Agenda item

To consider and receive the Gender Pay Gap Report and approve publication.

Consideration was given to the report presented by the Service Director of Human Resources and Organisational Development which provided the detail of the Gender Pay Gap information as at 31st March, 2025, that the Council was obliged to publish under reporting legislation.

In 2017, the Government introduced the Gender Pay Gap Information Regulations which required employers with 250 or more employees to publish statutory calculations every year, showing how large the pay gap in their organisation was between their male and female employees.  A positive pay gap indicated that men were paid more than women and a negative pay gap that women were paid more than men.

The gender pay gap showed the difference in the average pay between all men and women in a workforce regardless of job role. The smaller the value of the gap, the more equal the pay gap was between genders. If a workforce had a particularly high gender pay gap, this could indicate there may be a number of issues to deal with and individual calculations may help to identify what those issues were.

The Council had up to 12 months following the annual snapshot date of 31st March, to publish this information on the Council and Government website. The deadline to report on details taken at the snapshot date of 31st March 2025 for public sector employers was 30th March 2026. The Council had chosen to include a narrative with its calculations to explain the reasons for the results and details of actions being taken to reduce or eliminate the gender pay gap.

The mean value was based on total pay for the group, divided by the number in the group being measured. The mean gender pay gap for the Council at the end of March 2025 had continued to reduce to 4.42%, down from 5.5% in 2024.The median measure (the middle numerical value in the male and female salary lists for every member of staff in the Council, ranked highest to lowest) also showed a further reduction in the overall pay gap at 4.81%, down from 8.1% in 2024.

The Council’s pay gap resulted from the fact that the Council had a greater number of female employees working in traditionally low-paid cleaning and catering roles, where there was an over-representation of female workers. In the upper quartile, where the jobs tend to be professionally qualified or dependent on several years of management or other types of experience, women were under-represented but make up 69% (up from 60% in 2024) of the top 5% of earners and females represented 4 out of 7 positions of the Strategic Leadership Team.

There was no legislative requirement to publish information on other protected characteristics, however, analysis for Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic (BAME) employees showed the Council had a negative 5.43% (6.11% in 2024) median pay gap and a negative 0.69% (0.17% in 2024) mean figure demonstrating that BAME employees on average were paid more per hour. This was due to a higher proportion of BAME workers being employed in the ‘upper’ and ‘upper middle’ quartiles. For disabled employees, there was a negative median of 6.85% (7.01% in 2024) and a negative 2.92% (3.10% in 2024) mean figure demonstrating that disabled employees were paid more than non-disabled employees by both measures. This was due to a higher proportion of disabled workers being employed in the ‘upper middle’ quartile.

Resolved:

That Staffing Committee:

1. Receive the Gender Pay Gap Report at Appendix 1.

2. Approve publication of the Gender Pay Gap Report at Appendix 1.