From the Chair of the Economy & Resources Board
Cllr Peter Marland
Equality Framework Team
Cabinet Office
1 Horse Guards Road
London SW1A 2HQ
By e-mail: [email protected]
27 June 2025
Dear Equality Framework Team
Call for Evidence - Equality Law
This response is submitted by the Local Government Association (LGA) on behalf of local authorities. The LGA is the national voice of local government. We work with councils to support, promote and improve local government. The LGA covers every part of England and Wales and includes county and district councils, metropolitan and unitary councils, London boroughs, Welsh unitary councils (via the Welsh LGA), and fire and national park authorities.
The Workforce Team of the LGA offers advice on employment issues and represents local government employer interests to central government, government agencies, trade unions and other interested parties. The Economy and Resources Board comprises elected members from the LGA’s political groups providing cross party leadership to the LGA’s policy input.
The LGA manages sectoral collective bargaining in local government and national collective bargaining arrangements for fire, education and related sectors in total covering around two million employees. Elected councillors (and other employer organisations where appropriate) and nationally recognised trade unions work together in a positive way to reach collective agreements on key employment issues such as pay, and other terms and conditions. This helps to ensure that councils, and other employers, have pay, terms and conditions that are compliant with legislation and where possible model best practice.
In responding to this Call for Evidence, we have sought the views of local authorities through a roundtable held with authorities who expressed an interest in the topics covered. This submission responding to the areas about which we have most information or experience is based on the responses received along with our knowledge of the issues as they impact on local government.
Equal pay: Extending the right to equal pay to ethnic minority and disabled people
Many of the councils we spoke to were supportive of the extension of equal pay: it is a clear and distinct measure that will help to promote action in a way that keeping it within wider discrimination complaints would not. However, there is widespread concern that insufficient funding for the sector will be a major obstacle to achieving the objectives the government has set out.
The local government sector has significant experience of dealing with equal pay claims. It is also a sector in which pay transparency, pay audits and effective job evaluation schemes are commonplace. It is also a sector where the workforce benefits from trade union representation, and trade unions are joint custodians of the main local government job evaluation scheme. Where robust, impartial job evaluation schemes are in place, the rate of pay for the relevant role should not be affected by a protected characteristic, whether that be gender, ethnicity or disability. It is clear that where such schemes are effective, the need for litigation is limited, benefiting claimants and saving the time and resources of both them and employers in lengthy litigation. This also limits the pressure on an overburdened Tribunal system that is a salient issue when looking to expand access to legal redress. Using job evaluation schemes and pay audits benefits the whole workforce rather than relying on individuals identifying pay discrimination. Establishing such schemes should be a priority in order to tackle and ultimately avoid discrimination and would be more cost effective than addressing issues in litigation.
In our experience, concerns around lower pay for ethnic minority and disabled employees are likely to arise from structural issues, around employment opportunities, career progress and occupational segregation, rather than through those groups not being paid equal pay for work of equal value. The focus should therefore also be on addressing those structural issues alongside efforts to address and ultimately reduce pay inequalities.
Whilst supportive of the extension to equal pay, in local government there are significant capacity issues within human resources and legal teams. There are concerns that the additional burdens of further legislation in this area, at the same time as the introduction of provisions of the Employment Rights Bill (including the replacement of existing collective bargaining in some areas with new negotiating arrangements) and local government reorganisation, will put local authority HR provision under enormous pressure. The most recent Local Government Workforce Survey (2024/25) confirms that most councils’ resources had either stayed the same or decreased over the last three years following significant reductions in resource over the preceding decade.
The LGA is concerned that the extension of equal pay eligibility could create significant additional burdens, in terms not only of the liability for such claims, but the extensive costs and administrative time that would result from responding to any such equal pay claims. This is particularly acute where councils do not have the resources and funding to take on any extra work.
When asked what would help the sector to meet these challenges, additional funding, clear regulations and accompanying guidance were priorities, alongside reasonable lead-in times for implementation. Support by way of national campaigns encouraging employee data disclosure would also be needed, so employers could be surer of an employee’s ethnicity or disability status when carrying out equal pay audits or similar, ensuring people are paid equal pay for equal work, and so prevent equal pay claims arising.
Challenges with the current approach, for individuals and employers, include the lengthy wait times currently in the Employment Tribunal, particularly for equal pay claims. Until these are addressed, legal resolution remains very much a last resort. Consideration could be given instead to extending the period of conciliation prior to issuing proceedings, to allow for meaningful investigation (particularly around those involving ‘work of equal value’ which can be legally and operationally complex) and local resolution of such claims in quicker time.
The LGA has previously submitted a response to consultation in respect of the Equality (Race and Disability) Bill.
Equal pay: outsourcing
Enabling cross-employer equal pay claims would significantly increase the number of potential comparisons that could be made for equal pay purposes and so could significantly increase the number of claims. Even where claims can be defended, the cost both in time and money of doing so would be likely to be very substantial. Given the amount of outsourcing local authorities oversee, there are grave concerns about these proposals.
The complexity would be increased if they were to be introduced simultaneously with local government reorganisation, which in many cases, will lead to extensive discussions around harmonisation that could open the potential for equal pay comparisons and so further claims.
An additional, and significant, complication for all employers would be the upcoming removal through the Employment Rights Bill of the ability to use ‘fire and rehire’ to address equal pay and related equality issues, through changing employees’ existing terms and conditions. The LGA has previously submitted a response to consultation on this issue. The LGA is deeply concerned that the practical tools for local government employers to ensure equality compliant pay arrangements are fair and in line with changing equality law are being limited, which will lead to costly and disruptive outcomes that do not serve the interests of employees, councils and local service users.
Careful consideration would need to be given to the timing of introducing any right to make such comparisons, and how employers’ defences would operate in all circumstances. For public sector employers, including local authorities, many of the outsourcing and inequality in pay issues may well be addressed through the re-introduction of the two-tier code, as well as through an increased emphasis in procurement and contract management, and that could be the better route, resulting in fewer costs, risks and burdens on local government.
Local authorities have significant concerns about how pay equality would be managed or accurate comparisons made when services are outsourced, in particular how comparisons would work in practice, taking into account other contractual benefits, including pensions, type of contract and other elements.
It is also not clear how outsourcing companies would manage staff working across a number of principals, when each of those principals may operate using different terms and conditions. This could, potentially, lead to an increase in claims around pay disparity increasing in relation to the workforce within a large contractor as well as claims arising between workforces employed by contractors and principals commissioning services.
The tendering of outsourcing contracts with these more onerous requirements could deter potential suppliers, affecting service delivery, and management of external contracts under these new requirements would require substantial expertise and resources.
Equal pay: enforcement body
We consider that in addition to unions being involved in any new enforcement unit, employers, specifically local authorities, should also be involved, providing their experience of job grading, pay transparency, job evaluation and equal pay.
Ensuring the Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED) is met by all parties exercising public functions
Local authorities currently can influence non-public bodies exercising public functions through the outsourcing process. The contracts covering these arrangements can include provisions on compliance with the PSED. However, contract oversight and monitoring are a considerable burden on councils as part of their work involves ensuring that providers are fully aware of their duties. More guidance in this area issued centrally by government for those specifical providers would be helpful. For the PSED to become embedded and delivered effectively by all parties, local authorities will need to increase their EDI capacity to effectively support the procurement process from the tendering stage and during the ongoing monitoring of contract delivery.
Maintaining workplaces free from sexual harassment: effective steps
As large public sector employers, local authorities have had a range of steps in place for some time aimed at preventing sexual harassment.
Many local authorities will already be taking steps to provide a workplace free from harassment for all those working in it, including volunteers. We do not have any information to date that their inclusion, along with office-holders and other ‘atypical’ individuals, has caused any particular challenges to date.
Implementation of the Equality Act 2010 socio-economic duty
As in relation to the introduction of all new proposals, local authorities will need appropriate staff, training and guidance to be able to effectively implement this. This is particularly the case at a time when there are already significant workload issues for local authorities, as well as coming at a time of considerable change in their organisation.
Yours faithfully
Cllr Pete Marland
Chair, Economy & Resources Board
Local Government Association