Beddoes & Ors v Birmingham City Council

In mass equal-pay litigation, tribunals should readily permit correction of accidental job-title misdescriptions unless the amendment creates real prejudice, raises a jurisdictional problem, or involves abuse.

Employees of a local authority working in community schools may compare themselves with other authority employees where the establishment criterion is satisfied. The governing body’s power to recommend terms does not necessarily make it the single source of those terms.

Under the modified grievance procedure, an employee’s initial statement must identify the grievance and its essential basis sufficiently to enable a substantive response. However, collective-grievance provisions may deem compliance where a representative raises the same grievance for the requisite employees. Agreement to use the modified procedure cannot generally be withdrawn, although a later collective grievance may supersede it.

Eighteen interlocutory appeals arose from large-scale equal-pay claims brought against Birmingham City Council. They concerned three groups of issues: correction of inaccurate job descriptions; whether non-teaching employees in community schools were in the same employment as other Council employees; and compliance with the statutory grievance regime under the Employment Act 2002.

The Employment Tribunal permitted some amendments but refused others, accepted the school-employed claimants’ comparator case, and held that it had jurisdiction over claims affected by allegedly defective grievances. The Council and various claimants appealed. The central questions were whether the amendments should have been permitted, whether a single-source requirement restricted the school-employed claimants’ comparisons, and whether the grievances complied with, or were deemed to comply with, the statutory procedures.

1. Job-title amendments. The Council’s appeal against permission to amend in the LTS cases was dismissed, and the claimants’ appeals in the non-LTS cases were allowed. In mass litigation, tribunals should be very ready to correct accidental job-title errors. The decisive question is usually whether the correction causes real prejudice or raises a jurisdictional difficulty. The fact that a fresh claim might be out of time is relevant, but was of little weight here because the existing equal-pay claims were in time, the mistakes were venial, and comparable claims were already in the litigation. The Tribunal’s differing treatment of materially similar cases, without identifying specific prejudice, was irrational. No remittal was required.
2. School-employed claimants. The Council’s appeal was dismissed. Following North Cumbria Acute Hospitals NHS Trust v Potter, the Tribunal should not depart from its existing authority unless it is plainly wrong. The authority was rightly decided. The governing body’s powers under the School Staffing (England) Regulations 2003 did not establish that it was the true source of the relevant terms. In any event, the statutory concept of same employment could naturally permit comparisons between employees of the same employer, subject to the establishment criterion, without infringing European Union law. Any resulting disparity might instead provide a defence under section 1(3) of the Equal Pay Act 1970.
3. Statutory grievances. The Council’s appeal was dismissed, subject to a declaration limiting the jurisdiction in the UNISON types 6b, 7b and 8 cases to claims based on the named comparator classes. A modified-procedure grievance must state the essential reasons for the complaint in sufficient detail to enable a substantive response. The Council’s subsequent response could not cure an insufficient statement. Nevertheless, regulation 9 could apply to collective grievances raised by a trade union, including where identical individual forms were submitted by the union and the surrounding circumstances showed that it had adopted the grievances. The correlation principle applied, but an unparticularised equal-pay grievance could support later fully particularised claims. Agreement to the modified procedure was generally binding and could not simply be withdrawn; a later collective grievance under regulation 9 was different and could supersede the individual procedure.

• Employment Tribunal: interlocutory decisions made in proceedings concerning amendment applications, the school-employed claimants’ comparator status, and statutory grievance compliance.
• Employment Appeal Tribunal: the Council’s amendment appeal and school-employed claimants’ appeal were dismissed; the claimants’ non-LTS amendment appeals were allowed; the Council’s section 32 appeal was dismissed subject to the limited jurisdiction declaration.