Stress at work: What are your rights?
Recent figures from the Health and Safety Executive show that workplace stress remains a major problem. In 2024/25, an estimated 964,000 workers in Great Britain experienced work-related stress, depression or anxiety, accounting for 52% of all self-reported work-related ill health. These conditions resulted in approximately 22.1 million working days being lost, with each affected worker taking an average of 22.9 days off. The figures show that work-related stress continues to place substantial pressure on employees and employers. (Health and Safety Executive, 2025).
Case precedents upheld by the House of Lords have confirmed that employers are liable to pay compensation for workplace stress if the employee’s illness was foreseeable and the employer failed to take reasonable steps to prevent it.
Current Health and Safety Executive guidance also confirms that employers have a legal duty to assess the risk of work-related stress and take appropriate action to prevent harm.
In Walker v Northumberland County Council [1995], John Walker successfully established that his employer was liable for a second work-related nervous breakdown. After his first illness, the council knew that he was vulnerable to further psychiatric injury but failed to provide adequate assistance or reduce his workload. The High Court confirmed that an employer’s duty of care extends to reasonably foreseeable psychiatric injury as well as physical injury. (Barber v Somerset County Council [2004]),
In Kawsar v Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis, decided in June 2026, the court reaffirmed that employers must take reasonable care to prevent reasonably foreseeable psychiatric injury caused by work. The employer was found to have breached its duty after becoming aware of the employee’s vulnerability but repeatedly failing to implement occupational health recommendations. Those failures materially contributed to further psychiatric injury (Kawsar v Commissioner of Police 2026).
For employers
Whilst employers do not have to guarantee a stress-free workplace. They must none to less assess work-related stress risks and take reasonably practicable measures to remove or reduce identified risks. Failure to do so may result in employees seeking compensation.
We help you to put in place an effective employee stress management solution to help remove or reduce identified risks.
References
Health and Safety Executive, 2025. Health and safety statistics: Key figures for Great Britain 2024 to 2025. Bootle: Health and Safety Executive.
Kawsar v Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis, Chelmsford County Court, 8 June 2026.
Barber v Somerset County Council [2004] UKHL 13; [2004] 1 WLR 1089; [2004] ICR 457.
Walker v Northumberland County Council [1994] EWHC QB 2; [1995] 1 All ER 737; [1995] ICR 702; [1995] IRLR 35.