The Government has published draft Regulations introducing gender pay gap reporting.

Under the new regime, private and third sector employers with at least 250 employees will be required to publish an annual report showing the overall gender pay gap in their organisation, calculated using both mean and median hourly pay over a specific pay period (normally a week or a month, depending on the employer’s usual pay cycle). The report will need to include information on the gender balance in each of four salary quartiles, based on the employer’s overall pay range. This will show how the gender pay gap differs across the organisation.

Affected employers will also be required to publish their “gender bonus gap”, that is the difference between the average bonus payments paid to men and women over a 12-month period, and the proportion of male and female employees that received a bonus.

If the Regulations come into force on 1 October 2016, as expected, employers will be required to have a snapshot of gender pay gap data prepared for 30 April 2017 and will need to publish the first gender pay reports within 12 months of that date.

The present draft of the Regulations, controversially, does not contain any financial or other civil or criminal penalties for failure to comply.