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Equal pay has evolved from a specialised issue to a significant and pervasive risk that demands attention from council leadership, impacting both financial resources and organisational reputation.Grant Thornton's latest human resources directors (HRD) survey, which gathered insights from 212 HR leaders within local government and the private sector, highlights that the majority of organisations are actively managing existing equal pay concerns.What makes these findings particularly stark is that equal pay issues rarely feature prominently on risk registers until they erupt.Unlike financial or operational risks, equal pay exposure develops quietly and cumulatively, often over many years. By the time it becomes visible, through grievance, union scrutiny, pay transparency disclosure or legal action, the organisation is already on the back foot.High profile cases in retail, local government and healthcare have moved equal pay from a niche HR topic to a mainstream organisational risk. Public awareness is rising, unions are becoming more strategic and employees expect unprecedented levels of transparency and fairness.At the same time, the nature of work is transforming faster than most frameworks can keep up with. Hybrid working, role evolution and non-standard pay arrangements have created new layers of complexity that legacy systems were never designed to handle.Pay is now viewed as a barometer of organisational culture, and even unintentional inequities now carry reputational as well as financial consequences that can escalate quickly.This gap between perceived compliance and real world readiness is the core problem.Equal pay exposure is rarely caused by a single decision or act of negligence. Instead, it is generated through hundreds of routine but isolated choices: starting salary, market supplements, retention payments, overtime arrangements, honoraria and role evolution.Our experience and the survey evidence show that accountability for these decisions is often diffuse, poorly understood and weakly governed.While many organisations express confidence in their understanding of equal pay legislation, far fewer have embedded that understanding beyond HR.Managers and leaders are frequently asked to make pay decisions without sufficient awareness of how equal pay risk is created and compounded. In that environment, unequal outcomes can develop even where intent is genuinely fair.The consequences of getting this wrong are severe. Financial exposure regularly runs into tens, and in some cases hundreds of millions of pounds. But the wider impact can be just as damaging: prolonged industrial relations fallout, workforce disengagement, reputational damage and loss of confidence in leadership decision making. Once an organisation is publicly associated with equal pay failure, recovery is slow and uncertain.The urgency of the challenge is reflected in the fact that 80% of organisations are implementing, or planning to implement, new job evaluation or pay and grading schemes within the next 12 months.The organisations responding most effectively are those that have stopped treating equal pay as a technical HR exercise. Instead, they are reframing it as an organisation-wide risk requiring strong governance, clear accountability and leadership capability. They are modernising frameworks, tightening decision-making controls and ensuring that those with authority over pay understand the consequences of their choices.The data leaves little room for complacency. Equal pay risk is already live for the majority of employers. Waiting for it to surface is no longer a defensible strategy. The real decision facing leaders now is whether to address equal pay early and deliberately, or manage it late, publicly and under pressure.Simon Christian is a partner – public services consulting at Grant Thornton UK

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EQUAL PAY

Two-thirds of councils facing a live equal pay risk

By Simon Christian | 03 June 2026

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