ERA reforms in depth: Maternity, pregnancy and gender equality

The new requirement for large employers to create and publish gender equality action plans (as outlined below) is set to come into effect in March 2027 for relevant public authorities, and April 2027 for relevant private and voluntary sector employers.

Enhanced dismissal protections for pregnant employees and new parents are expected to come into force in October 2027.

Current position

When it comes to dismissal protections, there are relatively limited additional protections for pregnant employees and those who are on, or who have recently returned from, family-related leave. The main additional protection is a requirement in a redundancy situation for such employees to be offered suitable alternative vacancies, where available. In April 2024, this additional protection was extended to pregnant employees and those returning from maternity, adoption and eligible shared parental leave.

For pay gap reporting, all employers with 250 or more employees are required to publish data on their gender pay gap every year, but there is no requirement to publish an action plan with this data.

What is changing?

The three key areas of reform outlined in the Act which are relevant to gender equality are:

• Dismissal protections – The Act itself contains relatively little information about this reform. Instead, it introduces a provision enabling the Secretary of State to issue regulations concerning dismissals during pregnancy and after maternity leave (and other types of family-related leave, such as adoption and shared parental leave). Who will be protected, for how long and what those protections will look like was left to secondary legislation.
  
  In October 2025, the government launched a consultation seeking views on those key questions and more. In its consultation response, published in October 2026, the government outlined the following plans for these new protections:
  • Where an employer dismisses a protected employee, the employer will need to justify that dismissal as a ‘proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim’. This is a stricter legal test than the existing requirement under unfair dismissal protections to show that the dismissal is in the band of reasonable responses. The employer will need to be able to identify a genuine business interest that it is furthering by dismissing the employee and show that the dismissal is proportionate. This latter point in effect requires the employer to show that there are no less-discriminatory alternatives (e.g. a warning, redeployment or changes to the employee’s duties) that would also achieve the legitimate aim.
  • The protections will cover pregnant employees (once they have informed their employer that they are pregnant), employees who are on maternity, adoption, shared parental, neonatal care or bereaved partner’s paternity leave and those employees who are in the first 6 months after returning from such leave. Employees who took shared parental leave, neonatal care or bereaved partner’s paternity leave will only be covered by the post-return protection against dismissal if they took at least 6 weeks’ continuous leave.
  • The protection will be a ‘day one’ right, meaning that employees will not need to complete a qualifying period of employment before they benefit from the protection.
• Gender equality action plans – Acknowledging that reporting alone has not brought about significant change, large employers (those with 250 or more employees) will be required to create and publish action plans showing the steps they are taking to address their gender pay gap and the steps they are taking to support employees through the menopause. Separate regulations will be published which will provide further details regarding these action plans, including what they will need to contain and how frequently they will need to be revised.

• Outsourced workers – The Act contains powers enabling regulations to be issued that would expand the information that large employers must provide as part of their gender pay gap reporting to include information about the service providers that they contract with for outsourced services (but not the gender pay gap data of such providers).

The enhanced dismissal protections for pregnant employees and new parents are significant. The government recognises that the steps available to employers when exploring alternatives to dismissal will vary depending on the size and nature of the organisation, so smaller employers will not be held to the same standard as larger employers. Nevertheless, it is clear from the government consultation that it expects dismissal to only be justified in limited circumstances such as where continued employment would pose a health and safety risk to customers, staff or the public, would have a significantly detrimental effect on the business or would have a serious negative impact on the wellbeing of others.

With the enhanced dismissal protections still a little way off and whilst we await further details in regulations, there are limited steps that employers can take now to prepare. However, there is one preparatory action that employers should be taking – employers should review the systems that they have in place to identify which of its employees are pregnant, are on maternity/adoption/shared parental leave/neonatal care leave and/or have recently returned from such leave. Employers should already have some systems in place as part of the enhanced redundancy protections introduced in April 2024 so it should largely be a case of confirming that these systems are working effectively and can be adapted to cover not just those who are subject to a redundancy exercise.

It will also be important to update your policies and processes and, crucially, to ensure that HR & People teams and line managers are aware of this change, and the impact that it will have on potential dismissals of protected employees.

Large employers will need to keep a close eye on the gender pay gap reporting reforms. Many already voluntarily produce an action plan to accompany their gender pay gap data (although possibly not menopause action plans). Large employers should start considering what they will include in their first action plan or how they will revisit their existing action plans to ensure they are compliant.

Employers will also need to ensure that their gender pay gap data reporting complies with any new requirements surrounding service provider information.