Gender Pay Gap Report for Boston Borough Council

From March 2018, public sector employers with more than 250 employees were required by law to report and publish gender pay gap information using employee data from the previous year. The gender pay information details the difference between men and women's aggregate hourly pay.

The Council have published the gender pay gap data from March 2023 as required on the .gov website. This information is presented below and includes available comparisons and analysis against data from previous years, and March 2023 average data from comparative organisations.

Background

By law, men and women must receive equal pay for:

• The same or broadly similar work;
• Work rated as equivalent under a job evaluation scheme; or
• Work of equal value.

Boston Borough Council is committed to the principle of equal opportunities and equal treatment for all employees, regardless of sex, race, religion or belief, age, marriage or civil partnership, pregnancy/maternity, sexual orientation, gender reassignment or disability.  It is committed to paying employees equally for the same or equivalent work, regardless of their sex (or any other characteristic set out above).

Across the UK economy, men are more likely than women to be in senior roles (especially higher senior roles), while women are more likely than men to be in front-line roles at the lower end of an organisation.  Women are also more likely than men to have time off from work which has affected their career progression, for example bringing up children.  They are also more likely to work part time, and many of the jobs that are available across the UK on a part time basis are relatively low paid.

The figures set out below have been calculated using the standard methodologies required by the Equality Act 2010 (Gender Pay Gap Information) Regulations 2017.

Gender Pay Gap Information March 2023

• The mean gender pay gap for BBC is 4%
• The median gender pay gap for BBC is 3%
• No bonuses were paid in the period.  

The mean pay gap is a positive figure, demonstrating that pay for female employees is proportionately lower than for males. Women earn 95.9p for every £1 the men earn when comparing hourly wages.

The Mean pay gap has decreased by 3% from last year. The 4% gap is predominantly due to a higher proportion of male employees sitting at Management level when compared to female workers. Three quarters of the Corporate Management Team are male and 61% of managers across the organisation are male, an increase of 6% compared to the previous year.

The decrease in the pay gap figure can be attributed to an increase in the number of lower paid male workers employed in the Council compared to the previous year.  In total 10 additional male employees at Grade 1 were employed within Waste Services as vacancies were filled. 

In addition, the highest paid appointment between April 2022 and March 2023 was a female appointment at grade 7.

It is worth noting that whilst there are more males than females in the top 20 highest paid, the highest paid employee at the Council is female. 

The median pay gap is a positive figure, demonstrating that the mid-range level of pay for male employees is proportionately higher than that for females. The Median rate of pay for women is 40p less than the Median pay for men, a decrease of 38p compared to the previous year. The gap can be attributed to the upper and upper middle quartiles having a higher proportion of male employees.

Pay Quartiles by Gender

This shows Boston Borough Council's workforce divided into four equal-sized groups based on hourly pay rates, with the lower quartile including the lowest paid 25% of employees and upper quartile covering the highest paid 25%. In order for there to be no gender pay gap, there would need to be an equal ratio of men to women in each band.

The lower and lower middle quartiles have a higher proportion of men to women compared to the previous year, attributed to the high volume of recruitment in low paid roles in areas typically occupied by males.  The proportion of males in the upper quartile has decreased slightly compared to the previous year (58.9%).

Comparison to Previous Boston Borough Gender Pay Gap Figures

The mean gender pay gap for the Council has reduced since March 2020, and despite an increase in 2022, it is the lowest it has been for 4 years.  Until this year the Median figure had remained more static over the last 3 years however in 2023 it was less than half it had been in the previous year.

Comparison to Other Organisations

When examining the Council's figures from 2023 and comparing to the submitted figures from comparator organisations, the Council's mean and median gender pay gap is almost exactly in line with the comparator Local Authorities average. The comparators were selected from the .gov Gender Pay gap submission page, District and Borough Councils were selected of between 250 and 499 employees.  As at the 9^th February 2024 32 councils of this size had submitted their gender pay gap figures.

To demonstrate a pay gap better than the average figures, the lower quartiles would show a lower percentage of females than the comparator average, and the upper quartiles would show a higher percentage of females than the average. 

The Council has less women in the lower quartile compared to the comparator average figures, showing a difference of 16% which is a positive result.  The figures in the Upper Middle and Top Quartile show as below the comparator average, meaning that a lower number of females occupy the higher paid roles in the organisation compared to the comparator average.  This difference is most significant in the upper middle quartile.  There is only a 5.6% difference between the comparator and the Council's upper quartile figure, showing that the number of females in the higher paid roles when compared to other similar Councils is relatively comparable.

Addressing the Gender Pay Gap

The gender pay gap figures are the lowest they have been since 2020, with a 3% decrease compared to the previous year.  Boston Borough Council have implemented several initiatives over the past couple of years to contribute to the reduction in the gender pay gap and promote gender diversity in all areas of its workforce, including:

• Ensuring their Flexible working Policy, which is currently under review to update in line with recent legislative changes, provider greater flexibility for employees wishing to alter their contract of employment to improve their work life balance.
• Fully supporting employees prior to, during and on return from maternity and other parental leave. It has robust Maternity, Adoption and Shared Parental Leave policies in place to shape how the Council pledges to do this.
• Investing in an online applicant tracking and recruitment system which is able to provide detailed data on applicants to all roles across the organisation. This data can be collated and analysed to improve the diversity of applicants and assess the effectiveness of recruitment processes in increasing gender diversity within the workforce.  In the last 12 months there has been one senior role advertised (Grade 7) and 62% of the applicants were female.
• Using a Job Evaluation process to assess the skills, knowledge and demands of roles within the organisation, grouping equivalent jobs and ensuring there is no pay disparity between equivalent roles.
• Continuing to invest in the future leaders programme, to identify and develop employees who show potential to be future leaders within the organisation, regardless of gender; 53% of the programmes 2023/24 cohort are female.
• Using the Agile Working Policy, implemented in February 2023 to enable employees to work remotely and with greater flexibility, within contracted hours and service demands, with an onus on performance.

Next Steps

Boston Borough Council will continue to report the Gender Pay gap information on an annual basis in accordance with legislative requirements.  They will also publish the Gender pay gap report on the Council website in a manner that is accessible to all employees. The report will also be uploaded onto the .gov website designated by the Secretary of State as supporting documentation for the Gender Pay gap figures for 2023 currently published.