Gender pay gap at South Yorkshire Fire and Rescue lower than national average

At a South Yorkshire Fire Authority meeting, members of the board heard about a report into the gender pay gap at SYFR that said the force “remain, certainly on the operational side, still a male-dominated organisation” which has an impact on the gender pay balance.

However, as members were told, the force was below the national gender pay gap (which is 14.2 per cent). SYFR, according to the report published ahead of the meeting, has a 3.9 per cent “mean average” pay gap.

Translating this to numbers, this means a man earns £17.66 an hour while a woman at the same job does receive £16.97. This is a 69p difference between the two.

In terms of median hourly rate, the difference is 97p an hour.

The report said: “The pay gaps in both calculations favour males.

“This may be explained by the disproportionate number of male staff to female in higher paid operational (“Gold” and “Grey Book” roles), and the large number of males in senior management positions and thus within the mid and high bands of pay (see overleaf).

“Also when looking at females alone a disproportionate amount of females are in lower paid roles.”

The document also added that while SYFR’s mean (average) hourly gender pay gap has decreased from 4.59 per cent last year to 3.9 per cent this year, the median pay gap, however, has increased from 4.91 per cent to 5.7 per cent.