The Equality Act 2010 (Specific Duties and Public Authorities) Regulations 2017 will come into force on 31 March 2017 requiring specified public authorities with 250+ employees to publish their gender pay gap data. The Regulations, which are almost a mirror image of the provisions applying to large private sector organisations, impose new gender pay gap reporting requirements on the public authorities specified in Schedule 2 and will become part of the specific duties under the public sector equality duty. Under the Regulations the specified authorities must publish the following four measures of information, based on a ‘snapshot’ of pay information taken on 31 March each year:

1. The difference between the average (mean and median) hourly rate of pay for male and female employees (excluding employees being paid at less than their usual rate because they on ‘leave’ as specified);
2. The difference between the average (mean and median) bonuses paid to male and female employees over the period of 12 months ending with the ‘snapshot’ date of 31 March.
3. The proportion of male employees, and of female employees who were paid bonuses during the period of 12 months ending with the snapshot date.
4. The proportions of male and female employees in each quartile of the pay distribution.

These Regulations use a ‘snapshot’ date of 31 March each year, and not 5 April as in the private sector, because 31 March better aligns with existing public sector reporting obligations and practices. The information must be published on the public authority’s own website and provided on a digital portal to be maintained by the Secretary of State, within 12 months of the 31 March snapshot date each year.

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