Agenda item

The Director of People and Development presented the report.The Equality Act (2010) (Specific Duties and Public Authorities) Regulations 2017 came into force on 31 March 2017.  These regulations imposed a legal obligation for employers with 250 or more employees to publish gender pay details each year.(by 30 March for  public sector employers) to highlight the difference in gross pay and bonus payments made to female as compared with male employees. The calculation followed government guidance to ensure consistency and this was our second report.

Building on last year’s report, the Service had and was making improvements in its gender breakdown difference, with the latest recruitment processes for whole-time recruitment showing clear progress. The Service also had for many years had clear pay structure arrangements (as outlined in the Pay Statement) which provided for equal pay for both men and women across the roles throughout the organisation. Members had previously endorsed the single status approach for “green book” employees utilising the local authority job evaluation methodology and the adoption of the living wage principles.  It therefore did not have an equal pay issue within the Service.  (Men and women who carried out the same jobs or similar jobs or work of equal value were paid the same).

It was recognised, however, that like all fire and rescue services, the Authority had an unbalanced spread of male and female employees in the different occupational staff groups and at different levels and roles. A significant factor was the different construction of Terms & Conditions and remuneration between the “Grey” and “Green” book roles. These factors reflected the diversity and differences in activity and requirements and were two significant reasons for the gender pay gap outcomes.

In addition, the mean gender pay gap was significantly affected by the inclusion of certain groups as required by the statutory methodology utilised to calculate the position. This produced an anomaly between the mean and the median averages.

The Executive Board believed that excluding the RDS and Dual contract staff in the headline figure would provide a more realistic reflection on the position of LFRS but this would conflict with the government instructions, which was intended to allow comparisons across all sectors. 

The report therefore showed a Gender Pay Gap of:

MEAN  - positive of 3.23%      MEDIAN - negative of 16.95%

The Director of People and Development advised that last year all sectors of the economy showed a negative pay gap and that the Government had produced 2 documents to help employers reduce the gender pay gap, these were:

·        8 ways to understand your organisation’s gender pay gap; and

·        Four steps to developing a gender pay gap action plan.

These documents provided areas to help employers to identify potential causes of the gender pay gap in their organisation and develop an effective action plan to tackle it.  The Director of People and Development confirmed that the Service already practiced the approaches suggested. 

In response to a question raised by County Councillor O’Toole the Director of People and Development confirmed that staff on the same grade received the same rate of pay.

RESOLVED:- That the Resources Committee noted the report and authorised the publication of the Gender Pay Gap Report.