Management Regulations 1999 regulations 16 to 19, UK wide
Young Person and New or Expectant Mother Risk Assessments
Two groups get their own regulations because the general risk assessment does not reach them properly. Both duties are easy to breach without noticing. AL23 Safety produces the specific assessments required by regulations 16 to 19 of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999, together with the procedures that make them work in practice, for clients UK wide.
What are these assessments?
Two separate duties, both sitting on top of your general risk assessment
The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 single out young persons and new or expectant mothers for additional protection. In each case the general assessment under regulation 3 remains in place. These are extra layers on top of it, with their own triggers, their own factors and their own consequences.
For young persons, the assessment must be made or reviewed before you employ anyone under 18, taking particular account of a defined list of factors. Regulation 19 then prohibits certain work outright, subject to a narrow exception.
For new or expectant mothers, the trigger comes earlier than most employers expect. It is the presence of women of child-bearing age in the workforce, not an announcement of pregnancy. If you have waited for somebody to tell you before assessing anything, you are already behind the duty.
Who needs one
The triggers are age, workforce composition and the type of work
- Any employer about to take on a worker under the age of 18, including apprentices, seasonal staff, weekend and holiday workers
- Any employer taking on a child, meaning a person not over compulsory school age, which brings a separate duty to inform the parent before employment begins
- Schools, colleges and businesses hosting work experience placements, where the host carries the duty as an employer would
- Any employer whose workforce includes women of child-bearing age and whose work involves processes, working conditions or physical, biological or chemical agents that could pose a risk to a new or expectant mother or her baby
- Employers with an employee who has notified pregnancy, has given birth within the previous six months or is breastfeeding
- Any workplace with manual handling, night work, lone work, standing for long periods, temperature extremes, vibration, ionising radiation, lead or biological agents
Compulsory school age in England ends on the last Friday in June of the school year in which the pupil turns 16. A 16 year old past that date is still a young person and no longer a child, which changes what you may lawfully ask them to do.
The regulations that apply
Your legal framework, in plain terms
Both duties sit in the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999. They interlock with the Employment Rights Act 1996 for suspension and pay, with the Working Time Regulations 1998 for young worker hours, with the Children and Young Persons Act 1933 and local authority byelaws for children and with the Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992 for rest facilities.
MHSWR 1999 regulation 3
You must not employ a young person until you have made or reviewed the risk assessment in relation to risks to young persons. Where you employ five or more people, regulation 3(6) requires the significant findings to be recorded, together with any group especially at risk. Young persons are such a group.
MHSWR 1999 regulation 10(2)
Before employing a child, you must give the parent comprehensible and relevant information on the risks identified, the preventive and protective measures and the risks notified by other employers sharing the workplace. This duty applies to children only, not to 16 and 17 year olds.
MHSWR 1999 regulation 19
Requires young persons to be protected from risks arising from inexperience, absence of awareness of risk and immaturity, then prohibits certain categories of work.
MHSWR 1999 regulations 16 to 18
The new or expectant mother assessment, the response hierarchy, night work suspension on a medical certificate and the written notification rule.
Employment Rights Act 1996 sections 66 to 68
Suspension on maternity grounds, the right to be offered suitable alternative work first and the right to full remuneration while suspended.
What we assess
Young persons
- Inexperience, lack of awareness of risk and immaturity, assessed against the specific tasks rather than as a general statement
- The fitting-out and layout of the workplace and the workstation, including reach, guard positions and controls designed for adult stature
- The nature, degree and duration of exposure to physical, biological and chemical agents
- The form, range and use of work equipment and the way it is handled, tested against PUWER 1998 regulation 7 on specific risks and regulation 9 on training
- The organisation of processes and activities, including supervision ratios and who the young person actually reports to on shift
- The extent of health and safety training provided or to be provided
- Prohibited work under regulation 19(2), covering work beyond physical or psychological capacity, harmful exposure to toxic or carcinogenic agents or agents causing heritable genetic damage or harm to the unborn child, harmful exposure to radiation, risk of accidents a young person cannot reasonably be expected to recognise or avoid, plus risk to health from extreme cold or heat, noise or vibration
- Whether the regulation 19(3) exception applies, which requires all three conditions together, meaning the work is necessary for training, the young person is supervised by a competent person and the risk is reduced to the lowest level reasonably practicable. That exception is not available for a child
- Working Time Regulations 1998 limits for young workers, being 8 hours a day and 40 hours a week with no opt-out, 12 consecutive hours daily rest, 48 hours weekly rest, a break of at least 30 minutes where daily working time exceeds 4.5 hours, restricted night work and a free health and capacities assessment before night work
- For children, the Children and Young Persons Act 1933 and byelaw position, including the minimum age of 13, the local authority employment permit, no work during school hours, no work before 7am or after 7pm and a maximum of two hours on a school day or a Sunday
- Sector prohibitions, including the Control of Lead at Work Regulations 2002 restrictions on specified lead processes and the lower dose limits for trainees under 18 under the Ionising Radiations Regulations 2017
An honest note on machinery. The old prescribed dangerous machines regime under the Young Persons (Safety) Act 1920 and the Factories Act has been repealed. Lists of banned machines still circulate in training packs and in old company procedures. They are not current law. The controlling provision now is regulation 19(2) and 19(3) applied through risk assessment, which is a harder discipline than reading off a list.
New or expectant mothers
- The generic assessment required by regulation 16(1) wherever women of child-bearing age work, covering processes, working conditions and physical, biological and chemical agents, including those specified in Annexes I and II of Council Directive 92/85/EEC
- Individual assessment on written notification, covering manual handling, prolonged standing or sitting, work at height, confined spaces, lone working, travel, night and shift work, temperature extremes, whole body vibration, ionising radiation, lead and biological agents such as rubella, chickenpox and cytomegalovirus
- Post-natal factors for the first six months after birth and for as long as breastfeeding continues, which are not the same as the antenatal factors
- Fatigue, rest, hydration, toilet access and the practical availability of breaks on your actual shift pattern
- Infectious or contagious disease exposure, where regulation 16(4) applies the duty only where the level of risk at work is in addition to the level expected outside the workplace
- Rest facilities under regulation 25 of the Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992, where regulation 25(4) requires suitable facilities for a pregnant woman or nursing mother to rest
Our process
Baseline, generic assessments, procedure, controls, then brief managers
- 01
Establish the baseline
We review your general risk assessments and identify which of them already reach these groups and which do not. Most existing assessments assume an adult, non-pregnant worker without ever saying so.
- 02
Build the generic assessments
We produce the young person assessment for each role you recruit into and the regulation 16(1) generic assessment for the roles held by women of child-bearing age so that both exist before anyone needs them.
- 03
Write the response procedure
We set out the individual assessment trigger, the review points during pregnancy and after birth, plus the exact sequence managers must follow when a risk cannot be removed.
- 04
Fix the controls
We work through the hierarchy with you, drawing on the underlying assessments where relevant, such as manual handling and COSHH. We say plainly where a task cannot be adjusted.
- 05
Brief and review
We brief line managers and HR together, since the failures in this area are almost always coordination failures, then set the review triggers.
The sequence that managers get wrong
Alter, offer, then suspend on full pay. In that order.
Where the generic assessment shows a risk to a new or expectant mother that cannot be avoided by other means, regulation 16 sets a sequence and it is not optional.
- 01
Remove the risk
by ordinary preventive means if you can.
- 02
Alter her working conditions or hours of work
, where it is reasonable to do so and where that would avoid the risk. This is regulation 16(2).
- 03
Offer suitable alternative work
under section 67 of the Employment Rights Act 1996, where such work is available. It must be suitable and appropriate for her to do, on terms and conditions not substantially less favourable.
- 04
Suspend from work on full pay
under regulation 16(3) and section 68 of the Employment Rights Act 1996, for as long as is necessary to avoid the risk. This is a week's pay for each week of suspension, not statutory maternity pay.
Dismissal is not a step in this sequence. Neither is unpaid leave, nor requiring the employee to start maternity leave early, nor asking her to take annual leave. Regulation 17 works the same way for night work, where a certificate from a registered medical practitioner or a registered midwife shows that she should not be at work for an identified period.
What you get
Both assessments plus the procedure managers will follow
- A young person risk assessment covering the specific factors regulation 3 requires, with a regulation 19 determination on prohibited work for each task
- A parental information letter template meeting regulation 10(2), for use before a child starts work
- A generic new or expectant mother risk assessment for each affected role, satisfying regulation 16(1) before any individual notifies
- An individual assessment template with a written notification form and a review schedule tied to pregnancy stage and to the six month post-natal period
- A manager procedure setting out the alter, offer, suspend sequence with the correct pay position at each step
- A rest facilities review against regulation 25 of the Workplace Regulations 1992, with a practical specification for the room
What we need from you
The roles, the shifts and your maternity policies
- Job descriptions and task lists for the roles young people and women of child-bearing age occupy
- Shift patterns, night work arrangements and the actual supervision arrangement on each shift
- Existing risk assessments, COSHH assessments and manual handling assessments
- Your maternity and family leave policies, which lets the safety procedure and the HR procedure say the same thing
- A plan of the site showing available rest, welfare and sanitary facilities
Why AL23 Safety
One procedure HR and operations both use
Accountable
When something is non-compliant, we say so clearly and set out the fix. If a task cannot lawfully be given to a 17 year old, we say so rather than writing a control that everyone knows will not be applied.
Expert and chartered
Chartered Building Engineer and Health and Safety Professional leadership, working to current standards and legislation.
Practical, not just compliant
These duties fail at the handover between HR and operations. We write one procedure that both functions use, with the pay consequences spelled out so nobody improvises.
UK wide
We support employers taking on young workers and managing pregnancy at work across the UK from our Manchester base.
Talk to us about protecting these groups
A short conversation usually clarifies the position
Most enquiries here start with a specific person and a specific problem. We can usually tell you on a call whether the answer is an adjustment, an alternative role or a paid suspension.
Common questions
Answers, up front
Cannot see your question? Get in touch and we will answer it directly.
Contact usNo. This is the most common error. Regulation 18 provides that written notification triggers the individual protective duties in regulations 16(2), 16(3) and 17. It does not switch on the generic assessment duty in regulation 16(1), which applies as soon as women of child-bearing age are employed in work that could pose a risk. An employer with no generic assessment is in breach before anyone says anything.
You are not required to take the individual protective action until written notification is given. You may also request a certificate from a registered medical practitioner or a registered midwife confirming pregnancy. If she does not produce it within a reasonable time you are not required to maintain the action. Good practice is to act on what you know rather than to stand on the paperwork, since the duty of care and the discrimination exposure do not wait.
Sometimes, under a narrow exception. Regulation 19(2) prohibits work involving risks of accidents a young person cannot reasonably be expected to recognise or avoid. Regulation 19(3) permits that work for a young person who is no longer a child, though only where all three conditions are met together, meaning it is necessary for training, they are supervised by a competent person and the risk is reduced to the lowest level reasonably practicable. The exception is never available for a child.
Regulation 25(4) of the Workplace Regulations 1992 requires suitable rest facilities for a pregnant woman or a nursing mother. Guidance recommends they be conveniently situated in relation to sanitary facilities and, where necessary, include the facility to lie down. There is no legal right in Great Britain to a private room to express or store breast milk. HSE recommends providing a private, healthy and safe environment. A toilet is not a suitable place. That is guidance rather than law. We say so rather than overclaiming it.
Cost is driven by the number of distinct roles rather than by headcount, since the assessment attaches to the work. A single site with four or five affected roles is typically a short piece of work with the documents issued within two to three weeks. Multi-site employers with varied operations take longer. Tell us the roles and the sites and we will quote against that. This work sits naturally inside a broader health and safety audit.
Yes, on the employment side rather than the safety side. Since 6 April 2024 the priority right to a suitable alternative vacancy in a redundancy situation runs from the point the employee tells you she is pregnant until 18 months after the expected week of childbirth. From 6 April 2026 paternity leave and ordinary parental leave became day-one rights. Statutory sick pay is payable from day one. Strengthened protection against dismissal for pregnant workers and those returning from maternity leave is expected in 2027 and has not commenced.
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