Pump Court Chambers

Tim Dracass successfully defends equal pay claim

News 24th October 2024

Tim Dracass has recently secured another successful outcome in an equal pay claim before the employment tribunal.

Tim was instructed to act for the Respondent employer in the case of JH v NWF Ltd, who was facing a claim brought by a current employee that she was being paid less than her male comparator despite being engaged in like work.

The case ultimately turned on an assessment of the employer’s ‘material factor’ defence, with the Employment Tribunal holding, after hearing evidence and submissions over several days last week, that the Respondent had discharged the burden of establishing that the difference in pay was genuinely due to material factors that were not the difference in sex. Because the Tribunal also found there was no ‘sex taint’ in those factors relied on by the Respondent, there was no need for the Respondent to have to go further and objectively justify them.

This case comes on the back of Tim’s success last year in the long-running equal pay dispute of Barnard v Hampshire and Isle of Wight Fire and Rescue Authority, where he represented the Respondent Fire Service in defending the claim over the course of a 10-day ET hearing, leading to all claims being dismissed at first instance (ET Judgment can be found here) and then, together with Sean Jones KC, successfully resisted the claimant’s subsequent appeal to the EAT (now reported at [2024] IRLR 744 – Judgement here).

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