Hyde Park workers could get years of back pay in landmark case

By Adrian Zorzut, Local Democracy Reporter

Hyde Park workers could soon receive years worth of back pay after the government lost a legal battle to intervene.

The Department of Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) lodged an appeal jointly with Royal Parks against a recent ruling about employee pay.

The Royal Parks Charity set up by DCMS is responsible for maintaining eight royal parks in London, including Hyde Park, St James’s Park and Kensington Gardens.

DCMS claimed the 2021 Employment Tribunal decision – which ruled Royal Parks committed indirect racial discrimination when it paid its outsourced, mostly Black and brown workers less than its in-house crew – would lead to a “proliferation of ‘copycat’ claims brought by outsourced workers”.

The loss, at Central London Employment Appeal Tribunal on February 20, means an appeal by Royal Parks will go ahead without the government’s intervention on April 18 and 19.

Losing the appeal will pave the way for workers to seek compensation from their employer, which will be calculated by a remediation tribunal.

The outsourced park attendants and cleaners could seek back pay for the years between 2014 and 2019. They were finally brought in-house and given a pay raise in early 2020.

The landmark legal case brought by the United Voices of the World (UVW) union established that the charity’s policy to not pay their outsourced cleaners and attendants the London Living Wage, when their mainly white in-house employees were entitled to it, amounted to indirect race discrimination.

UVW claims in 2014 Royal Parks was given the option of paying cleaners the London Living Wage but chose not to, despite paying their own staff that amount.

The workers were directly employed by Vinci Construction, which is now known as Just Ask Services. Just Ask Services is not accused of any wrongdoing and the case is solely levied against Royal Parks.

Petros Elia, UVW’s general secretary, said: “The government’s failed political intervention in this case, highlights how high the stakes are. 

“They were right to argue that a win here would open the floodgates for other groups of outsourced workers to bring similar claims – which it would and which absolutely should happen if they are being institutionally discriminated against. 

“If we succeed it will effectively ring the death knell of discriminatory outsourcing and UVW is proud to be the pioneer in chipping away at this antiquated and abhorrent Thatcherite practice.”

A spokeswoman for The Royal Parks, said: “We are appealing the recent Employment Tribunal judgment against us, based on legal advice that its finding was flawed. 

“We take all matters of equality, diversity and inclusion very seriously and it is important for us to establish that there was no discrimination.

“The contract, to which the case related, was set up by The Royal Parks Agency in 2014 before the current Royal Parks charity was formed. We do not believe there was any discrimination against particular groups.”

DCMS was approached for comment but did not respond ahead of publication.

Pictured top: Hyde Park (Picture: @LondonNPC/Flickr)