Five times over a period of two weeks 3 employees were suspected of consuming alcohol during their lunch-hour and returning to work thereafter. The line manager wants to suspend without pay and invoke the disciplinary procedure. Alcohol consumption is considered to be gross misconduct and could lead to dismissal and I would not want any errors on impartiality.

If we want to breath test we would obtain permission from the employee first of course, but, can we breath-test in-house or do we have to ask for a doctor or health visitor to conduct the test? (Bearing in mind that testing could be delayed some time and reflect a different result to any earlier tests.)
I should be grateful for advice on conducting this process fairly. Thank you.

Kerstin Willis