Each year employers with over 250 employees are required by law to look at and publish details of their pay data to reflect any imbalance between males and females.
As an organisation Great Places has pay ranges which reflect the size, scale and complexity of each job and acknowledge the experience, skills and expertise required to do it successfully. These ranges apply to everyone doing that job regardless of gender.
The pay data however gives us insight into the distribution of monies within the payroll. It shows us the way our payroll monies are split across males and females and thereby measures the levels of pay between males and females; in short whether there is a fair distribution of males and females at the more senior levels of the organisation. In this way it allows us to determine whether there is fairness and equity between male and female in how they can access higher paying jobs, learning and development and career progression.
At Great Places we take this a step further, we also look at the balance of pay by ethnicity and also between colleagues that are disabled and those that are not. This is something that the Government is making mandatory for all organisations in 2027.
Full details regarding the pay gaps at Great Places are given later but in summary we have a good gender balance with women paid on average slightly (2.24%) more than men.
Like many organisations ethnicity is our largest pay gap at 15.35% and we have focussed activity to reduce this over the next few years. This year we have taken many measures to improve the inclusivity of our recruitment practices, we are rolling out training to all leaders and managers on cultural curiosity/intelligence and we are taking positive action to develop our aspiring ethnically diverse colleagues through a dedicated leadership and management programme.
Our disability pay gap is 7.5%. We are proud to be implementing the BeeNeuroinclusive Code of Conduct standard developed by the Greater Manchester Good Employment Charter which aims to support colleagues and potential new colleagues who are Neurodivergent by building a Neuroinclusive workplace at Great Places.
Before looking in detail at the Great Places pay data, here is some information about the national picture, by way of context.
The data from the Office of National Statistics in 2025 showed that the gender pay gap was continuing to decline, albeit at a slow rate. Over the last decade the Gender Pay Gap has fallen by approximately a quarter among full-time employees. In April 2025 the national gender pay gap stood at 6.9%, down from 7.1% the previous year. In practical terms this means that women are still being paid 93p for every £1 a man earns and that almost four out of five companies and public bodies are still paying men more than women (78.4%).
UK wide ethnicity data is difficult to come by as many organisations do not collect or report it at the moment. The most recent figure published by the Office of National Statistics is from 2022; at that time Black, African, Caribbean or Black British employees earned less (£13.53) median gross hourly pay than White employees (£14.35).
In 2023 the Office of National Statistics confirmed that the disability pay gap in the UK was 12.7%. Disabled employees were estimated to have earned roughly £13.69 per hour while other employees were likely to have earned a median of £15.69 per hour. They noted that the gap had “remained broadly stable” since 2014.
The way in which pay has to reported under the legislation is very specific. We have to look at the average pay (the mean) and also the median (the middle value if all salaries are put in a list from highest to lowest). Using the two figures gives greater understanding; just using an average would mean one or two high salaries could skew the data. We also have to report on the payment of bonuses.
We also have to split the data into 4 quarters; the 25% of highest paid colleagues, the next 25% of colleagues (the upper middle), the 25% of colleagues below that (the lower middle) and then the lowest paid 25%. The data reported here is as at 5th April 2025.
We have continued to see female promotions into senior roles with Sharon Brown becoming Chief Transformation Officer and Alicia Pearson stepping up into Director of Assurance.
We continue to see legacy benefits of the SHe programme, which was aimed at females wanting to progress in to management and leadership positions. 12 aspiring females working into traditionally male dominated areas were matched with an internal mentor and worked through an ILM Level 2 Award in Leadership and Team Skills. The most notable success story is our ‘SHe Inspires’ Award Winner, Hannah Cowton, (formerly Team Manager for the East Planning Team) who has stepped up to an interim Head of Property Services in the East region.
Ethnicity is our widest pay gap and we are committed to reducing it. We are a leading member of the Greater Manchester Housing Providers BOOST programme which is aimed at identifying the barriers to ethnically diverse talent emerging and thriving in Housing. We are using the learning from the programme to make changes. As part of this, we have reviewed our Recruitment and Selection Policy and implemented a series of innovations (detailed below) to support greater inclusivity. We are also upskilling our leaders and managers to have positive conversations about Race and as part of Sharon Hayes, our late Director of Tech’s legacy have launched a dedicated programme of development for aspiring ethnically diverse colleagues.
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.
We are also committed to supporting colleagues who develop disabilities during their employment with us and are working with the Greater Manchester Good Employment Charter to implement the findings of the Keep Britain Working review, which aims to reduce sickness absences through proactivity around reasonable adjustments in the workplace.
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