Gender pay gap

Gender pay reporting legislation requires employers with 250 or more employees to measure how large the pay gap is between their male and female employees.

The measurement must be taken each year - on 31 March for public sector organisations and 5 April for other employers - and must be made public.

This information is also reported on the Government’s gender pay gap portal and will be available for a period of at least three years.

Our most recent report is below, you can also download PDF versions of this and previous years.

Gender pay gap report 2023

Introduction

At Chesterfield Borough Council we value diversity and inclusion and believe that it strongly contributes to the quality of our services. We are committed to being an equal opportunities employer and aim to treat all employees and job applicants fairly, regardless of their gender (including gender reassignment), age, race, sexuality, full or part-time status, marital status, and disability. We believe it is important to attract and keep a workforce that reflects the customers and communities we serve.

We welcome the gender pay gap reporting requirements for several reasons including:

• it will help to confirm to our existing and prospective employees that we are committed to building a diverse and inclusive workplace, which provides equal opportunity to all employees irrespective of gender
• it will help us to monitor pay and career progression more closely and to ensure that all employees, irrespective of gender are supported to reach their full potential
• it is an opportunity to review our data and consider any issues we need to address, and we can capture our journey over the next few years in our gender pay gap reporting and review our progress

What is the gender pay gap?

The gender pay gap is concerned with differences in the average earnings of men and women over a standard time period, regardless of their role or seniority. The law requires any organisation with more than 250 employees to publish its gender pay gap information annually based on a snapshot date. For the public sector, the snapshot date is 31 March.

The gender pay gap is not the same as equal pay. The law says that men and women must be paid the same for doing the same or equivalent work. We use job evaluation techniques to evaluate each role and not the post holder to ensure that all roles are fairly remunerated in comparison to other roles. It makes no reference to gender or any other personal characteristics of any existing or potential job holders. We are therefore confident that our gender pay gap does not stem from paying men and women differently for the same or equivalent work, rather it is a result of the roles in which men and women work within the organisation and the salaries these roles attract. 

Our gender pay gap data

At 31 March 2023 Chesterfield Borough Council employed 943 people. The gender split of our workforce is 49% female and 51% male, however, this isn’t an equal split across our services. The majority of Chesterfield Borough Council services are provided in-house including services which many authorities have either contracted out such as building cleaning or moved to alternative models such as arms-length organisations for example managing council housing and associated repairs and maintenance (OSD). These services tend to have a large gender imbalance, for instance, building cleaning employs a large number of female part-time staff whereas the majority of higher-paid trades staff and associated professions working in housing repairs and maintenance (OSD) are male. These services have a disproportionate impact on our gender pay gap data.

Our gender pay gap figures for 2023 are:

Note on terminology:

Mean average - to get the mean figure we add up the hourly rate of our employees and then divide it by the number of employees (943).

Median average – to get the median figure we put all the 943 employee hourly rates in a row from lowest to highest and then take the middle point (471).

Quartiles – Again we put all the 943 hourly rates in a row from lowest to highest and then split the data into four equal slices of 236. The lower quartile is the 236 lowest hourly rates and the upper quartile is the 236 highest hourly rates

Interpreting the data

The Chesterfield Borough Council’s mean gender pay gap for 2023 is 7% in favour of males and the median gender pay gap is 13% also in favour of males. These figures are significantly affected by the council’s decision to retain in-house delivery for the majority of our services and the transfer in of staff from outsourced services during the year.

To understand the gender, pay gap it is essential to understand certain key facts about the distribution of grades, genders and working patterns in each of the four quartiles.

Upper quartile

The types of roles in this quartile include:

• The council’s corporate leadership team
• Heads of service/service manager roles, for example, head of ICT, head of communications and marketing, head of finance, leisure manager, bereavement services manager
• Trades, for example, plumbers, gas engineers, joiners, bricklayers, electricians
• Traditional professions – solicitors, planners, environmental health officers
• Exercise instructors

Upper middle quartile

The types of roles in this quartile include:

• Trades, for example, bricklayers, joiners, plumbers
• Recovery officers
• Team leaders
• Auditors
• Careline response officers
• Benefits advisors, Housing officers
• Enforcement officers
• Senior accounting technicians
• Democratic officers

Lower middle quartile

The types of roles in this quartile include:

• Accounting technicians
• Independent living officer
• Car park attendants
• Barista
• Elections assistants

Lower quartile

The types of roles in this quartile include:

• Cleaners
• Stage crew
• Caretakers
• Customer services assistants
• Receptionists
• Administrative staff
• Apprentices

The quartile information appears to support the theory of occupational segregation as a factor in gender pay gaps. We currently have no female employees in trade positions which make up a third of the roles in the upper middle quartile and almost 50% of roles in the upper quartile. Conversely roles within the lower quartile including cleaners and administrative staff are predominantly held by female employees.

Far fewer men across the organisation work in part time/ job share roles than their female equivalents. This can enable faster progression due to increased opportunity to gain experience and knowledge.

Bonus scheme

Chesterfield Borough Council does not have a council wide bonus scheme. We do however operate a productivity based incentive scheme for our trade based employees for example plumbers, electricians, roofers. This incentive scheme enables us to recruit and retain employees with specific trades to ensure that 100% of our council housing stock remains at the decent homes standard and that we can continue to provide an effective repairs service for our tenants. Nationally these types of role continue to be male dominated which is the key reason for the difference in the proportion of male and female employees receiving a bonus payment. We currently have no female employees in trade roles.

How we are addressing the pay gap

We aim to recruit from the widest possible talent pool. We have updated our recruitment policy and procedures and trained all our recruiting managers to ensure that language in job adverts is neutral, that they understand the importance of interviewing people with gender balanced panels in order to avoid unconscious bias and can develop a recruitment experience that enables candidates to showcase their knowledge, experience and skills across their whole life experience. During 2021 we have updated the policy to include ‘blind’ recruitment methods to ensure candidates are short-listed for roles on merit only.

We use job evaluation techniques to evaluate each role to ensure that all roles are fairly remunerated in comparison to other roles and also pay at least the Living Wage Foundations living wage level to all our employees which has a positive disproportional impact on female employees who make up a larger proportion of the workforce in services for example building cleaning that benefit from the living wage.

Once we have the right people, we want them to stay. To support this we have developed a range of flexible working opportunities including part-time, job-share, compressed hours, and so on. We have also updated and promoted our policies and procedures regarding maternity, paternity and adoption leave and have updated our shared parental leave policy and offering career breaks.

We devote significant time and resources to helping our employees progress in their careers and accessing quality learning and development opportunities. This includes regular development conversations with line managers, a formal personal development review meeting every six months and service level succession planning activities. There are also opportunities to learn from women who have progressed into the highest levels of organisations, this is a key consideration for our management conferences, managers seminars and international women’s day activities.

We use apprenticeships to enhance the skills, knowledge and experience of our existing employees and to give opportunities to a diverse range of new employees – this includes working with partners to increase engagement with ethnic minority groups. We recognise however that offering new apprenticeship opportunities which are attractive to women may in the short negatively impact our gender pay gap as these roles attract a lower salary, but this is about investing in a pipeline of talent and creating career pathways for apprentices to progress and meet their potential. We carefully consider how to support female staff and apprentices to take the next steps in their career, and identify and reduce any barriers to gender equality. Over time this will reduce the gender gap and quartile distribution.

We work with schools and colleges regularly via our local democracy programmes and work experience opportunities. These help us to develop a relationship with young people in the Borough early on which in turn helps us to identify as an employer of choice within the area particularly for apprenticeship opportunities. In a typical year we will engage over a thousand children and young people in these activities.

We also take our wider role as a key place shaper seriously and consider how we can help to address the gender pay gap within the Borough. As part of our commitment to local labour clauses we work with employers and partner agencies to enable them to showcase opportunities and career pathways in schools and colleges. Across the borough large scale regeneration activity is taking place, this matched with a clear focus on the skills agenda will provide significant employment and educational opportunities which have the potential to further reduce the gender pay gap within the borough. Some highlights include:

Along with the Chesterfield Equality and Diversity Forum we support International Women’s Day.

We continue to secure local labour clauses on all eligible developments and support businesses and communities to get the maximum benefit from these opportunities. Once local labour clauses are secured we offer a range of support to companies including advice on local recruitment, links with local training providers and information about how they can best explore local supply chain opportunities.

We encourage local businesses to engage with schools in the area to encourage children and young people to think about their future career aspirations.

Our work with Chesterfield College and other key partners to develop the apprentice town initiative. There are now thousands of young people embarking on apprenticeships and giving investors in Chesterfield access to a pool of high quality skills that will enable their businesses to grow and prosper.

Our partners Destination Chesterfield co-ordinate the successful ‘Made in Chesterfield’ campaign with is a celebration of the manufacturing, engineering, science and technology industries in the town. The campaign looks to inspire the next generation to the industry, with businesses, schools and training providers coming together to showcase the sector.

Derby University’s Chesterfield campus offers a large range of health and social care courses where students can gain valuable work experience as well as academics qualifications utilising NHS standard mock hospital wards, interactive suite, clinical suite and high-tech computer suite.

Peak resort – a multi-million pound integrated leisure, health, sport and education resort will provide not only a large range of new jobs and careers but also an additional university campus, specialising in leisure and hospitality.

Young people and their parents or carers have also been able to access a number of sessions where they can learn more about careers in the health and social care sector. Apprenticeship and Technical Education Information events include a question-and-answer panel session and the chance to speak to experts in the sector including Chesterfield Royal Hospital and NHS Joined Up Care about the training and career options available to young people after completing school.

We are launching a skills brokerage service which aims to help businesses access the funding and the information they need to deliver skills development programmes for their employees

This is just a snapshot of the exciting activities taking place within the Borough which will provide high quality career pathways for young people within our Borough.

Gender pay gap reports

If our documents are not accessible to you, you can request a different format here.

Gender Pay Gap Report 2023	(PDF 164 KB)
Gender Pay Gap Report 2022	(PDF 154 KB)
Gender Pay Gap Report 2021	(PDF 81 KB)
Gender Pay Gap Report 2020	(PDF 106 KB)
Gender Pay Gap Report 2019	(PDF 104 KB)
Gender Pay Gap Report 2018	(PDF 80 KB)
Gender Pay Gap Report 2017	(PDF 129 KB)