Corporate Responsibility

Gender Pay Gap 2024

Last Updated: 23 Apr 2024

About Us 

Established in 2015, Birmingham Community Leisure Trust (BCLT) employs approximately 700 people and was created in partnership with Birmingham City Council to revitalise the city’s sport and leisure centres and offer value for money leisure services. Our vision is the creation and maintenance of a first-class range of health leisure and recreational activities, and facilities that serve all parts of Birmingham’s communities.

Since 2018/19, taken over the reporting of the gender pay gap figures from the Serco Group Plc, whose subsidiary Serco Leisure Operating Ltd acts as Managing Agents to BCLT.

Our Gender Pay Gap

BCLT falls under the requirement for organisations with 250 employees or more to report on their gender pay gap with figures compiled based on a reporting snapshot as of 5^th April 2023.

The gender pay gap is the difference between the average pay of men and women, expressed as a percentage (a positive figure indicates a gender pay gap in favour of men, in comparison to a negative pay gap which demonstrates a gap in favour of women). The gender pay gap is different from equal pay, which is defined as being paid the same regardless of gender for the same jobs, or similar work of equal value.

This report includes five years of gender pay gap reporting data, including the following as set out in the reporting requirements:

• Mean gender pay gap
• Median gender pay gap
• The proportion of men and women in each quartile pay band
• Mean bonus pay gap
• Median bonus pay gap
• The proportion of men and women receiving bonuses

Explaining our Pay Gaps

There are often many factors which contribute to, or cause, a gender pay gap, and these vary for different employers and for different industries.

Following a small decrease in the male/female proportions in 2023 (56.1% compared with 57.6% in 2022), we continue to have more women in employment than men at BCLT. 

This reporting year, both our mean and median pay gaps remain negative, demonstrating that within BCLT, women (on average) continue to earn more than males when speaking about hourly pay. This could be supported by the fact that within the Lower Quartile (the lowest paid employee group), the majority of the population remain as males, meaning the lower paid jobs within BCLT are held by more males, therefore reducing the overall median. This is the same as the previous reporting year, hence the median and mean remaining in favour of females.  Compared to last year, we can also see there has been a slight reduction in the movement of females in the Upper Quartile (57.6% compared to 60.4% in the previous reporting year). We continue to commit to attracting and retaining females in higher paid roles and we will continue to support equality, inclusion and diversity within BCLT.

Our Mean Bonus Pay Gap is still swayed in favour of males (11.22%), compared to the previous year (16.10%), however we are working hard to improve this gap. Whilst a larger proportion of females receive a bonus, the highest bonus payments are predominately received by males, hence the mean bonus pay gap is more in favour of males.

As in previous years, our results exceed wider industry trends with the Office for National Statistics stating that within the Leisure industry women earn 6.5% less than men. Our pay gap in favour of women further supports our commitment to pay fairly and equitably irrelevant of gender, and our continuing investment in attracting and retaining females in higher paid positions.

Our Continued Action Plan - Listening carefully, taking action, embedding change

Every year, with guidance and support from our links with Serco community networks, we pursue our ambition to build and maintain positive, welcoming and safe workplaces where everybody feels comfortable and secure, and where they are treated fairly and with dignity and respect.

And, with specific focus on the ways in which we have been working to drive gender equity across our business in the last year, other areas of progress which BCLT have access to include:

• Inspire – our colleague network supporting women in the business. Inspire’s UK&E’s Gender ERG, works to empower and enable our women to thrive so that we can achieve gender equity across our business.
• The newly launched a new 'Parents and Carers’ Network to help ensure that care responsibilities are understood, supported and more easily managed across the business.

Whilst our gender pay gap is already in favour of females, BCLT commit to continued equality, diversity and inclusion and we are committed to the following actions:

• Succession planning for senior roles to include both male and female internal candidates.
• MyHR catch ups with high performing female employees to discuss future opportunities in senior roles.
• Reviewing pay at least annually, to ensure it is applied fairly and equitably and that no gender, or other bias, is occurring. This will also be reviewed at point of recruitment for any senior positions.
• Reviewing recruitment processes to try and attract more candidates into roles that are under-represented, including running training courses for existing staff to up-skill them.

We will continue to monitor progress on a regular basis and report on this in future gender pay gap statements. These actions are part of, and integrated with, our broader approach to equality and diversity in the workplace.

We will continue to invest in and develop our workforce and to implement our action plans to improve diversity and inclusion. We will continue to monitor, and capture gender pay gap data to ensure that we maintain our efforts to create a working environment to attract, retain and enable all talent to flourish.

I can confirm that the data reported and the information in this statement is accurate.

Brian Taylor

Chair

Birmingham Community Leisure Trust

March 2024