Details of our Gender Pay Gap report for 2025.
Torbay Council’s Gender Pay Gap is provided in compliance with the ‘The Equality Act 2010 (Specific Duties and Public Authorities) Regulations 2017’ which came into force on 31st March 2017.
It also reaffirms the council’s commitment to being a fair and inclusive employer where every member of staff feels valued and supported to succeed, regardless of their gender or other protected characteristics. Creating an environment where everyone is able to achieve their full potential benefits employees and ensures that we can make the best use of the skills and talent available in supporting the people of Torbay. Our pay and grading structure and pay processes are a part of the Council’s overall approach to ensuring fairness and consistency for our workforce and supports the objectives of Our People Strategy.
This report covers all employees of Torbay Council including all staff permanently and temporarily employed on the reporting ‘snapshot date’ (31st March 2025). This includes those on casual contracts that worked during the pay period ending 31st March 2025.
In accordance with the Regulations, employees of Torbay Council’s maintained schools* are treated as being employed by the governing body of the school and not as Council employees. Consequently, employees in maintained schools have been excluded from the Council’s gender pay calculations. The duty to report GPG information applies to organisations with 250 or more employees. None of Torbay Council’s maintained schools individually exceed this figure and so will not need to make a submission. In the case of schools who are part of a multi-academy trust and which may collectively exceed 250 employees, they will be required to report their gender pay information as the employer and take advice as appropriate.
* Maintained schools are regarded as foundation, community, voluntary, nursery or special schools.
Under the regulations, and therefore in this report, ‘pay’ includes: basic pay, paid leave (including annual leave, sick leave, maternity, paternity, adoption and parental leave (except where an employee is paid less than usual because of being on leave)), allowances, shift premium pay and bonus pay. ‘Pay’ does not include: overtime pay, expenses, the value of salary sacrifice schemes (however the reduction to salary is included), benefits in kind, redundancy pay and tax credits.
The gender pay gap is defined as the difference between the pay of men and women. While there are many ways of presenting this data, under the regulations and in this report there are only two measures: median hourly pay and mean hourly pay. Each is represented as the percentage of the difference with men’s pay being the divisor.
For example, with a 3% pay gap women earn 97p for every £1 a man earns, whereas a -3% figure indicates that women earn £1.03 for every £1 a man earns. Gender pay gap is not about men and women being paid differently for the same job which has been prohibited by equal pay legislation since 1975. Even with this legislation, historically certain occupations have attracted greater pay due to the value placed on typical masculine and feminine skills.
To comply with equal pay legislation, we operate a recognised job evaluation scheme which covers all posts within the Council. This is supported by periodic pay data reviews to ensure that our pay structure remains transparent and free from gender bias. The Council seeks external advice on JE where required and regularly benchmarks against market data.
A gender pay gap of less than +/- five percent is considered to be acceptable as defined by the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s Equal Pay Toolkit. All gender pay gaps of three percent or more are subject to further analysis to identify the main causes and contributory factors of any pay differences.
A positive pay gap indicates that men are paid more, a negative pay gap indicates that women are paid more.
In regard to Gender Pay Gap Reporting, both the mean and median figures have to be reported, however, the median is referred to, to highlight the overall gender pay gap as it is more representative of the average earnings of a typical person (Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings, 2017:5). Significant pay gaps can often be explained by length of service, market factors, pay protection and/or progression.
The following summary has been prepared in line with the Equality Act 2010 (Gender Pay Gap Information) Regulations 2017 which requires public sector employers to publish specific details of their gender pay, as follows:
The difference between the average (mean and median) hourly rate of pay for male and female employees.
1. The mean pay for women is £21.56 per hour and mean pay for men is £21.62 per hour. Therefore the mean gender pay gap 0.27%.
2. The median pay for women is £17.60 and the median pay for men is £20.96 per hour. Therefore the median gender pay gap is 16%.
The difference between the average (mean and median) bonuses paid to male and female employees over the period of 12 months ending with the snapshot date of 31st March 2025.
3. No bonuses were paid to employees during this period.
The proportion of male employees, and of female employees, who were paid bonuses during the period of 12 months ending with the snapshot date of 31st March 2025.
4. No bonuses were paid to employees during this period.
5. The proportions of male and female employees in each quartile of the pay distribution – to be supplied
| Quartile | Posts | Men (Count) | Men (%) | Women (Count) | Women (%) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A - Lower (0-25%) | 311 | 79 | 25.40% | 232 | 74.60% |
| B - Lower Middle (25-50%) | 306 | 86 | 28.10% | 220 | 71.90% |
| C - Upper Middle (50-75%) | 303 | 100 | 33.00% | 203 | 67.00% |
| D - Upper (75-100%) | 300 | 132 | 44.00% | 168 | 56.00% |
| Total Posts | 1220 | 397 | 32.54% | 823 | 67.46% |
Torbay Council employed 1220 employees on 31st March 2025, as a headcount figure. This figure does not include our School employees.
The previous Gender Pay Gap Report highlighted a –0.14% mean gap in favour of women and a -1.38% median gap in favour of women, however this years’ figure shows the mean gap to be 0.27 mean gap in favour of men and a 16% median gap in favour of men, showing an overall gap in favour of men.
The mean and median gender pay gaps for the whole economy, i.e. all jobs in all sectors (according to the 2025 Office for National Statistics (ONS) Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) figures, Table 1.12) are 12.8% median and 13.4 mean% for all sectors.
The median and mean gender pay gaps for the whole economy categorized into sectors (according to the 2025 ONS ASHE figures, Table 13.12) are:
The Council’s median gender pay gap position is slightly above the public sector average, although the mean gap is well below this.
The calculation for the median figure for 2025 has been updated, which explains the difference between the figure provided for 2024.
The Council has a large proportion of women in the lower quartile, in job roles where there are more flexible working hours (School Escort, Support and Enabling roles). The majority of men occupy roles in the upper middle and upper quartiles, in professional and senior roles.
The Council current pay and grading structure was introduced in April 2019 and a full equality impact assessment was undertaken to assess any adverse impact upon certain groups, including a gender analysis. This has since been reviewed and changes to the Council’s job evaluation conventions have further been consulted upon with Trades Unions to ensure that evaluation of any new and existing jobs continues to be fair and equitable.
In addition, the following proposals are put forward to review and minimise any pay gaps going forward:
Signed by: Anne-Marie Bond
Print Name and Job Title: Anne-Marie Bond, Chief Executive, Torbay Council
Date: 16 April 2026
More information can be found regarding Torbay Council’s approach to inclusion, our workforce data and equality objectives on our web-pages:
Equality and Human Rights Commission:
GOV.UK
Office for National Statistics: