Gender Pay Gap figures

The Gender Pay Gap is the difference in pay between all males and all females in any organisation.

The point of gender pay gap reporting is not to check that women are paid equally to men for the same job or work of equal value (this is protected by Equal Pay legislation). It is about whether there are differences in the sorts of jobs done by men and women which result in men generally being paid more than women. So if an organisation has a gender pay gap, it doesn’t mean that men and women in comparable roles are paid differently. It means that the workforce includes proportionally more men paid at higher hourly rates than women.

By law the Council is required to report 6 sets of figures which measure our gender pay gap:

1. Difference in mean hourly rate of pay
2. Difference in median hourly rate of pay
3. Difference in mean bonus pay
4. Difference in median bonus pay
5. The proportion of male and female employees who were paid bonus pay
6. The proportion of male and female employees within each pay band, based on 4 quartiles

The report below details each of the above 6 sets of figures for 2023, and for reference the figures previously reported in 2017 through to 2022 have also been included.

Figures 1 and 2 are about the difference in hourly rate between men and women, based on pay rates as of the “snapshot date” of 31 March 2023. Mean gender pay gap compares the average hourly rates of men to those of women. Median gender pay gap is calculated by placing all hourly rates in order from lowest to highest and comparing the middle rate for men with the middle rate for women. The median figure is often seen as more accurate, because it is not skewed by extremes at the highest or at the lowest ends of the scale.

	Mean	Median
Gender pay gap 2023	2.7%	-1.9%
Gender pay gap 2022	0.1%	0.0%
Gender pay gap 2021	2.3%	0.0%
Gender pay gap 2020	2.3%	-1.9%
Gender pay gap 2019	1.8%	-5.9%
Gender pay gap 2018	3.4%	-3.2%
Gender pay gap 2017	1.9%	-2.1%

Based on the mean measure, women in the Council earn 2.7% less than men. In other words, on average for every £1.00 a man earns, a woman earns just over 97p. However, based on the median measure, women in the Council earn 1.9% more than men. In other words, for every £1.00 a man earns, a woman earns almost £1.02.

Figures 3 and 4 are about the difference in bonus pay between men and women, again based on the mean and also on the median. Based on the definition of “bonus payments” contained within the Regulations, the only relevant payments for this calculation are one-off payments made to employees under the Council’s Reward and Recognition scheme.

	Mean	Median
Gender bonus gap 2023	1.2%	0.0%
Gender bonus gap 2022	2.5%	0.0%
Gender bonus gap 2021	10.3%	0.0%
Gender bonus gap 2020	4.8%	0.0%
Gender bonus gap 2019	5.8%	0.0%
Gender bonus gap 2018	9.4%	0.0%
Gender bonus gap 2017	-0.7%	0.0%

The gender bonus gap figures show that based on the mean measure, women earn bonuses worth 1.2% less than men’s bonuses. In other words, on average for every £1.00 bonus a man earned, a woman earned just under 99p. Based on the median measure, there is no bonus gap.

The median bonus gap is 0% because the payment amount paid most often is £100, so when male and female bonus payments are each put in a line from lowest to highest, this amount is always in the middle. This situation was the same under the previous rewards scheme, which explains why the median bonus gap has consistently been 0% since 2017.

Figure 5 is the proportion of men and women who received a bonus payment. For context, the overall percentage of employees receiving a bonus has also been provided.

	Male	Female	All
Proportion of employees receiving bonus - 2023	4.6%	5.5%	5.3%
Proportion of employees receiving bonus - 2022	35.6%	42.0%	40.1%
Proportion of employees receiving bonus - 2021	26.6%	26.7%	26.7%
Proportion of employees receiving bonus - 2020	28.7%	29.8%	29.5%
Proportion of employees receiving bonus - 2019	30.4%	29.1%	29.5%
Proportion of employees receiving bonus - 2018	23.4%	27.8%	26.6%
Proportion of employees receiving bonus - 2017	22.5%	23.0%	22.9%

Obviously there are significantly fewer employees receiving bonus in 2023 than in previous years, especially 2022. This reflects the change of approach, but also there is a particular contrast to the previous year because 2021 saw more employees than ever receive a one-off payment under the CRR scheme. This was because the rewards made in June 2021 reflected performance during the year April 2020 to March 2021, i.e. the height of the Covid pandemic when many Council employees took on additional responsibilities or new roles.

It should also be remembered that fluctuations in the percentage of men and women receiving bonus happen for the same reason that the overall gender bonus gap is subject to fluctuations - the employees receiving a one-off payment change annually as does the number of payments made and the amount of the payments.

Figure 6 shows the workforce divided into four equal groups (“quartiles”) based on hourly rate from lowest to highest, and the proportion of men and women in each quartile.

Quartile analysis supports the mean and median pay gap calculations by showing if an organisation has a lack of women in senior roles. E.g. if an organisation has a 70 per cent female workforce but only 40 per cent of its upper quartile are female, and 80 per cent of its lower quartile are female, they probably have a gender pay gap. And organisations with large gender pay gaps in favour of men tend to have higher proportions of women in the lower and lower middle pay quartiles than in the upper and upper middle pay quartiles.

	Quartile								All
	Lower		Lower Middle		Upper Middle		Upper
	F	M	F	M	F	M	F	M	F	M
2023 %	72.6	27.4	72.0	28.0	74.7	25.3	72.6	27.4	73.0	27.0
2022 %	68.0	32.0	70.8	29.2	71.4	28.6	71.7	28.3	70.5	29.5
2021 %	71.7	28.3	69.9	30.1	72.8	27.2	70.5	29.5	71.2	28.8
2020 %	71.4	28.6	69.4	30.6	73.2	26.8	71.0	29.0	71.2	28.8
2019 %	71.6	28.4	69.3	30.7	75.3	24.7	70.3	29.7	71.6	28.4
2018 %	69.4	30.6	72.3	27.7	75.2	24.8	68.5	31.5	71.3	28.7
2017 %	70.8	29.2	67.6	32.4	72.1	27.9	69.5	30.5	70.0	30.0

Again, there is no requirement to report the overall proportion of male / female employees; however it is useful to compare this overall figure with that of each of the four quartiles.

Analysis of the Council’s pay quartiles from 2017 to 2022 shows that:

• The proportion of women in each of the four quartiles is similar to each other and to the overall proportion of women every year, and especially so in 2023.
• Up to 2021, and again in 2023, the upper middle quartile consistently had the highest percentage of women, higher than the overall ratio of women to men.
• 2023 sees a slightly higher proportion of women in the Upper quartile, but with the greatest proportion in the Upper Middle; and the overall percentage of women is higher.

The quartile analysis clearly shows that the Council’s male / female split is consistent at all levels with only minor variations. It is worth noting that because the majority of Council staff are at lower or mid-level grades, the range of salaries included in the Upper Quartile actually starts at grade 9 so covers a wide range and by no means just the most senior or highly paid roles. It can therefore be concluded that the increase in women in the higher quartiles i.e. higher-paid roles is a reflection of the grade make-up of the Council and has contributed to a low mean and median gender pay gap.

Conclusion

Gender pay gap reporting is not a solution in itself; but is just one of a number of measures in use to assess progress in promoting equality and diversity.

The gender pay gap figures compare favourably with the wider sector and the economy as a whole. This shows that the Council takes this issue seriously and have successfully taken steps to prevent gender pay inequalities in the workforce, such as:

• Providing development and promotion opportunities internally, to support all employees in reaching their full potential
• Adopting effective recruitment practices to ensure that we always appoint the best person for the job, and do not proportionally disadvantage either male or female applicants
• Offering part time working in a wide variety of roles, which have been taken up by a significant proportion of the workforce
• Offering family friendly benefits including childcare vouchers and holiday purchase
• Introducing and supporting mobile and flexible working at all levels, which promotes a healthy work/life balance and supports employees with caring responsibilities
• Our commitment to paying a local living wage for all employees, supporting those in the lowest graded jobs

The intention is to continue to develop and embed practices which encourage equality across the Council, and to monitor their success using the gender pay gap figures among other measures.