Pay Gap Report 2025

Gender pay gap and quartile summary

Overall the average pay for women is slightly higher (2.5%) than for men at Great Places. The average salary (when all salaries are added together and divided by the number of women in the organisation) for a female at Great Places was £21.01 per hour compared with an average for men of £20.49 per hour. Women earn on average 52 pence per hour more than men.

The median calculation (giving the middle value ie: if all salaries were placed in a list from the highest to the lowest) was -11.43%. The median salary for a female was £18.98 per hour and £17.04 per hour for a male. This is driven by the greater number of males in the lower quartile.

If we look in detail at each quartile, the data is as follows:

Overall therefore the data tells us that the payroll is distributed evenly between males and females. There is less than £2 per hour difference between the mean and the median payments across each quartile.

Bonus payments

Our bonus payments were made up of ‘reward’ payments for colleagues under the £5 for a 5-Star review scheme (which mainly operates in the Repairs Service) and the peer to peer YouCount rewards scheme, 10-year anniversary payments and Retirements. The Mean figure was a gap of 1.82%, while the median was -34.16%. The majority of bonus payments were the £5 for 5*’s, which primarily operates in the Repairs service where there are more males than females in trade roles.

Overall the average pay for white colleagues is higher (15%) than for ethnically diverse colleagues at Great Places. The average salary for a white colleague at Great Places was £21.49 per hour compared with £18.20 per hour for an ethnically diverse colleague. On average therefore white colleagues earn £3.29 per hour more than their ethnically diverse colleagues.

The median salary for a white colleague was £18.49 per hour compared to £15.67 per hour for an ethically diverse colleague; a difference of £2.82 per hour.

The difference is driven by low numbers of ethnically diverse colleagues at senior levels within the organisation, which reflects the sector profile and the reason we are active within the BOOST programme which is aimed at changing the culture so that ethnically diverse talent can emerge and thrive.

We note that in the lower quartile ethnically diverse colleagues make up 24.18% of the population and earn more than their white colleagues. We will look to identify talent in this quartile and support its development.

In the 12 months before April 2025 we recruited 56 ethnically diverse colleagues, which was 22% of our new intake. During this time 33 ethnically diverse colleagues left us, which was 14% of the total leavers.

If we look in detail at each quartile, the data is as follows:

Social housing tenants are disproportionately likely to be from black and minority ethnic backgrounds. 44% of Black African households and 40% of Black Caribbean households are social renters, compared to 16% of White British households.

It is important to have colleagues that reflect local communities, understand some of the issues they face and are empathetic to their needs. This often is the case at front line levels, but the further up the organisation you go the less diverse it can become. Leadership in housing is generally white; the Cabe Report in 2018 that of 330 senior executive positions in housing only 15 were filled by ethnically diverse leaders and three quarters of housing providers had exclusively white leaderships teams. This means that decisions that affect tenants are taken by people from a white background and culture.

Black and minority ethnic tenants are more often located in inner city properties where stock may be poorer quality and harder to repair and retrofit, and where there are fewer green areas. This can lead to overcrowding which can, in turn, have negative health impacts for tenants. Diversifying leadership and management may help to reduce this inequality.

Great Places is part of BOOST, a Greater Manchester Housing Provider initiative to understand and remove the barriers so that ethnically diverse talent and emerge and thrive in the sector. As part of this programme we have:

• Reviewed and updated our Recruitment and Selection Policy
• We’ve continued to broadened our guaranteed interview schemes to include ethnically diverse candidates and social housing tenants who meet essential criteria, alongside the existing schemes. There has been a particular focus in the last year on upskilling and raising awareness of these schemes with recruiting managers
• Further improved job advertisement inclusivity, ensuring language, tone and imagery clearly reflect our commitment to diversity and belonging.
• Focused on refined role profiles to balance formal qualifications with lived experience, making opportunities more accessible to people from our communities.
• Introduced a new Recruitment Platform which will allow us to measure the characteristics of our applicants and successful candidates.
• Started to interrogate the information from our exit interview platform to capture deeper insights into why colleagues leave, helping shape stronger retention strategies.
• Introduced a new inclusive recruitment training programme for managers.
• Rolled out a workshop for all managers to develop their cultural intelligence and equip them with the skills to have positive conversations about race.
• Launched a new programme to develop our aspiring ethnically diverse colleagues, which includes a level 3 qualification, behavioural insights and mentoring.

Of the 970 colleagues (93.44%) that declared a status, 14.26% of our workforce stated they had a disability.

Overall the average pay for non disabled colleagues is higher (7%) than for disabled colleagues at Great Places. The average salary for a non disabled colleague at Great Places was £21.23 per hour compared to £19.64 per hour for a disabled colleague; a difference of £1.59 per hour.

The median salary for a non disabled colleague was £18.74 per hour and £18.49 per hour for a disabled colleague; a difference of £0.25 per hour.

If we look in detail at each quartile, the data is as follows:

A recent Inside Housing survey on diversity found that 18% of social housing tenants in England are disabled but only 4.9% of Board members and 5% of executives identified as disabled. Again this can impact on levels of understanding and empathy in decision-making.

Over the last twelve months we have updated our knowledge and skills on neurodiversity and in doing so have updated many of our recruitment practices. We have for example introduced the practice of giving all candidates the questions prior to the interview and have allowed the use of AI to compose covering letters and CV, provided the content remains accurate and the candidate informs us that AI has been used.

We are excited to be working with Enable, our colleague forum on disability to be implementing the Greater Manchester Good Employment Charter BeeNeuroinclusive Code of Conduct. While we already have many of the recommendations in place, such as anonymised recruitment, accepting AI generated applications, giving interview questions prior to interviews and delivering Neuroinclusion training to managers, we recognise there is lots more to do to ensure we are supporting all our colleagues to be at their best at work.