Issue - meetings

Consideration was given to the report of the Assistant Chief Executive that met the Council’s obligations under the Gender Pay Reporting Legislation that had been introduced in 2017 requiring employers with 250 or more employees to publish annually statutory calculations showing how large the pay gap was between their male and female employees. It was noted that the Council had up to 12 months following the annual snapshot date of 31 March to publish this information on the Council and Government websites, with the deadline for public sector employers to report for the snapshot date of 31 March 2019 being 30 March 2020. It was noted that a positive pay gap indicated that men were paid more than women and a negative pay gap indicated that women were paid more than men.

The full Gender Pay Gap report for 2019 was attached as an appendix to the officer’s report. The report stated that over the last seven years the Council had seen significant reductions it its Gender Pay Gap, with the mean positive pay gap reducing from 18.2% to 10.6%. It was noted that while this reduction in the gap was welcome, whilst evert there was a gap work would continue to address the imbalance.

The report highlighted key issues from the report for the Committee’s consideration including:

·       The median gender pay gap for the Council at the end of March 2019 was almost the same as the previous year, increasing from 13.3% to 13.4%.   The mean pay gap had also increased from 9.9% to 10.6% after falling from 11.5% the previous year.  It was noted that an analysis of the underlying data had not identified any specific cause that could explain these changes.

·       The Council’s pay gap showed that overall men were still paid more than women, however, the figures compared favourably with the average UK gap 17.3%.

·       In Black and Minority Ethnic (BAME) employees the Council had a negative 8.2% median pay gap and negative 4.3% mean pay gap.  For disabled employees there was a negative 6.6% median and a negative 2.6% mean.  The negative pay gap indicated that both BAME and disabled employees were paid more than non-BME/disabled employees.

It was noted that as no other Council in the region had published data for 2019, benchmarking was only available for 2019, with the benchmarking that had been carried out on the 2018 figures showing that the Councils gender pay gap median figure compared favourably with that of neighbouring authorities.

It was noted that the report was scheduled to be discussed at the meeting of the Overview and Scrutiny Management Board on 4 March 2020.

Resolved: -

That the Gender Pay Gap report for 2019, as attached at Appendix 1 of the officer’s report be noted and approved for publication.