Birmingham Equal Pay FAQs

The offer pack contains a document referred to as a ‘Settlement Agreement’. The agreement sets out the offer from the Council. It also explains what the obligations on you will be if you accept the offer and what will happen to your Employment Tribunal equal pay claim.

Once signed by you and by the Council, the Settlement Agreement will be a legally binding document. As the Settlement Agreement is a contractual document, once it is signed by you, you cannot retract your acceptance of the offer.

You should read all the advice before signing the Settlement Agreement. You will be asked to confirm that you have read and understood the advice before signing the Settlement Agreement. To receive the compensation payment offered to you by the Council, you must sign the Settlement Agreement. This will bring your current claims in the Employment Tribunal to an end.

In all the circumstances, and having considered the length of time to get to an Employment Tribunal final hearing, the finances available to the Council to settle this claim, and the inherent uncertainty of proceedings in the Employment Tribunal, yes we recommend this deal as a reasonable settlement offer.

Once a Settlement Agreement has been accepted, Leigh Day will provide confirmation of your acceptance to the Council, along with their Legal Advisors Certificate. That acceptance will be confirmed later if you provide alternative bank details, as those will need to be verified by Leigh Day.

The council will pay your compensation sum to you within 58 days of the acceptance being confirmed.

For current Council employees, settlement payments will be made to the same bank account used for salary payments by default. If you would prefer the payment to be made to a different account, you will have the opportunity to nominate an alternative.

For former Council employees, and for current school employees, you will be asked to confirm whether you wish to receive your settlement payment into the bank account the Council currently has on record, or whether you would prefer to nominate a different account.

Under the terms of the Settlement Agreement, all claims have been settled up to and including 31 March 2025. Any periods of employment from 1 April 2025 are not included. This was a date agreed between the unions and the Council.

For context, any discrimination arising from the practice of task & finish ended in June 2023, with Fleet & Waste removing the practice

The WRCO, which was the equal value comparator for grade 2 claimants, was deleted from the council in January 2024 and therefore the loses for this element of the claim came to an end. The Driver Team Leader Role has also been deleted from the council following a period of consultation in October 2025.

We understand there has been a period of pay protection which this claim does not settle. GMB felt it was in members’ best interests to deal with this issue after compensation has been received for this claim, so as to not cause any delay for our members.

The offer pack contains very specific detail about your job, pay, hours and other personal data that makes the offer personal to you. Please check your information carefully.

If the information is inaccurate, please email us with evidence of anything that you think needs to be corrected. You should only accept the offer if your employment data is accurate. After reviewing these documents, you will have the chance to dispute your settlement sum. If you do wish to dispute you are required to submit evidence.

This legal campaign will end when the settlement is implemented, but the campaign for pay equality continues. The compensation is “full and final settlement” of your current claim. If you accept the compensation payment, your legal claim against the council will be withdrawn.

The focus will shift to the new pay system and the work required to ensure that new arrangements for grading and pay are fair and equal.

If there are new inequalities in the pay arrangements at Birmingham, they can be challenged at any time. If necessary, that challenge could include new legal action.

The vast majority of the thosuands of GMB claimants are registered for the online settlement. That process moves more quickly than paper copy signing.

If you are using esignature, your digital acceptance will reach your representative immediately. If your bank details haven’t changed, then that information is likely to be passed to the council on the same day. The council will then have 58 days to process your payment via bank transfer.

The precise date for your payment depends on the speed of council payment processes.

If you opted to receive a paper copy, and sign in the traditional way, the process will be slightly slower. That is because posting, data entry and checking are all done manually.

No this is in full and final settlement of your claim and will bring your tribunal claim to a conclusion.

Birmingham have only included jobs that are in scope for payment in your individual offer data. It is possible you have had other jobs within the relevant time period but they are not in scope. If you decide to dispute your offer because of missing jobs, please know that will delay your offer payment. We do not have an estimated response time for disputes based on the volume of offers.

GMB did not recommend that members who had a valid claim sign the MOU, as we feel it sought to compromise your claim for significantly less that you would have achieved in tribunal.

We understand that some members made the decision to sign the MOU. The impact of this means your claim value is based on the period after you signed the MOU. For example, if you signed the MOU on 1 April 2022, your compensation is calculated from 2 April 2022 until 31 March 2025.

For those who did not sign, their compensation will start from 6 years before their claim was lodged. For example, the first GMB claim was lodged on 6 May 2022 and therefore their compensation will be from 7 May 2016 or your first day of employment, whichever is later.

No. The MOU is a legally binding document and cannot be revoked. Your claims up to the date of signing are compromised.

No. Once a member accepts the Settlement Agreement, they are only allowed to discuss it with i) their immediate family or trade union representative, ii) any people who owe them a duty of confidentiality (such as legal representatives or tax advisors), iii) government benefits agencies, or iv) HMRC.

The specific circumstances in which you can discuss the existence and terms of the Settlement Agreement are set out at clause 11 of the Settlement Agreement.

We are not able to advise you on your benefits and therefore you may wish to seek advice about this from someone else, for example Citizen Advice Bureau, a financial advisor etc.

GMB Member Benefits offer financial advice from Quilter which you may wish to consider making use of:

www.quilter.com
08000 858590
QFAinfo@quilter.com

No. The Council will deduct appropriate amounts for income tax and National Insurance contributions before the compensation sum is paid to you. The Council will also deduct employee pension contributions.

Unfortunately, we are unable to give specific tax advice. If you think that the Council is proposing to deduct the incorrect amount in respect of tax, please inform us as soon as possible and within 14 days at the latest so that a dispute can be raised with the Council.

The settlement offer is pensionable. This means that before the Council pays the settlement sum into your bank account, they will deduct your employee pension contributions (which will be calculated in line with the method used to work out the employee pension contributions you usually pay on your earnings).

The Council will also pay employer pension contributions on the settlement sum, also calculated in line with the Local Government Pension Scheme rules. The Council will pay the employer’s pension contributions directly into your pension.

Please read the linked information supplied by West Midlands Pension Fund: Statement on Equal Pay Settlement

The council adopt a process known as salary sacrifice which means your pension contributions are paid before tax is deducted. This will be the same for your settlement payment.