Tens of thousands of women working for local councils and health authorities won the right to higher wages today following a landmark Court of Appeal ruling on equal pay laws.

The decision will allow thousands of female workers to bring employment tribunal claims demanding compensation for being treated less favourably than male workers doing the same or similar jobs.

The claims are likely to focus on local authorities and NHS trusts but the three judges who heard the cases said the effect of the ruling extended beyond the public sector. Lord Justice Mummery, the lead judge in today’s case, said the sums involved could be “very large indeed”.

The cases concerned two separate groups of female workers — among them cleaners and school crossing patrol staff — employed by two councils in the North East.

The legal arguments focused on a scheme introduced in the 1990s to iron out historic pay differences between male and female workers. Although the scheme largely did this, male workers, who were facing a drop in pay as a result, were given an extra layer of pay protection to top up their earnings for the next several years.

Lawyers for the women workers successfully argued that this scheme illegally perpetuated earlier pay inequalities.

Robin Allen, QC, representing the women workers, told the court that his clients “did not oppose the introduction of pay protection but rather their exclusion from it”.

After the ruling , Rachel Crasnow, a barrister at Cloisters’ chambers, said: “The ruling, that discriminatory pay protection is unlawful, could pave the way for thousands of new equal pay claims against local authorities and the NHS.

“This would be in addition to the thousands of equal pay claims, which are already in the system,” she said.

The number of equal pay claims lodged at employment tribunals has spiralled in the last year, largely driven by cases brought by women working in local government. Recent figures from the tribunals service showed the number of claims soared 155 per cent to hit 44,000 over the past year.

Adam Fuge, an employment partner at Matthew Arnold & Baldwin, said: "In addition to providing a major headache for local authorities and the NHS, this ruling also raises serious questions about how the employment tribunal system will cope with the avalanche of new equal pay claims we can now expect.

"The tribunal system is already clogged up and while the government is hoping that the new Employment Bill will help reduce tribunal claims overall, these changes are unlikely to assist in settling equal claims without recourse to tribunals."

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