Equal pay chaos...

The Court of Appeal has handed down its judgment in the combined appeals in the long-running equal pay disputes of Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council v Bainbridge and Others and Surtees and others –v- Middlesbrough Borough Council.

Although the appeals addressed a number of issues, at the crux of both was the question of whether pay protection schemes, negotiated by the councils as part of the implementation of new pay and grading systems, discriminated against women. The new systems were designed to implement the Single Status Agreement, a national collective agreement concluded in 1997. The agreement brought former "blue collar" and "white collar" workers on to the same pay scale and required councils to re-evaluate their jobs and review pay and grading.

Wragge & Co's specialists in local authority have put together an expert analysis of the judgment.