Women are paid 1p an hour more than men on average at Avon Fire & Rescue Service, an annual pay gap report reveals.
Firefighters in breathing apparatus | Photo courtesy of Avon Fire & Rescue Service
Female employees receive £15.66 compared with £15.65 by their male counterparts, which works out as a 0.07 per cent difference.
It shows the service has cracked the pay gap which has fallen from 4.48 per cent the previous year when women earned an hourly wage of only £14.68 – 69p less than the £15.37 rate for men.
The report comes less than three years after government inspectors found that female employees were treated “inappropriately”.
The figures, discussed by Avon Fire Authority’s people and culture committee on Friday 17th September, are based on the snapshot date of 31st March 2021.
Those from the previous 12 months, which are also going to the committee for approval following long delays because of Covid, relate to salaries on the same date in 2020.
The official UK national gender pay gap is 7.4 per cent, the papers say.
In a statement in the report, authority chairwoman Cllr Brenda Massey and chief fire officer Mick Crennell said: “Avon Fire Authority is committed to developing a culture which puts diversity, inclusion, cohesion and equality at the heart of all our work.
“Gender equality and ensuring people are paid fairly for the work they do is a key aspect of this.
“We are encouraged to see that Avon Fire & Rescue Service has a gender pay gap which has reduced from last year and is still lower than the current national average.
“We do, however, recognise that we have much more to do in order to ensure our organisation is truly inclusive for women.”
The report said the service had made “considerable progress” to complete its culture change action plan in response to a damning government inspection in 2018.
HM Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services found women were treated “inappropriately” and rated the organisation “inadequate” at both promoting the right values and culture and ensuring fairness and promoting diversity.
The pay gap report, however, said there had been an increase of women in the top quarter of earners in the organisation from 17.9 per cent in 2020 to 20.4 per cent this year.
It said: “Having a gender pay gap is different to equal pay. Equal pay deals with the differences between men and women who carry out the same or similar jobs, or work of equal value.
“The gender pay gap shows the difference in the average pay between all men and women in a workforce. It compares hourly rates of pay and any bonuses staff may receive by gender, highlighting any areas of imbalance.”
As of 31st March, there were 901 employees, of which 744 were men and 157 women.
The service is broadly split into uniformed staff, including full- and part-time firefighters and control staff, whose pay and conditions are negotiated nationally, and non-uniformed staff such as those in human resources, finance and technical services whose conditions are negotiated locally and salaries determined through an evaluation system.
In July, Bristol City Council’s gender pay gap was revealed to be its biggest for five years, having hovered around four per cent since 2016, with a small increase to 4.26 per cent as of March 31, 2020, which were the latest figures.
A report to councillors at the time said the mean average pay gaps on that date were 9.4 per cent for Avon & Somerset Police, 11.2 per cent for UWE, 14.5 per cent for Avon & Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust, 18.3 per cent for the University of Bristol, 20.6 per cent for University Hospitals Bristol and Weston NHS Trust and 23.5 per cent for North Bristol NHS Trust.
The latter two hospital trusts had much lower median average differences, however, as low as 1.4 per cent for UHBW.
Adam Postans, Local Democracy Reporter
