Gender pay gap in Milton Keynes: Six companies failing to close it, including MK Council and MK Hospital

Many employers across Milton Keynes are still failing to close the gender pay gap, new figures show.

April 4 was the deadline for employers across Great Britain to submit their 2022/23 gender pay gap reports to the UK government. Returns from more than 10,000 companies and organisations across the country show four out of five (79.4%) still pay men more than women on average.

The results also reveal gender pay gaps remain at many employers in Milton Keynes including the following:

> Milton Keynes Council; women earn 94p for every £1 that men earn when comparing median hourly pay. Their median hourly pay is 5.6% lower than men’s.

> Milton Keynes College; women earn 96p for every £1 that men earn when comparing median hourly pay. Their median hourly pay is 4.5% lower than men’s.

> Milton Keynes University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust; women earn 84p for every £1 that men earn when comparing median hourly pay. Their median hourly pay is 16.1% lower than men’s.

> Milton Keynes Education Trust; women earn 94p for every £1 that men earn when comparing median hourly pay. Their median hourly pay is 5.6% lower than men’s.

> Buckinghamshire & Milton Keynes Fire Authority; women earn 88p for every £1 that men earn when comparing median hourly pay. Their median hourly pay is 11.7% lower than men’s.

> NHS Bedfordshire Luton and Milton Keynes Integrated Care Board; women earn 73p for every £1 that men earn when comparing median hourly pay. Their median hourly pay is 27.5% lower than men’s.

Only workplaces with 250 or more employees have to submit a gender pay gap report. The gap is calculated as the difference between median hourly earnings of men and women, as a proportion of men’s earnings. It excludes overtime and bonuses.

Not every employer failed to close the gender pay gap last year. The figures show more than 800 across Great Britain reported no gender pay gap at all, representing 7.9% of employers.

Some of the big names where men and women earned the same on average include the British Film Institute, English National Opera, Department for Work and Pensions, Blackpool Pleasure Beach and The Royal Zoological Society of Scotland.

More than 1,300 (12.7% of employers) across Great Britain were also found to be paying women more on average than men.

The average woman in paid employment effectively works for free for nearly two months of the year compared to the average man in paid employment, according to analysis published by the TUC.

The TUC analysis also shows that the gender pay gap is widest for older women.

A spokesman for Milton Keynes Council said: “Our gender pay gap has actually been decreasing since this reporting began (recently by 11%). We’re committed to fair and equal pay and we have strong policies already in action.

“We directly provide a lot of homecare and employ far more women working in those roles than we do men. Things like this have an impact when calculating gender pay gap figures.

A spokesman for Milton Keynes University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, said: "Over the last few years, the Trust has worked extremely hard to close the gender pay gap and has made several strides forward, reducing the gap by 4% in the last two years.

"As well as reducing the gender pay gap, we have also made great progress in other areas for example introducing new policies to support colleagues who are going through the menopause and increasing opportunities for flexible working across all roles. We know there is still a lot of work to do, and we will continue to work with colleagues so that all voices are heard, and changes are made.”

MK College Group commented: “We are encouraged to see that our gender pay gap has reduced. Our median gender pay gap has decreased since first reporting in 2017 from 11.2% to the current year of 5.2%, and the mean pay gap from 8.4% to 4.5%. Comparing this to the national average of 14.9% and the average for the education sector of 20.4% (the provisional 2022 ONS gender pay gap data) shows that this work is having a positive impact on women’s pay at all levels.

At MK College Group, our goal is to achieve fair representation across all levels of the organisation – narrowing, and eventually closing, the gender pay gap is a positive consequence of this. Simply looking at gender won’t achieve fair representation and pay – we also need to look at areas such as ethnicity to identify who’s thriving and who needs more support to progress.

We have a number of initiatives to support us with this, such as including offering hybrid working where possible, supporting a range of employee networks and striving for a more diverse Strategic Leadership Team. We also voluntarily publish our ethnicity pay gap data at the same time as our gender pay gap report. In fact, we’re publishing our gender and ethnicity pay gap report for 2023 in May this year, a full 10 months ahead of the compulsory deadline.

A Fire Service spokesman said: “This is the sixth year of reporting the Service’s gender pay gap, and as is detailed within the report, the Service is committed to addressing the gap. These latest figures show the mean (average) gender pay gap has decreased again in 2022, which is positive, and takes the Authority’s gender pay gap data below the UK national average for 2022.”

NHS Bedfordshire Luton and Milton Keynes Integrated Care Board and Mk Education Trust were contacted for a response.