Peterborough City Council publishes pay details of its highest and lowest earners

Peterborough City Council has published its Pay Policy Statement for the financial year 2022/23.

Members of the Employment Committee heard at their meeting (February 17) that the gender gap in respect of pay has widened slightly.

Of the council’s 1,226 employees in 2021/22, 887 were female (72.34%) earning an average of £18.17 per hour, while the 339 male employees (27.65%) earned an average of £19.39 per hour.

In 2020/21 the average hourly pay was 5.1% lower for women than for men.

In 2021/22 that gap has widened slightly to 5.2% with the overall gender pay gap now £1.22 per hour in favour of male employees.

The percentage of women occupying the highest paid jobs at the council has also fallen dramatically with the appointment of new CEO Matt Gladstone, who has taken over from Gillian Beasley.

Mr Gladstone’s salary is the highest at the council, but remains at £173,596 – the same level since 31 January 2018.

However, this represents an increase in real terms compared to the lowest salary package (£19,288) with a ratio of 9 to 1 (compared to 8.89 to 1 in 2020/21).

The Council defines its lowest paid employees as those in the bottom 10% of employees by remuneration based on a total of 1,313 staff with a full time equivalent salary between £15,455 and £21,077.

The average remuneration package for those 132 employees is in the region of £19,288.

For employees who work part-time, their salary is calculated pro rata to the full-time equivalent rate.

The minimum figure has increased, and the average salary has decreased since last year because there are a lot more staff employed on lower grades this year than last.

For example, in 2021 there were only 64 people earning between £15,000-£19,999, whereas in 2022 there were 81 earning between £15,000-£19,999.

All figures have to be approved by Full Council whose next meeting is 2 March 2022.