Town halls are freezing posts, making service cuts, raising council tax and mortgaging assets to fund £3 billion in compensation payments for 700,000 equal pay claims. Schools are having to make cuts and the issue now extends to the NHS, where compensation could reach £5 billion. At the same time more than 75,000 claims are already waiting to be heard by employment tribunals.

So how has it come to this? The Equal Pay Act 1970, implemented five years later, was designed to bring women’s salaries into line with men’s, but the legislation proved too unwieldy because only a minority of women qualified.

Unions subsequently reached a single-status agreement with town halls in 1997 that sought to give equal pay to women whether they qualified through the law or not. A similar agreement was reached with the NHS: Agenda for Change. Both were aimed at evening out the pay gap between white and blue-collar jobs and delivering equal pay for women. Councils were expected to fund single status while the Government paid for the NHS agreement but without back pay.

The difficulties for town halls were compounded by a 2004 EU directive that required councils to pay six years’ back pay instead of the two for which most were planning.

In the same year unions stepped up the pressure by striking a further deal with councils that they should implement equal pay reviews by March 2007. So far only 44 per cent of councils have drawn up pay reviews, but there is growing pressure from frustrated unions and aggressive “no win, no fee” lawyers, keen to exploit the chaos. Unions such as Unison, the GMB and Unite are already backing 60,000 individual cases for fairer pay while “no win, no fee lawyers” have taken a further 15,000 to employment tribunals.

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