A pregnancy risk assessment is only required if your work is genuinely risky
“EATStands for Employment Appeal Tribunal. It hears appeals from employment tribunal decisions on points of law, not on the facts. It is not a way of simply asking for a second opinion on the outcome. found no automatic duty to risk-assess pregnant employees and dismissed the discrimination claim on the facts.”
Nothing obliges your employer to assess risk until you've put your pregnancy in writing. Even then, the obligation only bites if your job could genuinely endanger you or your baby.
- Put your pregnancy notification in writing and keep a copy, since this is what starts your employer's legal obligations.
- Think about whether your actual duties involve a real hazard, such as heavy lifting, chemicals, or long shifts, rather than assuming any office-based role automatically qualifies.
- If your employer refuses to assess a genuine risk after you have notified them in writing, get advice, since this can amount to discrimination even without further proof.
The situation
A primary school teacher told her school, in writing, that she was pregnant. At the time, there had already been performance concerns and a disciplinary process underway. Once she told her employer she was pregnant, she expected a risk assessment to follow. When none came, she treated that gap as pregnancy discrimination in itself. She later went on maternity leave, resigned, and brought a claim for constructive dismissalWhen your employer's behaviour is so serious that you feel you have no choice but to resign, the law may treat that resignation as a dismissal. The most common basis is a fundamental breach of the imp... and pregnancy-related discrimination.
What the tribunal found
The Employment Appeal Tribunal rejected the idea that every pregnant employee is automatically entitled to a risk assessment. Written notice of the pregnancy has to come first; nothing else in the duty switches on before that happens. From there, the job itself needs to carry a genuine risk of harm to the woman or her baby, and that danger has to trace back to something concrete in the workplace, whether that is a particular process, working condition, or exposure to a physical, chemical, or biological agent. In this case, there was nothing to show that ordinary teaching duties carried that kind of risk, so the tribunal found no failure on the employer's part. The EAT confirmed, though, that where the duty genuinely is triggered and the employer does nothing, that failure is automatic unlawful discrimination under the relevant health and safety and sex discrimination provisions.
O'Neill v Buckinghamshire County Council · EAT · 2010