City council meeting to address 2019 pay gap

By James Wynn

This month’s meeting of the Leicester City Council will detail the most recent Gender Pay Gap Report.

The figures from the council’s third report have already been detailed and showcase that on average men were paid 0.1% more per hour than women in Leicester in 2019.

This represents a big shift from 2018, where women were paid almost 1% more than men, receiving a mean hourly rate of £14.39 an hour, compared to £14.25 for men.

Despite the shift in the pay gap, mean hourly rates have gone up for both men and women, to £14.57 and £14.55 respectively.

Meanwhile, the median hourly rate has risen to £13.76 from £13.28 for both genders.

“The council’s figures compare very positively against median and mean gender pay gaps of 16.8% and 15.7% respectively for the public sector as a whole- i.e. average pay for men being significantly higher than for women,” the report said.

“At 31 March 2018 the Council was one of only three out of 40 local authorities in the same employee headcount band (5000-19,999) with a zero median pay gap.

“The council’s mean pay gap was the closest to zero- i.e. we had the smallest difference in average pay between men and women.”

This report is the first address of a gender pay gap by Leicester City Council since a report emerged last year that Leicestershire Police had the largest difference between median male and female salary of any police force in England and Wales.

Last year’s figures suggested that the force had a 31.5% gap in salary and showed that women earned 68p for every pound earned by a man.

Chief constable Simon Cole told the BBC that “I just don’t recognise it as described as that.

“Everybody here gets paid the same according to role, there is no difference in that between the sexes. However, there’s a reality to how our workforce is made up.

“We have lots of people joining the organisation, and, compared to the past, more of them are female.

“And obviously, when you join you get paid less.”

Further figures for public authorities and nationwide councils will be published by March 31 2020.