Women are paid slightly more than men at Avon Fire & Rescue Service (AFRS), an annual gender pay gap report has revealed. It means that, technically, the difference between male and female wages has tripled since last year – from 1p to 3p an hour in favour of women.
Avon Fire Authority (AFA) members welcomed the figures, from a snapshot date of March 31, after hearing it was probably the result of ongoing efforts to improve diversity and inclusion in the service and help female employees climb the career ladder. It comes less than four years after government inspectors found that women were treated “inappropriately” at AFRS.
AFA’s people & culture committee heard on Thursday, June 9, that the 157 female firefighters and non-uniformed staff received an average hourly rate of £15.92 compared with £15.89 for the service’s 737 men. A report to members said: “The pay gap between men and women in Avon Fire & Rescue Service has marginally increased from 0.07 per cent in 2021 to 0.18 per cent in 2022 in favour of female staff.
Read more: Avon Fire & Rescue Service cracks gender pay gap as women paid 1p an hour more than men
“It is encouraging to see that our gender pay gap has remained lower than the national average which is currently 7.9 per cent.” AFRS culture & inclusion manager Richard Stokes told the meeting at Police & Fire HQ in Portishead that the marginal increase in the salary difference was because fewer women were in the bottom quarter for employee pay than in 2021 and there were more in the middle two quarters.
He said this reflected better recruitment processes and work by the HR and the diversity, inclusion, cohesion and equality (DICE) teams, such as placing job adverts in wider places in the community and training recruiters in unconscious bias. “So there is a greater appetite for moving up the ladder in the whole female staff population, which is positive and reflects the initiatives we have been working on,” Mr Stokes said.
“We are advertising our roles into wider and more diverse areas and the response has been a lot better. We are going to continue to improve the way we encourage our female staff to go for promotion and go to areas where there is more progression.
“We are trying to keep that pay gap as low as possible going forward.” In a statement in the report, chief fire officer Simon Shilton and AFA chairwoman Cllr Brenda Massey said: “Avon Fire Authority is committed to developing a culture which puts diversity, inclusion, cohesion, and equality at the heart of all our work.
“Gender equality and ensuring people are paid fairly for the work they do is a key aspect of this. We are encouraged to see that AFRS has a gender pay gap which has marginally increased in favour of female staff.
“We do however recognise that we have much more to do to ensure our organisation is truly inclusive for women, and achieve full gender pay parity..” Gender pay gap is different to equal pay, which deals with the differences between men and women who have similar jobs.
The gender pay gap shows the difference in the average pay between all males and females in a workforce. A damning inspection by HM Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services in 2018 found women were treated “inappropriately” and rated the organisation “inadequate” at both promoting the right values and culture and ensuring fairness and promoting diversity.
It prompted wholescale changes in the service, and inspectors said they were “very pleased with the progress” in their follow-up report last December.
