Gender Pay Gap Report

For more information about the Gender Pay Gap please see Gov.UK.

Purpose and Scope of the Report

The Equality Act 2010 (Specific Duties and Public Authorities) Regulations 2017 requires local authorities who employ over 250 or more employees to produce a gender pay gap report.

The Act requires that an authority must report on the following information: 

• The mean gender pay
• The median gender pay gap
• The mean bonus gender pay gap
• The median bonus gender pay gap
• The proportion of males receiving a bonus payment
• The proportion of females receiving a bonus payment
• The proportion of males and females in each quartile pay band

Definitions and Calculations

Mean average

This involves adding up all of the numbers and dividing the result by how many numbers were in the list.

Median average

This involves listing all of the numbers in numerical order. The median is the middle figure.

Ordinary Pay

The report reflects 'ordinary pay'. Ordinary pay is defined in regulation 3 and it includes basic pay, allowances and shift premium pay.

Bonus Pay

Bonuses are defined in regulation 4. They include anything that relates to profit sharing, productivity, performance, incentive and commission. Bonus pay does not include pay related to paid overtime, allowances, shift premium pay, redundancy or termination of employment, pay in lieu of annual leave or pay which is not money.

The only form of bonus pay payable by West Devon Borough Council is in accordance with its Merit Pay Policy which rewards exceptional performance with a one-off payment.

The Gender Pay Gap at West Devon Borough Council

West Devon Borough Council (WDBC) shares the majority of its workforce with South Hams District Council (SHDC) following a major restructure in 2015.

The newly created shared workforce in 2015 was roughly 75% SHDC and 25% WDBC. This was broadly in line with the size of the organisations before the shared workforce, and new employees are allocated to one of the Councils to keep that historic balance in place. There is no consideration of salary or gender when allocating new employees, although where a like-for-like replacement is appointed, the new employee is normally allocated the same employer as the predecessor.

At the relevant date of 31 March 2022, the shared workforce consisted of 409 employees, with 216 being female (52.8%) and 193 being male (47.2%). For comparative purposes, at 31 March 2021, the relative figures for the workforce was a total workforce of 395, with 211 females (53.4%) and 184 males (46.5%).

Because West Devon Borough Council employees fewer than 250 people, it does not need to report its gender pay gap.

Please visit South Hams District Council's website For information about the Gender pay gap across the shared workforce.