Gender pay gap reporting





Since April 2018, compulsory gender pay gap (GPG) reporting has been in force in the public, private and voluntary sectors, for employers of 250 or more employees. The information that must be published annually is:



• the mean and median pay gap between men and women; 



• how many men and women are in each quartile of the employer’s payroll; and



• percentages of staff receiving bonuses by gender, and the bonus gender pay gap.



The information must be supported by a written statement confirming its accuracy. The figures published must be based on the situation on the “snapshot date” (31 March each year). 



The regulations use the wider meaning of “employee”, which includes anyone classed as a “worker” for the purpose of equality rights (see Chapter 2). It includes freelance workers who are integrated into the organisation and who provide their services personally to the organisation’s customers, as well as workers who use a personal service company. However, an employer is only required to provide pay gap information for these workers if it has the data available, or can reasonably obtain it. 



The data must be published annually on the employer’s own website and remain there for three years. It must also be uploaded to a government portal: www.gov.uk/report-gender-pay-gap-data. The reporting duty is policed and enforced by the EHRC. There is no provision for official checking of the accuracy of the figures provided.



The new regime does not require employers to explain why pay gaps exist, or what they intend to do about them. Even so, in the long term the published information is likely to support union campaigns to promote ways of addressing the gap, such as return-to-work plans to support women after maternity leave, and targeted programmes to help women access promotion and career progression. Acas recommends that employers add a “narrative” to their written statement to “help anyone reading the statement to understand the organisation’s view of why a gender pay gap is present and what the organisation intends to do to close it”.



In Scotland and Wales, there are additional GPG reporting duties on public bodies that are covered by the specific duties under the public sector equality duty (see page 269).



The GPG regulations do not apply in Northern Ireland, which has its own legislation — the Employment Act (NI) 2016. This law is not in force. Future standards in Northern Ireland are likely to be more stringent than in the rest of the UK because the Northern Ireland law will require employers to break down the data by reference to sex, ethnicity and disability, and to develop action plans to address any differences, with potential criminal penalties for breach of the legislation.



https://gender-pay-gap.service.gov.uk/