Equal pay claims

Plans to close the gender pay gap announced by the Department for Education and Employment (DfEE) include a cash injection of £145,000 to train union representatives to carry out pay reviews. The money is available through the Union Learning Fund.

The DfEE also intends to speed up the process of taking an equal pay case to an employment tribunal by:

* simplifying the paperwork so that a group of workers making a claim will be able to use a single form, rather than all filling out separate forms;

* speeding up the process by calling in an "assessor" to give claimants expert advice rather than asking for a formal report from an independent expert; and

* removing both the "no reasonable grounds" defence and the two-year time limit on back pay.