The district auditor declared that payments made by the Council under an ‘enhanced voluntary severance scheme’, established by it in connection with its policy of not making employees compulsorily redundant, were unlawful. The payments were considerably in excess of the amounts which the council was obliged to pay under the employment legislation.
Held:The Council did not have power to make awards in excess of the limits set out in the 1972 Act. The powers of the local authority to make payments to employees under either ss 111 or 112 of the Local Government Act 1972 were subject to the regulations made by the Secretary of State pursuant to sections 7 and 24 of the Superannuation Act 1972; the payments under the scheme were for redundancy; and the regulations under the Superannuation Act did not authorise the council to make payments for redundancy in excess of redundancy payments provided for in the employment legislation.
Parker LJ said: ‘ . . the plain intention of Parliament [was] that the Secretary of State , subject to Parliamentary power to annul regulations in accordance with the Act, should be in complete charge of what is to be or may be paid on redundancy in addition to the payments provided for by the Act of 1978’
Judges:
Parker LJ, McCowan LJ and Sir John Megaw
Citations:
(1991) 90 LGR 462, [1992] ICR 639
Statutes:
Superannuation Act 1972 112, Employment Protection (Consolidation) Act 1978 81, Employment Protection (Consolidation) Act 1978 111 112
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Cited by:
Distinguished – Newbold and Another v Leicester City Council CA 20-Aug-1999
An authority which had made an agreement which gave benefits to its employees in return for a reduction in their earnings was bound by that agreement even if it later proved more expensive than had been expected, and very generous. The scheme was . .
Cited – British Medical Association v Chaudhary CA 15-May-2003
The claimant had sought registration as a specialist medical practitioner by the respondent. His complaint that the crtiria used to reject his claim were discriminatory had been rejected by the employment tribunal and EAT on the basis that they had . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Employment, Local Government
Updated: 31 July 2022; Ref: scu.180544