Birmingham City Council's Equal Pay Claims — £650–760m Liability, a Section 114 Notice and a 2025 Settlement (Cautionary Case)

In 2012 the UK Supreme Court (Birmingham City Council v Abdulla) refused to strike out civil-court equal pay claims by 170 women and 4 men who had missed the six-month tribunal deadline, effectively opening a six-year window for such claims.
In June 2023 the council reported it still had to pay £650m–£760m to settle equal pay claims, and about three months later it issued a section 114 notice (effective bankruptcy), partly attributing it to equal pay liabilities; officials said the figure was growing by £5m–£14m a month. A later council estimate cited by GMB exceeded £1bn.
A second section 114 notice followed after a proposed new job evaluation scheme collapsed. Birmingham, UNISON and GMB reached an agreement in principle in December 2024 and announced a final settlement on 14 October 2025 covering outstanding union claims for council and Birmingham Children's Trust staff. Terms are confidential, settled without admission of liability; the council acknowledged shortcomings in how equal pay risks were handled in the past and committed to a fairer, more transparent job evaluation scheme, which is not yet complete.
This is a cautionary case: failure to run a transparent, gender-neutral job evaluation allowed liability to compound for over a decade. No settlement sum or post-settlement pay outcomes are public.

Read the full analysis: https://www.localgovernmentlawyer.co.uk/litigation-and-enforcement/400-litigation-news/62506-birmingham-settles-historic-equal-pay-claims