In person For the v Respondent — 2023

The claimant was employed by the London Borough of Bexley as a Valuer at Bex 12. She compared her role with two male Building Surveyors graded at Bex 16 and said that, particularly after she was given the temporary accommodation project, her work was of equal value to theirs. The respondent relied on a 2021 HAY job evaluation study, contending that the claimant’s role had been correctly graded and that the study defeated the equal pay claim at this stage.

The tribunal accepted that the HAY system itself was an established and inherently reliable evaluation method, and it did not treat the claimant’s absence from the first panel meeting as making the process unreliable. It also accepted that the appeal stage was conducted by a trained evaluator and that the respondent’s notes and outcome documents were sufficient in detail. However, the tribunal found that the process involved substantial additional input from the claimant’s managers, beyond the agreed job description, and that some of that input was negative or dismissive in tone.

The tribunal identified reasons to suspect that the evidence presented to the panels was not fully reliable. It referred to the manager comment that the claimant’s work was ‘not rocket science’, Ms Jackson’s email saying the claimant had ‘constantly moaned’, and disagreements between the claimant and her managers about matters such as the extent of supervision, the use of proformas, and the experience required for the role. The tribunal also noted the earlier grievance relationship between the claimant and Mr Muirhead. It concluded that, although the evaluation was evidence-based, there were reasonable grounds for suspecting that at least some of that evidence was tainted.

On that basis, the tribunal held that the respondent’s job evaluation study was not in itself a defence to the equal pay claim. It declined to decide at this stage whether the claimant’s role and the comparators’ roles were in fact of equal value, and directed that the matter should move on to the next stage, with the parties invited to comment on whether an independent expert report would be necessary.