Northumberland County Council v Collins & Ors

An employment tribunal deciding whether work was rated as equivalent must give adequate reasons for its factual and inferential conclusions. It must explain why material evidence has been rejected and how the primary facts support the conclusion reached. A conclusion that a job evaluation must have occurred cannot rest on speculative assumptions, the existence of a grading, or a non sequitur. Where the reasoning is inadequate, and the conclusion is one that no reasonable tribunal properly directing itself could reach on the evidence, the decision may be set aside and remitted for rehearing.

The respondents brought equal pay claims under the Equal Pay Act 1970, comparing their work with that of male temporary road workers or labourers graded MG1 under the White Book job evaluation scheme. The Employment Tribunal held that the temporary road workers’ work had been rated as equivalent because it inferred that their jobs must have been evaluated under the scheme.

The Council appealed, contending that the tribunal had inadequately reasoned its conclusion and that the conclusion was perverse. The central issue was whether the evidence justified an inference that the temporary road workers’ jobs had been evaluated under the valid job evaluation scheme.

1. Appeal allowed and case remitted. The Employment Tribunal’s declaration was set aside. The matter was remitted for rehearing before a differently constituted Employment Tribunal.
2. For the purposes of Equal Pay Act 1970, section 1(5), the claimant bore the burden of proving on the balance of probabilities that the relevant jobs had been evaluated in the required manner. The parties accepted that, once common grading under a valid scheme was shown, the respondent might bear an evidential burden if asserting that the comparator’s job had not in fact been evaluated.
3. The Employment Tribunal failed to explain why it rejected the evidence of the Council’s witnesses, particularly Mr Nicholson, that the temporary workers had been placed in MG1 without the White Book evaluation procedures being followed. If that evidence was rejected, the reasons for rejection had to be stated.
4. The inference that an evaluation must have occurred did not follow from the findings that the employer was heavily unionised, that unions would probably have objected to unequal pay, or that the workers regarded themselves as labourers. The documentary evidence showed only that an MG1 grading existed; it did not establish that a job evaluation had taken place.
5. The conclusion that a personnel department must have carried out an exercise to bring the jobs within MG1 was itself inadequately supported. The tribunal had taken too large a step from its primary findings to its conclusion, and the word therefore concealed a non sequitur.
6. The Tribunal also accepted, with some hesitation, that the conclusion was one which no reasonable tribunal properly directing itself on the evidence could have reached. The case could not safely be resolved by substituting a finding of non-compliance because the underlying inferential findings were themselves defective.

• Employment Appeal Tribunal: allowed the appeal against the Employment Tribunal’s preliminary finding and remitted the matter for rehearing before a differently constituted tribunal.
• Employment Tribunal: at a pre-hearing review, held that the respondents’ work had been rated as equivalent with that of the male comparators and made a declaration accordingly.