Janice Anyon & Ors v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions
| Judge | Mr Justice Lavender |
| Neutral Citation | [2024] EWHC 326 (KB) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Court | King's Bench Division |
| Counsel | Douglas Leach,Adam Tolley Kc |
| Date | 01 March 2024 |
Neutral Citation Number: [2024] EWHC 326 (KB)
Case No: QB-2019-003813
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
KING'S BENCH DIVISION
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand, London, WC2A 2LL
Date: 1 March 2024
Before:
MR JUSTICE LAVENDER
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Between :
JANICE ANYON
and 120 othersClaimants
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SECRETARY OF STATE FOR
WORK AND PENSIONSDefendant
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Douglas Leach (instructed by Harrison Clark Rickerbys Ltd) for the Claimants
Adam Tolley KC (instructed by the Government Legal Department) for the Defendant
Hearing date: 3 November 2023
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JUDGMENT
Anyon v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions
Mr Justice Lavender:
(1) Introduction
1.Eachof the claimants is,orwas,employedby the defendant as a “local service
investigator” (“LSI”), investigating benefit frauds. The post of LSI is graded in the
defendant’s grading system as “executive officer” (“EO”). In this action, the
claimants complain about the conduct of a job evaluation exercise carried out by the
defendant in 2015-16 (“the Evaluation”). In summary, they contend that:
(1)The Evaluation was not conducted in accordance with the relevant procedures.
(2)Had it been conducted in accordance with the relevant procedures, the
Evaluation would have resulted in the role of LSI being graded as “higher
executive officer” (“HEO”), which would have increased the claimants’ pay.
(3)Thisisdemonstrated,interalia, by thefactthat,atthe same timeasthe
Evaluation, a job evaluation exercise was carried out in respect of the post of
“centralcriminal investigationandintelligenceserviceinvestigator”
(“CCIISI”), which the claimants contend is equivalent to the role of LSI, but
the role of CCIISI was upgraded from EO to HEO.
2.The defendant contends that the LSI role was correctly evaluated.
3.The claimants allege, and the defendant denies, that the defendant’s conduct of the
Evaluation involved a number of breaches of the claimants’ employment contracts. It
will be necessary for me to consider these allegations in more detail in due course.
4.On 5 May 2023the claimants applied for permission to amend their particulars of
claim. The defendant resisted the application on a number of grounds. It will be
necessary for me to consider later in this judgment both the nature of the proposed
amendments and the circumstances in which the application was made.
5.This judgment sets out the reasons for my decision on the claimants’ application for
permission to amend their particulars of claim.
(2) Background
(2)(a) The Evaluation
6.As is the case with ministers in charge of other government departments, the
defendant operates a grading system for civil servants in his department. The grade
accorded to a role plays a significant part in determining the salary paid to civil
servants who perform that role.
7.The defendant was obliged by the Civil Service Management Code (“the CSMC”) to
develop arrangements for the grading of posts. The version of the CSMC which I was
shown was dated November 2016, but it was not suggested by either party that there
were any material differences between that version and the version in force at the time
of the Evaluation.
Page 2
Anyon v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions
8.The arrangements for the grading of posts which the defendant had in place by the
time of the Evaluation consisted of the Job Evaluation Grading and Support system
(“the JEGS system”), which was used throughout the civil service. A number of
documents set out how the JEGS system was expected to operate throughout the civil
service. These documents were, or included:
(1)The JEGS Handbook. The claimants do not have access to a copy of the JEGS
Handbook. It is in the possession orcontrol of the defendant, but it is the
copyright of Willis Towers Watson (“WTW”) and its contents are said to be a
trade secret.
(2)The “JEGS Joint Evaluation and GradingSupport Good Practice Guide”
published in May 2013 (“the 2013 Guide”).
(3)The “Job Evaluation - Guidance for Managers and Post-Holders” (“the
Guidance”).
9.In addition, the defendant had produced the “DWP Guidance on Pay and Reward”
(“the DWP Guidance”).
10.The JEGS system makes use of software (“the JEGS software”) devised by WTW.
The defendant says that the JEGS software is not in his possession or control. The
defendant’s witness, Stuart Potts, has summarised the central part of the JEGS system
as follows:
“The JEGS methodology is contained in the Handbook and the associated
software. The Handbook is used by the trained evaluators to score a role by
using 44 questions across seven factors, which give an assigned letter value.
The scoring from the 44 questions is then inputinto the software. The
algorithm in the software converts the letter value to a numerical final score,
which will then be read across to defined ranges which equate to the seven
[civil service] grades. JEGS assessors do not know how the algorithm works
as otherwise this could add risk that assessors may not complete the
assessment fairly and independently as the possibility would be there for them
to score questions in a way that pre-empts the grading outcome. These grades
ranges are determined by WTW, and the software algorithm is confidential.”
11.The 2013 Guide states, inter alia, as follows:
“Departments should hold libraries of evaluations. These are helpful when
looking to identify roles for benchmarking and providing quality assurance.
As a minimum, a record should be maintained which shows the following for
all posts which have been evaluated:
• the date of the evaluation
• an anonymised job description/JAF/job profile
• scores by factor
• the finally agreed overall score
• the evaluated pay band.”
Page 3
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