Next wins key appeal overturning £30m equal-pay ruling

Next can continue paying its warehouse workers more than shop-floor staff after winning a key appeal in a long-running equal-pay dispute. The Employment Appeal Tribunal accepted that recruitment and retention pressures justified the higher warehouse rates.

The ruling overturns a central part of a landmark 2024 decision, which found that the retailer had wrongly paid warehouse employees higher basic wages than shop-floor workers doing jobs of equal value. More than 3,500 current and former employees, most of them women, had been in line to share potentially more than £30 million in back pay.

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The importance of this decision is that the Appeal Tribunal has confirmed that it was justifiable for Next to rely on market forces to distinguish between different groups of employees, where there was a good rationale to pay one group more than the other.

Leigh Day, the law firm representing the store workers, called the decision on basic pay “disappointing” and said it would appeal. Next described the outcome as a “landmark victory” on the “key issue of basic pay.”

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disappointing

“The importance of this decision is that the Appeal Tribunal has confirmed that it was justifiable for Next to rely on market forces to distinguish between different groups of employees, where there was a good rationale to pay one group more than the other,” the company said.

The tribunal upheld the 2024 findings on night-time premiums, overtime premiums and paid rest breaks. Next said it would seek permission to appeal those decisions. Both tribunals found no direct sex discrimination in the pay rates, although shop-floor employees are predominantly women and warehouse workers predominantly men. The case comes amid other equal-pay disputes, including claims involving Birmingham City Council and more than 1,000 cases facing Brighton and Hove City Council.

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landmark victory