ST HELENS Borough Council has revealed its gender pay gap data for the last year.

In its latest Pay Policy Statement, which is released annually, the council revealed its mean hourly rate of pay was £13.01 for women and £13.67 for men.

That’s a difference of 66p per hour – or 4.8 per cent. Working on the basis of a 7.5 hour average workday, that means women receive £4.95 less each day.

By law, any organisation with more than 250 employees must publish their gender pay gap figures and report the data to central government.

The data further revealed the gender split between men and women in each wage quartile.

These are separated into Upper, Upper Middle, Lower Middle and Lower.

Women occupied 75 per cent of lower quartile jobs, while men took up just 25 per cent.

According to the report, this is “largely due to the historical occupational segregation that means that female employees tend to occupy the part-time lower paid work that is widely available within Council services”.

The upper quartile does still employ more women than men – 66 per cent versus 34 per cent.

The report went on to add that based on median rates of pay, there was no gender pay gap – the median rate of pay for both men and women was £10.97.

Overall, the workforce is made up of 30.6 per cent men and 69.4 per cent women.

Compared to last year’s figures, the gender pay gap has actually narrowed.

In March 2020, women’s mean hourly pay was £12.20, while men received £12.98 – making a pay gap of 6 per cent or 78p per hour.

In 2017, the year it was made law that gender pay gap data be published, the gap based on mean hourly rates was 8.7 per cent.

Based on median data, that figure was 6.9 per cent.