Pay gap break comes to an end as reporting deadline looms

Companies with 250 or more employees are being reminded that that they are required to report their gender pay gap by Tuesday 5 October.

Laws requiring employers with 250 or more employees to publish data on their gender pay gaps came into effect in April 2017. To help businesses as they coped with the impact of the pandemic, enforcement for 2019/20 was suspended and enforcement for 2020/21 was pushed back from April to October.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), the body responsible for enforcing the requirements, will begin enforcement action against employers failing to report by the extended deadline.

Kishwer Falkner, Chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, said:

Businesses are facing challenging times but it is still important that they comply with the law and report their gender pay gap. We have delayed our legal enforcement to strike a balance between supporting businesses and enforcing their obligations.

Employers that don't report their gender pay gap risk letting down the women who work for them and damaging their reputation.

Publishing and monitoring pay gaps helps employers and their employees to see if there is a pay gap and explore how to address it.

Notes to editors

The gender pay gap is the difference in average pay between the men and women in a workforce. It is different from equal pay, which means an employer must pay men and women the same for equal or similar work.

Each year, employers with 250 or more employees need to publish six calculations, by law, showing: mean gender pay gap in hourly pay, median gender pay gap in hourly pay, mean bonus gender pay gap, median bonus gender pay gap, proportion of males and females receiving a bonus payment, and proportion of males and females in each pay quartile.

The ONS said the national gender pay gap for full-time employees fell from 9.0% in April 2019 to 7.4% in April 2020.

Employers must publish their gaps on their own company websites and through the government gender pay gap reporting website on or before the deadline each year.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission has the power to take enforcement action against any employer who does not comply with the reporting duties. Following an investigation to confirm whether an employer is breaching the regulations, the Equality and Human Rights Commission can seek a court order requiring the employer to remedy the breach. Failing to comply with the court order is an offence, punishable with an unlimited fine if convicted. Details of any employer investigated is made publicly available on our enforcement action page.