Ms A Morton v East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust — 2021

The tribunal considered the respondent's material factor defence after an earlier judgment had found that the claimant was engaged on like work with her chosen comparators while working as a Senior Divisional Accountant. The issue in this judgment was whether factors other than sex explained the difference in pay between the claimant's band 8a role in Family Care and the band 8b Senior Divisional Accountant roles in the SAS and Medicine divisions.

The tribunal rejected the respondent's first proposed factor, namely that the greater size and complexity of the SAS and Medicine divisions led to the higher banding, because those matters did not form part of the job evaluation exercise and were not shown to have informed the evaluation panel's scoring. It found, however, that Charlotte Henson genuinely held the view that the new SDA roles should be band 8b and provisionally banded them on that basis in order to fill the posts. The tribunal found that this was a significant and relevant cause of the pay difference until the formal evaluation outcome was confirmed.

The tribunal also found that the subsequent CAJE evaluation in May 2013 formally evaluated the SDA role at band 8b and that this then explained the continuing pay difference until the end of the claimant's service in the Family Division. It found no evidence that either factor was tainted by direct or indirect sex discrimination. The material factor defence under section 69 of the Equality Act 2010 therefore succeeded, disapplying the equality clause and defeating the equal pay claim.