Gender Pay Gap Report 2024-25

• Background
• Methodology
• Scope
• Definitions
• The Workforce Profile
• Key findings
• Conclusions
• Action plan/summary
• Timescales of achieving the action plan

The Gender Pay Gap Information Regulations require all employers with 250 or more employees to report their Gender Pay Gap annually, publishing on a national Government website as well as the organisations website. The Gender Pay Gap Information Regulations apply to employers in the Public and Private sector.

In addition to these new regulations, employers in the public sector are subject to a specific public sector equality duty in respect of their functions – The Equality Act 2010 (Specific Duties and Public Authorities) Regulations 2017.

The regulations apply to all employers with 250 or more employees on the “snapshot” date. The “snapshot” date for the public sector is 31 March each year. Therefore, the authority is required to publish its gender pay gap for each year on the Portsmouth City Council (PCC) website and on a government website, no later than 30 March of the following year. So, for the snapshot date of March 2024, the findings must be published no later than 30 March 2025.

The purpose of Gender Pay Gap reporting is to achieve greater gender equality across the UK and increase pay transparency by narrowing and eventually eliminating the pay differential between men and women.

In 2024, the national gender pay gap for full-time employees declined from 7.5% in 2023 to 7.0%, meaning that average pay for full-time female employees is 7.0% lower than for full-time male employees. This remains below the national gender pay gap of 9.0%, seen before the Coronavirus pandemic in 2019.

The national gender pay gap for all employees, full and part-time in April 2024 was 13.1% which is down from 14.2% in April 2023. This latest change in the figures is in line with the longer-term trend which is showing a continual decline.

It is important to note that the Coronavirus pandemic and the furlough scheme continues to have had an artificial impact on the national gender pay gap figures for 2020/21 and therefore it is encouraged to focus on long-term trends rather than year-on-year changes.

What is clear from the data is that the gender pay gap has been declining slowly over time and over the last decade it has fallen by approximately a quarter among both full-time and all employees. The Government considers that this rate of progress is too slow and has committed to closing the gender pay gap within a generation.

A challenge remains in addressing the gender pay gap with the inequality of pay between men and women being affected by short-term labour market conditions, and longer-term social norms.

PCC is committed to the principle of equal pay for all employees by ensuring that it meets the requirements of the Equality Act. To achieve this, PCC uses a job evaluation system scheme (JESS) to assess the value of all jobs across the organisation, which provides evidence in support of the banding of each job within our grading structure. Salaries are paid according to band and incremental annual progression within the band occurs irrespective of employee’s gender.

Whilst the data on the age breakdown is not a statutory requirement under the legislation, this data has been included at the request of our council Members. The ONS publishes national data on the age breakdown and the same categorisation and calculations used by the ONS have been replicated for the breakdown of the data for Portsmouth City Council.

Sources:

Gender pay gap in the UK – Office for National Statistics

The Regulations clearly define the methodology for the gender pay gap calculations and reporting guidelines.

The regulations require employers to publish the following information:

• The mean gender pay gap;
• The median gender pay gap;
• The mean bonus pay gap;
• The median bonus pay gap;
• And the relative proportions of male and female employees in each quartile pay band.

The Regulations detail how to conduct the calculations, and these are based on how the ONS undertakes their calculations to allow for comparisons to be made nationally against the data.

All public sector organisations are required to publish their reports by no later than 30 March of the following year.

The report will be based on hourly pay rates as of 31 March 2024 and on bonuses paid between 1 April 2023 and 31 March 2024.

The regulations create two categories of people who must be considered in the gender pay gap reporting: relevant employees and relevant full-pay employees.

For the purposes of gender pay gap reporting, the definition of an employee is that which is given in the Equality Act 2010. This is an extended definition which includes:

• Employees (those with a contract of employment)
• Workers with a contract to do work or provide services for your organisation.
• Some self-employed people who must personally conduct the work they do for you.

The gender pay gap calculation is based on the number of individual employees and not the full-time equivalent. This means that each part-time employee counts as one employee.

Apprentices, seasonal, temporary, or casual employees and zero hours workers are included if they fall within the reference period created by the snapshot date.

Gender Pay Gap

The gender pay gap is a measure of labour market or workplace disadvantage, expressed in terms of a comparison between males and females’ average hourly rates of pay. The gap can be measured in a variety of ways, and it is important to understand how the gap is being measured. The hourly rates of pay, excluding overtime are used to take account of the fact that more males than females work full-time. Overtime is excluded because it is recognised that male employees work more overtime than female employees due to female’s caring responsibility and part-time nature of work.

Equal Pay

Equal pay means that there should be no difference in the contractual terms of a female and a male doing equal work, who both work for the same employer. For further details please refer to the Equality Act 2010.

The difference between Gender Pay Gap and Equal Pay

The most significant difference between equal pay and the gender pay gap is that equal pay requires one to scrutinise information at the level of the individual employee (to satisfy that there is equal pay for equal work). Gender pay gap reporting asks you to examine aggregate data.

Mean Gender Pay Gap

The difference between the mean hourly rate of pay of male full-pay relevant employees and that of female full-pay relevant employees.

To calculate the mean

The mean is an average of all the numbers in a dataset, that is, you must add up all the numbers and then divide the result by how many numbers you are dealing with. To find the mean hourly rate for PCC’s full-pay relevant male employees, all the hourly rates will be added together and then divided by the total number of full-pay relevant male employees. This will give the “mean” hourly rate.

Median Gender Pay Gap

The difference between the median hourly rate of pay of male full-pay relevant employees and that for female full-pay relevant employees.

To calculate the median

The median is the numerical value which splits the top 50% and the bottom 50%. To find the median, all the hourly rates for all employees will be listed in numerical order; if there are an odd number of values, the median is the number in the middle. If there is an even number, the median is the mean of the two central numbers.

Bonus

Bonus pay means any remuneration that is in the form of money, vouchers, securities, securities options, or interests in securities and relates to profit sharing, productivity, performance, incentive, or commission. Non-consolidated bonuses are included. Long service awards with a monetary value are also included.

For PCC, this captures Long Service Awards and one-off honoraria payments. Regular honoraria payments are excluded from “bonus” calculations and included in “ordinary pay”.

Mean Bonus Gap

The difference between the mean bonus pay paid to male relevant employees and that paid to female relevant employees.

Median Bonus Gap

The difference between the median bonus pay paid to male relevant employees and that paid to female relevant employees.

Bonus Proportions

The proportions of male and female relevant employees who were paid bonus pay during the relevant period.

Quartile Pay Bands

The proportions of male and female full-pay relevant employees in the lower, lower middle, upper middle and upper quartile pay bands.

Quartiles

A quartile is one of the three points that divide the population of data into four equal parts. In the context of gender pay gap reporting, the four quartile pay bands are created by dividing the total number of full-pay relevant employee into four equal parts.

Measures

A positive measure, for example 18%, indicates the extent to which females earn, on average, less per hour than their male counterparts.

A negative measure, for example -18%, indicates the extent to which females earn, on average, more per hour than their male counterparts. This may happen, for example, if PCC employ a high proportion of males in low-paid part-time work, and/or the senior and higher paid employees are female.

The gender pay gap data supplied is correct for all staff, including school staff, in post with PCC on 31 March 2024 who earned their full-pay (relevant employees). At that time, there were 4694 relevant full pay employees, which is made up by 3301 females (70%) and 1393 (30%) males. Out of the 4694 relevant employees, 30 are covered by TUPE regulations (5 are male and 25 are female).

The profile of the workforce has been broken down into the proportion of full time and part time employees, whereby 1152 (42%) of males are full time^[1] and 241 (12%) are part time compared to 1561 (58%) of females are full time and 1740 (88%) are part time.

The profile of the workforce has been further categorised by age range. The age ranges used are based on those as determined by the ONS data.

As our workforce is predominantly female (70%) the data is skewed as it shows that women are the higher proportion of workers across each age category compared to males, apart from the 60 and over age group in full time employment although the number of females in this age category are increasing annually.

It is worth noting that there has been a consistent increase of full-time employees overall from 2388 in 2021 to 2713 in 2024 with a consistent decrease in part-time employees from 2484 in 2021 to 1981 in 2024. This pattern is evident across both females and males.

Fulltime Female vs Male

Full time is as determined by ONS as those working 30 hours or more.

Part time female vs male

In addition to the above age profile, using the same methodology as applied by the ONS, the gender pay gap has been broken down by age and full-time/part-time hours. In accordance with the ONS data, full time hours have been classed as 30 hours or more. The Gender pay gap by age full-time/part-time is based on the median salary within each data category (as per the ONS data) and uses a separate calculation for part time and full time per age range.

The data in the table below looks at the gender pay gap for people of a similar age and working pattern, unlike the statutory data which looks at the gender pay gap based on the median difference between men and women. Therefore, the gender pay gap within each age bracket does not relate to the overall median figure because that is based on all relevant employees across the Council, whereas the age gender gap is based on each individual age groupings and working patterns within those age brackets.

The table and graph above show that within each age bracket where there is a negative figure, for example -2.00%, this indicates the extent to which females earn, on average, more per hour than their male counterparts. A positive measure, for example 2.00%, indicates the extent to which females earn, on average, less per hour than their male counterparts.

The figures show that both full-time and part-time females are earning more, on average, than their male counterparts with a few exceptions.

The gap for 16–21-year-old females in full-time employment increased from 1.96 in 2022 to 4.77 in 2023 and 7.81 in 2024. This trend can also be seen in 22–29-year-old part time females where the gap has increased from 0.00 in 2022 to 5.88 in 2023 and 9.17 in 2024.

However, in the 60 and over age bracket the pay gap has decreased for full-time female employees from 11.05 in 2022 to 2.78 in 2023 and -4.99 in 2024. A trend that is also seen in the 30 – 39 age bracket for full time female employees, which has decreased from -0.78 in 2022 to -3.57 in 2023 and -13.02 in 2024.

The gap for 30- to 39-year-old part-time female employees has also seen the gap decrease from 22.78 in 2022 to -2.62 in 2024.

The reduction in the pay gap across the age groups as listed above, could be attributed to several factors, one may be explained by the recruitment of new employees and where they are appointed to on the pay band, for example, female employees are more likely to start at the bottom of the pay band due to their levels of experience as a result of breaks in employment. If an existing employee changes their working pattern from full time to part time, their hourly rate will remain the same and if they have been employed for several years, they are likely to be at the top of their pay band through the incremental rises within the pay band compared to a new starter.

Where there are pay gaps in the age ranges this may indicate the impact of women taking time out of the labour market and the preference for working part time when re-joining the labour market, for example for reasons such as taking time out to have children or other caring responsibilities.

6.1 Mean Gender Pay Gap

The difference between the mean hourly rate of pay for male full-pay relevant employees and that of female full-pay relevant employees is 5.62%. In March 2023, the gap was 8.63%, 9.27% in 2022, 9.12% in 2021 and 10.99% in 2020.  Apart from 2022, which was likely to have been impacted by the pandemic and the furlough scheme, the gender pay gap long term trend has continued to decrease.

The average hourly rate of pay for a male in the reporting period was £20.10 and £18.97 for a female, which results in the 5.62% difference in the mean figure reported above. The gap has slightly decreased since last year due to the female average mean hourly rate of pay increasing.  The increase in hourly pay can be partially attributed to the application of the Real Living Wage and cost of living pay rises. There are more females on the lower pay bands and the pay increases have been more significant at the lower end of the pay scale, it has therefore brought increased pay parity on average mean hourly rate.

6.2 Median Gender Pay Gap

The difference between the median hourly rate of pay of male full-pay relevant employees and that of female full-pay relevant employees is 7.11%. In March 2023, this gap was 7.54% and in 2022 it was 13.85%.

The average median hourly rate for a male was £17.58. For a female, the average median hourly rate was £16.33. This result is a 7.11% differential in the median figure reported above from the previous year resulting in a narrowing of the gap.

6.3 Mean and Median Pay Gap summary

PCC’s median and mean gender pay gap compares favourably with the national figure from the ONS where the average gap for all employees, part-time and full-time is 13.1% based on data from 2024, which is down from 2023 where it was 14.2%.

In addition to a job evaluation scheme, PCC has a clear policy of paying employees equally for the same or equivalent work, regardless of their gender. As such, the council:

• provides regular job evaluation training for employees involved in undertaking job evaluation; and
• evaluates job roles and pay bands as necessary to ensure a fair structure.

The council is therefore confident that its gender pay gap does not stem from paying male and female employees differently for the same or equivalent work but rather the gender pay gap is the result of the roles in which male and females work within the council and the salaries that these roles attract.

Across the UK economy, males are more likely than females to be in senior roles (especially very senior roles at the top of organisations), while females are more likely than men to be in front-line roles at the lower end of the organisation. In addition, men are more likely to be in technical, mechanical, and IT-related roles, which attract higher rates of pay than other roles at similar levels of seniority.

Unpaid home and care work, including childcare and informal adult care, is disproportionately performed by women. This can have a significant impact on pay and progression. Females are also more likely than males to work part time, and many of the jobs that are available across the UK on a part-time basis tend to be lower paid. In addition, females tend to take jobs that are nearer to home and that allow greater flexibility because of their caring responsibilities so this in turn may reduce their job opportunities and give them less access to high-paying firms. Therefore, the gap widens over time. As men move up the pay ladder, women fall behind, either staying in lower paid positions, reducing their hours, or both. Others drop out of work entirely.

The gender pay gap exists within PCC as the majority (70%) of the workforce is female and a considerable proportion of these are employed in the lower quartile pay bands, with fewer employed at the more senior levels although this is changing.

PCC’s gender pay gap is lower than the national average and this is down to several factors that already exist within the council:

• The commitment of PCC to continue to follow and adopt the Foundation Living Wage increases annually.
• PCC continues to promote and support flexible and hybrid working policies for all employees within the organisation, irrespective of gender.
• Robust equal opportunities and diversity policies ensure that all employees are treated fairly and equally with a clear escalation process if an individual feels they are being treated unfairly.
• The JESS Job evaluation scheme ensures that all jobs are evaluated to ensure equal pay for equal work across the entire authority.

6.4 Mean Bonus Pay Gap

The difference between the mean bonus pay paid to male relevant employees and that paid to female relevant employees is 22.79%. Which is a further increase from last year’s gap which was 16.41%.

 6.5 Median Bonus Pay Gap

The difference between the median bonus pay paid to male relevant employees and that paid to female relevant employees is 46.24%. This is an increase on last year’s figure which was 32.24%.

6.6 Bonus Proportions

The proportions of male and female relevant employees who were paid bonus pay during the relevant period in the 12 months up to 31^st March was 68 males (4.85%) out of a total of 1402 males and 95 females (2.77%) out of a total of 3428 females.

6.7 Bonus pay gap summary

The mean gender bonus gap and the median gender bonus gap for the council have changed to 22.79% and 46.24% respectively, there were a total of 95 females who received a ‘bonus’ payment compared to 68 males, which is a slight change to 2023 with the comparative figures of 26 males (1.72%) and 74 females (2.09%) so proportionately there were fewer females who were in receipt of a bonus payment in the relevant timeframe.

The bonus value for females is up to £13,000 compared to £8,800 for males with the overall average bonus payment made to males being higher than that of females. Males were paid an average £1357 with females paid an average of £1047.

A proportion of honoraria (bonus) payments made within PCC are used to reward outstanding contributions and the definition of “bonus” for this report captures these types of payments. As such this can skew the data and creates inconsistencies in reporting. Continuing work is underway to ensure that recording of this data is accurate in the future.

6.8 Quartile Pay Bands

The proportions of male and female full-pay relevant employees in the lower, lower middle, upper middle and upper quartile pay bands are set out in the table below.

*The totals differ slightly to accommodate the same hourly rate distribution across the divides.

6.9 Quartile Pay Band Summary

For there to be no gender pay gap, there would need to be an equal ratio of male to female in each quartile. However, within the council, 72% of the employees in the lower quartile are female and 28% are male, which is consistent year on year. The percentage of male employees increases throughout almost all the remaining quartiles however, in direct comparison the percentage of female employees decreases throughout almost all the remaining quartiles.

While the council’s gender pay gap compares favourably with that across the whole UK economy, it is committed to doing everything that it can to continue to reduce the gap. The council is confident that its gender pay gap does not stem from an equal pay issue as the pay and grading system in place ensures that all roles are evaluated equally and ensures individuals receive equal pay for equal work.

The council recognises that its scope to act is limited in areas and has for example, no direct control over individual choice in relation to study, career or work/life balance. However, as the employer, the council can ensure that individuals can make these choices without experiencing discrimination with fair, consistent, and inclusive working models supported by flexible working policies such as hybrid working. In addition, our council values, and behaviours framework guide everything we do, set who we are as people, what we stand for and how we act to promote and build a diverse and inclusive culture which includes our continued commitment to maintaining our Disability Confident status, Armed Forces Covenant and a newly achieved White Ribbon accreditation.

PCC is committed to continuing to close the gender pay gap. Our aim is to reduce this further as part of a wider agenda to improve equality, diversity, and inclusion across our entire workforce following a staged approach over the long term.

Stage 1: Analysis of the current workforce profile – ongoing

The Equality and Diversity Strategy 2024 – 2027 was adopted and published in March 2024.

The strategy was based on the Local Government Association’s Equality Framework for Local Government which is an established framework based on best practice and was developed with input from stakeholders representing those most likely to experience discrimination. The strategy aims to help focus the organisation’s efforts to improve in the areas of equality, diversity and inclusion.

Stage 2: Review of current policies and procedures – Ongoing

Stage 3: Evaluation of progress 

• Monitor current pay systems to identify and address any systematic issues and prevent any distortion of the data used for pay reporting purposes.
• Use the trend analysis to inform and address future training needs of managers and employees.

The action plan will be implemented over the next 12 months and reviewed on an ongoing basis, and annually in comparison with the published results of the Gender Pay Gap report, each March.