Progress on policies for healthier night shifts

Impact in action: Liminal Space at the BEIS Committee

In April of this year, The Liminal Space brought evidence from the Night Club on the health risks of the night shift – or as they’ve found – ‘the forgotten shift’ to parliament. It was amazing to see the insights from our partnership being reviewed by the Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) Committee – now known as the Business and Trade Committee.

The BEIS Committee has agreed and identified that there is a need for night workers to be looked at as a distinct group of workers. Prior to The Liminal Space giving evidence to the Committee, they were unaware of the full extent of the negative health impact that night work causes.

The subsequent BEIS Committee report on post-pandemic economic growth now recommends that government should take more steps to provide protection for workers from any effects of night-time working. It also calls for government to commission an investigation into the health and safety implications of night-time work.

The Liminal Space followed up their successful evidence session with a parliamentary event on June 21 in the House of Commons. The Liminal Space gave 60 guests a first-hand experience of the Night Club initiative, welcoming a cross-party group of more than 20 members of parliament, night workers, business leaders, and academics.

Speaking at the event were Director of Liminal Space and Founder of Night Club Sarah Douglas, London Night Czar Amy Lamé, Co-op Sleep Champions Colin Easson, Kat Uren, and Terry Robinson, alongside Co-Op’s Head of Logistics Ian Gibb, ex-nurse and MP Paulette Hamilton, MP and Chair of the Business and Trade Select Committee Darren Jones, and Professor Russell Foster, Director of the Sleep and Circadian Neuroscience Institute at the University of Oxford. Together they made the case that a focus on making night shift work healthier will improve health and bring benefits to employers as well as the economy. 

Looking to the future

It has been so encouraging to see the journey that The Liminal Space has been on to raise awareness of ‘the forgotten shift’. By zeroing in on night shifts, they’ve been able to really make progress for the millions of people whose health is affected by when they work.

We support The Liminal Space in their calls to government to change the Working Time Directive to require annual health checks, and to further investigate the health impact of working at night. We also support the call to recognise night work as distinct and assigning an MP to be responsible for the needs of night workers.

We look forward to seeing and supporting the next phase of work on rights for night workers. While change can take time – it’s been great to see this tangible progress for people who have often been left out of the conversation on better working conditions.