Gender Pay Gap Report Snapshot as of March 2024

Gender Pay Gap Report as at snapshot date 31^st March 2024

Introduction

This report covers North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service’s (NYFRS) obligations under the Equality Act 2010 (Gender Pay Information Regulations 2017) to publish an annual Gender Pay Gap report.  The snapshot date is 31/03/2024.

Gender pay reporting is a different concept to an equal pay audit. It is not a review of equal pay for equal work but, instead, a comparison of hourly rates of pay and bonuses staff may receive by gender and identifies if there are any imbalances in pay.  The Service can have a gender pay gap without breaching equal pay requirements.

The analysis is conducted in line with gender pay gap regulations which require disclosure of data for all UK legal entities employing more than 250 employees.  The report is published both internally and externally.

As part of the report, the Service is required to provide an explanation of the cause of any pay gap.  The information is used to look at any gender imbalance across the workforce and the balance of men and women across pay graded roles.

The Service is required to publish the following information:

• Mean gender pay gap
• Median gender pay gap
• Mean bonus gender pay gap
• Median bonus gender pay gap
• Proportion of men and women receiving a bonus payment
• Proportion of men and women in each pay quartile

Gender Pay Gap

A gender pay gap shows the difference between the average hourly earnings of men and women.  This is expressed as a percentage of men’s earnings e.g. a gender pay gap of 18% indicates women earn 18% less on average than men

Workforce Information

A wide definition of who counts as an employee is used.  For North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service this includes all employees under “Green Book” (Support Staff) and “Grey Book” (Operational and Control Staff) terms and conditions.

As of 31 March 2024 the total headcount contained within the workforce definition as above was 735, of which 15.8% were women.

Note

Eight men and one woman have been removed from the headcount figures as they did not fulfil the required reporting criteria due to being on a career break.  Nine employees, five men and four women were also removed from the headcount due to reduced pay scenarios.

A further five people, three men and two women, are excluded from the above.  All of whom are volunteer firefighters or staff.

Based on nationally agreed terms and conditions, North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service pay the same salary for equivalent roles, however due to a predominantly male operational workforce, this does not translate when looking at the mean and median hourly pay rates.

The Gender Pay Regulations state that the definition of “ordinary pay” for reporting purposes does not include “remuneration provided otherwise than in money”.

Guidance published by Acas and the Government Equalities Office makes clear that this means that the value of benefits provided under a salary-sacrifice arrangement does not count as “ordinary pay” and it states that, when making the calculation, “the employer should use the employee’s gross pay after any reduction for a salary-sacrifice scheme”.

NYFRS offers a range of salary sacrifice schemes providing valuable benefits for car lease, childcare vouchers, cycle to work and home technology.   There are 13 women and 34 men who have a salary sacrifice arrangement as at the snapshot date.  By requiring to report pay after a reduction for a salary-sacrifice scheme, this potentially distorts the Service’s reported pay gap.

Mean and Median Pay Gap

The mean gender pay gap within North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service (NYFRS) as at 31^st March 2024 is 8.84%.  This means the gap has reduced since last year by 1.72%.

The median gender pay gap within North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service (NYFRS) as at 31^st March 2024 is 11.65%, illustrating a marginal increase of 0.42%.

According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), the median hourly pay for full-time employees was 7% less for women than for men in April 2024, while median hourly pay for part-time employees was 3% higher for women than for men.

Among all employees, the gender pay gap decreased to 13.1% in April 2024, from 14.2% in April 2023.

The gender pay gap is higher for all employees than it is for full-time employees or part-time employees. This is because women fill more part time roles which, in comparison with full-time jobs, have lower hourly median pay. ASHE data shows that in 2023 approximately 85% of male employees were in full-time jobs, compared with approximately 61% of female employees.

Strategic Leadership Team

As at 31^st March 2024, the Strategic Leadership Team is made up of six employees. There are additional representatives, including Trusted Advisors, that sit on the Service’s Strategic Leadership Board.  These are employees of the Office of the North Yorkshire Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner, the Office of the Cleveland Police and Crime Commissioner and North Yorkshire Police (roles within enableNY collaboration).

For the purposes of this report, roles within the analysis include only employees of North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service, namely the Chief Fire Officer, Deputy Chief Fire Officer and three Area Managers, all men.

In 2023, the Service appointed a woman to a new role of Director of Service Design & Delivery, however their specific circumstances mean they do not fall under the reporting regulations for March 2024.  Therefore, there is no gender pay gap reportable for SLT as at 31^st March 2024.

Salary Quartile Bands

Women are now represented at all employee types and at all levels across the Service, including within Senior Management teams.

The high quartile in the above chart illustrates the highest earners in NYFRS and includes 3.4% of all women employed relevant to hourly pay calculations, compared to 21.63% of the male workforce.

The highest numbers of women are in the low quartile, a significant proportion of whom are within the Support Staff group.  This quartile also features women who are in the development phase of their operational career.

NYFRS has a high proportion of staff from the On-Call Duty System. This staff group respond to their local station via an alerter system and usually have a primary employment as well as a Retained Duty System (on-call) contract. This staff group equates to 43.13% of the total workforce and are placed largely in the mid and lower quartiles.  Women make up 7.25% of the Service’s on-call firefighters.

The Service has rolling recruitment for on-call staff employed under the On-call Duty System terms and conditions however, as this staff group is constrained by locality to the fire station, it continues to create recruitment challenges.  The Service is continuing the review of the On-call duty system, ‘On-Call Futures’, with the overarching aim of strengthening its ability to provide an excellent On-call Firefighter duty system, through improved talent attraction, retention, progression, ED&I, culture and digitalisation.

The review demonstrates the Service’s commitment to increase the resilience of the On-call duty system and improve this for the benefit of both the staff and the communities of York and North Yorkshire.

Bonus Payments

NYFRS do not pay bonuses to any of our staff, as such, however eligible operational colleagues are entitled to receive an annual payment for completion of Continual Professional Development (CPD).  For the purposes of this report, CPD payments are captured within the bonus payment report.

CPD payments are designed to recognise and reward experienced employees who demonstrate continual professional development over and above that required at competent level by the national occupational standards.  Successful applicants are awarded a set annual figure which is determined each year by the National Joint Council for Local Authority Fire and Rescue Services.  The Service has used its available discretion to vary this amount.

The bonus pay gap is -11.69% at the mean and 0% at the median.  The reverse mean bonus pay gap is driven by several factors:

• Whilst there are only 11 women who received CPD payments during the 12 month period ending with the snapshot date, all were either wholetime or control staff.
• In contrast, 153 men received CPD payments during the 12 month period ending with the snapshot date. Of these, 21 were on-call firefighters, who receive one quarter of the set annual CPD payment applicable to wholetime firefighting staff.  As such, this contributes to a reverse mean bonus gap.
• Annual CPD payments are a set amount and, for both men and women, the median is the same, thereby calculating a 0% median bonus pay gap.

Ethnicity Pay Gap

Reporting the pay gaps that may impact people from minority ethnic backgrounds and other protected characteristics e.g. disability and sexuality, is not yet a legislative requirement in the UK.  As a Service, however, we have started reviewing our staff demographics, including ethnicity data and the following table outlines our first published ethnicity pay gap data, also with a snapshot date of 31^st March 2024.

The median hourly rate is calculated by ranking all employees from the highest paid to the lowest paid, and taking the hourly wage of the person in the middle; so the median gender pay gap is the difference between ethnic minority staff groups median hourly wage (the middle paid ethnic minority staff member) and the white/white other staff groups median hourly wage (the middle paid white/white other staff member).

Conclusion

North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service’s mean gender pay gap is 8.84% which is a reduction of 1.725 than the previous year.

Whilst the Service continues to work on increasing the diversity within its workforce, the proportion of men to women employees remains significantly higher, resulting in a pay gap.

The reasons for the gap are well known to the Service and the Fire and Rescue Service Sector generally. The Service values and encourages diversity in all roles and at every level and action is underway to encourage the recruitment and retention of female members of staff, particularly in operational roles where there is currently high underrepresentation.

Due to the geographical area of the Service, on-call employees represent the highest proportion of the overall workforce.  Recruitment challenges continue to exist for this staff group as a whole and the number of female applicants is relatively low.  It is important to note that the highest role which can be attained in the on-call staff group is Watch Manager and, with a high turnover, many on-call staff are relatively new to the Service and in the development pay band.  Similarly, albeit with a more even split of men and women occupying roles in Control, there is only one Station Manager role in the Service’s establishment.

A lower number of staff occupy non-operational roles, as you would expect, but it is the staff group which has the highest proportion of female employees.  Pay for such roles is typically less than for operational roles and this has been further compounded in 2023 and 2024 by significantly lower annual pay settlements.

The collaboration with North Yorkshire Police for corporate services, enableNY, has clear pathways for progression but, due to the majority of staff within these roles being employed by North Yorkshire Police, this continues to impact opportunity and the pay gap.  Only one of the five Heads of enableNY departments, at the snapshot date of this report, is employed by the Service and the Head of enableNY is also a North Yorkshire Police employed role.  In May 2024, however, the Business Design and Assurance department reverted to a sovereign model transitioning to a Directorate for Service Design and Delivery.  The appointment of the Director, who is a member of SLT, and the Head of Department for Delivery, Risk and Assurance are both women, however due to their individual circumstances and appointment timeline, they are not able to be included in the analysis for the snapshot date of 31^st March 2024.

Commitment to Closing the Gap

During 2023 and 2024, the Service has undertaken a vast amount of recruitment to stabilise the workforce after several years of operating with significantly high numbers of staff in temporary and fixed term roles.  Most recently, high numbers of on-call staff have undertaken temporary roles as wholetime firefighters and supervisory managers although this has reduced significantly over the last 18 months following promotion boards at every role from Area Manager to Crew Manager in 2023 and again for Group Manager to Crew Manger in 2024.  Wholetime Firefighter recruitment was undertaken in 2023/4 and the Service is mid way through the selection process for a further course to start in September 2025.

Through a two year phase of sustained recruitment, women have subsequently been appointed to both middle manager and supervisory manager roles and 20% of successful candidates from the 2023/4 wholetime Firefighter recruitment process were women.  These are a blend of new to Service and existing on-call staff.  Due to appointment dates for the new wholetime firefighters falling in April 2024, they have not been included in the analysis for this report.  Limited wholetime firefighter recruitment over the last decade has reduced opportunities to diversify the workforce in respect of gender so it has been positive to see a higher proportion of women entering the Service.

The Strategic Leadership Team and Service’s EDI Tactical Group have conducted a review of the current Equality Strategy, and a new strategy is set to launch in April 2025. This will allow us to integrate the outcomes of the Framework for Change project, developed in collaboration with the University of Huddersfield, into the new strategy.

In consultation with staff networks, it is proposed that the Strategic EDI Board and the Tactical EDI will merge.  It is the intention that this new, consolidated board will provide enhanced oversight of the strategy’s design and implementation. It will also create more opportunities for key stakeholders, representative bodies, and staff networks to contribute, ensuring the strategy reflects the change driven by staff.

A revised delivery plan will be launched alongside the new strategy in April 2025. This plan will detail internal and external actions the Service will take to improve the experience and working environment of North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service staff and the communities we serve.

The Service recognises and values the benefits of diversity and inclusion and commits to equality of opportunity and equal access in recruitment, selection and progression for all staff and encourage individuals from under-represented groups and communities to engage with our recruitment and progression opportunities. The Service strives to achieve a workforce that is representative of its communities and aims to realise this through employer branding, various positive action initiatives including ‘have a go days’, and close work with our customer engagement teams.

Open days and awareness days are held Service-wide, to establish and build relationships with our local communities and encourage underrepresented groups to consider a role with North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service. This is further supported by our participation in community events including Pride and those linked to International Women’s Day and International Men’s Day.

Staff networks are involved in both the design and delivery of positive action initiatives alongside the Talent team and District Watch Managers.  The Service’s Gender staff network lead, along with our five other staff networks, have representation on the Service’s EDI Tactical group to actively contribute to generating action to improve inclusion and matters affecting staff and monitoring progress of the relevant activity.  The Gender network lead is a member of the wholetime firefighter recruitment working group and, with the support of the respective network leads, the Service actively promotes key dates and activity of the diversity calendar both internally and externally in a variety of ways including the use of several social media platforms.

Ongoing development of our recruitment processes has seen a continued commitment to move away from competency-based processes to a strengths-based approach which looks more at abilities, interests and potential.  Diverse assessment and interview panels, incorporating gender balance, ensure we are making transparent decisions, based on merit not bias.

Detailed recruitment packs are advertised on a range of external platforms including Asian Fire Service Association (AFSA) and Women in the Fire Service (WFS).  We have also supported staff attendance at the AFSA conference and WFS events.

The development of an internal Coaching and Mentoring Academy in partnership with the British School of Coaching, in 2023, has created pools of mentors and coaches to support staff who, as relevant examples, maybe considering taking the next step in their career or trying to navigate balancing work and home life and struggling to find time to develop themselves.  Five pilot schemes have been offered in the Academy’s first eighteen months and have included two programmes for under-represented groups, one specific to women.  The newly trained mentors and coaches are continuing to undertake CPD and supervision to expand their skill set and to provide effective support moving forward. The Service, in conjunction with partner organisations, are now looking at focus areas for future coaching and mentoring support.

The Service is committed to developing its people and create a pro-inclusion culture through values based leadership.  To accelerate the Service’s development of cultural change, it has, in 2023, entered a collaboration with Huddersfield University to develop a framework for change and improvement. Recognising that culture is everyone’s responsibility, the partnership with the University is working with a selected group of staff from across all areas of the workforce who will have the opportunity to influence the Service’s cultural and ethical future.

The Service is continuously reviewing its policies and undertakes Equality Impact Assessments accordingly.  Family friendly policies can help act as a driver of talent attraction, engagement and retention and many go beyond the statutory minimum requirements by law.  In 2024, an updated maternity policy was introduced further enhancing pay and time off associated with maternity absence.

The Service has introduced twelve Diversity Champions, including five women, to help create a more inclusive working environment and to improve communications across our Service including further awareness of the Core code of ethics which is at the heart of everything we do.  By being active in the community, they will be able to influence where focussed activity is required.

The Service continues to make good progress with its programme of work to improve the facilities within its estate.  The estate is aging with each of its premises unique in nature which can present its challenges. However, by working with individual crews and support staff, solutions to make better use of their workspaces have been identified.  The introduction of Gender neutral pods at a number of locations is a positive example of how the Service is improving the privacy and dignity for all those using our facilities and creating a more comfortable and suitable environment for women and its future diverse workforce.  The programme of work is ongoing and includes a maintenance plan.

We recognise that North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service has a long way to go to achieve better representation of gender at all levels of the organisation and recognise it will take some time for the pay gap to be removed altogether.

We recognise that there are higher numbers of men than women retiring from the organisation and expect to see a further reduction of the gap in our next report, which will then include the salaries of our new female firefighters, appointed in 2024, and those of the women from our new Service Design and Delivery directorate, including some new employees who transferred from North Yorkshire Police in May 2024.

Declaration

I confirm that the information and data provided is accurate and in line with mandatory requirements.

Jonathan Dyson

Chief Fire Officer for North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service