Lewisham Council. Pic: Lewisham Council.

Women working for Lewisham Council are defying the wage gap and are being paid nearly 11% more than men, according to the authority’s statement on equal pay.

The Pay Policy Statement outlines the Councils view that every employee should be paid on an equal and fair basis. The statement is required to be published under the 2017 Gender Pay Gap Reporting legislation.

Average hourly rates for employees were found to be 10.9% higher and the boundary between the top paid and lowest paid jobs had increased by 15.8% for women.

Although a majority proportion of lower level jobs are occupied by men, 68% of both middle and upper tier roles at the council are occupied by women. This does not include chief officer positions.

Lewisham Pay Policy Statement. Source: Lewisham Council.

The report from the council said: “The Council seeks to be a fair and good employer of choice and in doing so deliver effective services in the borough.”

“Whatever their role, the Council seeks to ensure that every member of staff is valued and remunerated on a fair and just basis – taking into account the burden of personal responsibility their job requires.”

Lewisham Council’s pay policy breaks the trend laid out in the Office for National Statistics (ONS) annual earnings survey which was released in October 2017. The ONS stated that nationally men receive 9.1% more than women, this is a down from 17.4% when the survey began in 1997.

Roger Smith, of the ONS Earnings Branch, said: “The gender pay gap fell to 9.1% among full-timers, the lowest since the present survey began.”

With a majority of females securing positions in the upper and middle tier sectors, the Council are supporting women in higher paid roles, research from the Living Wage Foundation shows that “nearly a 1/3 of all women working in the UK don’t earn a wage they can live on.”