Consultation on Mandatory Gender Pay Gap Reporting

12 February 2016

The Government is seeking views on draft regulations that will increase transparency around the differences in pay between men and women. Regulations are due to come into force in October 2016 which will require private and voluntary sector employers with at least 250 employees to submit gender pay gap reports annually.

This follow-up consultation invites feedback on the details of the draft regulations that will introduce mandatory gender pay gap reporting for private and voluntary sector employers in England, Scotland and Wales with at least 250 employees.

CIPP comment The CIPP Policy Team have been involved in all the consultation work on gender pay gap reporting and will dissect the draft regulations in detail and ask for member opinion in due course to feed in to our formal response. In the meantime a summary of the draft regulations is detailed below.

Commencement and scope

Subject to the approval of Parliament, the regulations will come into force on the earliest relevant common commencement date (1 October 2016), although employers will not be expected to publish the required information immediately. Employers with 250 or more relevant employees will fall within scope of the regulations. A relevant employee means someone who ordinarily works in Great Britain and whose contract is governed by UK legislation.

Defining Pay

To ensure comparability with national gender pay gap figures, we have been consistent with the definition of pay used by the Office of National Statistics (ONS) for the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE). As such “pay” includes basic pay, paid leave, maternity pay, sick pay, area allowances, shift premium pay, bonus pay and other pay (including car allowances paid through the payroll, on call and standby allowances, clothing, first aider or fire warden allowances). It does not include overtime pay, expenses, the value of salary sacrifice schemes, benefits in kind, redundancy pay, arrears of pay and tax credits.

Publication timetable

Employers may need to introduce new systems or processes to analyse their gender pay gaps. To ensure that employers have sufficient lead in time, they will have about 18 months after commencement to publish the required information for the first time and must then publish annually thereafter.

This consultation will run until 11 March 2016.