Agenda for Change is the pay and grading collective agreement covering the majority of NHS staff. It stemmed from a Labour Government modernisation programme for the NHS outlined in a White Paper of the same name published in 1999. The collective agreement to enable pay and grading reform first came into effect on 1st December 2004. The Agreement has some similarities to the Single Status Agreement in local government, including the harmonisation of terms and conditions and the use of a job evaluation scheme to establish equal value between the approximately 650 different job roles it covers. Many NHS staff appealed against their initial regrading under Agenda for Change and there were early equal pay cases taken to industrial/employment tribunal such as Hartley and Ors v Northumbria Healthcare Trust [2009] but not in the same numbers as in local government. A number of different factors in relation to Agenda for Change (e.g. the use of a common job evaluation scheme and significantly higher levels of government funding to implement it) indicate that it was less vulnerable to legal challenge than the Single Status Agreement.