Legal: A Legal Update from Thompsons Solicitors

POA is fighting for 12 members of the NTRG in defence of their Specialist Allowance payment. Despite the fact that the payment had been made for years to those in closed grades, the employer turned that on its head and decided that in fact it had all been a big mistake. From paying without objection it decided not only that the payments should never have been made, but the payments made to date should be recovered from the members.

POA instructed Thompsons to resist the change and proceedings were issued in the High Court. The employer, to avoid having an injunction entered against them, agreed to keep the pay protection in place for as long as the claim was live. Since then, it has also formally abandoned seeking to recover the payment as it accepts that it gave everyone the impression that the allowance was properly payable. Nevertheless, it continues to defend the claim saying that only the Secretary of State for Justice can authorise payments like these, not regional staff. The case continues.

Meanwhile, the POA and Thompsons are continuing to pursue two other major cases.

The first of these is the High Court judicial review to challenge the government’s decision not to implement Recommendation 3 in the 2020 pay round. The Prison Service Pay Review Body had recommended that from 1st September 2020 the Fair and Sustainable National Band 3 base pay points should increase by £2,564 giving a total consolidated and pensionable award of £3,000 when the 17% unsocial hours payment is included. Despite it being properly costed and substantially funded through savings in the recruitment merry-go-round, the government declared this increase to be unaffordable. The High Court gave permission to judicially review the decision questioning whether the government properly complied with the public sector equality duty. Thompsons is working hard to secure a successful outcome of that judicial review but meanwhile and curiously, the government has just accepted all but one of the Prison Service Pay Review Body’s latest recommendations (19th July) and of these Recommendation 5 is basically the same as the ‘unaffordable’ Recommendation 3 from 2020.

The second claim has seen papers lodged with the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg arising out of the High Court’s refusal to give permission to challenge the Recommendation 3 on other human rights grounds. The first stage of this process is for a judge to consider the application and decide whether to give us permission to go to a full hearing. A decision on that is eagerly awaited.

Thompsons is proud to partner the POA. We actively campaign alongside the union to promote the benefits of union membership while delivering first-class legal services to members.

Our work with the POA includes landmark rulings and we have extensive experience of successfully representing POA members involved in workplace assaults, frequently securing hundreds of thousands of pounds in compensation for what are sadly sometimes career-ending injuries.