Mr Michael Raffell, Consultant For the v Mr Colin Barr, Consultant — 2022

Miss C Thompson told the respondent in writing on 17 October 2019 that she was pregnant. The tribunal found that the risk assessment carried out on 22 October 2019 by David Pepper was not suitable and sufficient: it was described as a brief tick-box exercise by an inexperienced manager, with no proper assessment of her individual circumstances or of the jobs she was being allocated. The tribunal held that this failure was unfavourable treatment in the protected period and therefore discrimination under s.18(2)(a) Equality Act 2010.

The tribunal then considered 10 specific jobs allocated between 6 November and 30 December 2019. It accepted the claimant's evidence that these tasks involved, among other things, wheelchair manoeuvring, bariatric or non-weight-bearing patients, lone working, and an aggressive patient, and found that the respondent should have treated the claimant as pregnant when allocating those duties. It concluded that each of the 10 incidents was an act of unfavourable treatment under s.18(2)(a) Equality Act 2010.

The same 10 incidents were also found to be detriments contrary to s.47C(1) and (2A) Employment Rights Act 1996. The reasons note that two incident identifiers had been mis-described in earlier case management material, but the tribunal treated the underlying jobs as the relevant events. A separate remedy hearing was ordered, so no monetary award was assessed in this judgment.