Equality duties: pay gap report 2026

Conclusion

This report and our analysis shows that our pay gaps within individual grades, as shown in Table 1, are low. This means that our pay system is delivering equal pay for work of equal value in relation to gender, disability and ethnicity. Across the organisation as a whole, most of our pay gap measures continue to show progress. For example, we now have a balanced representation of male and female staff in our most senior roles (i.e. SCS) which has helped reduce our mean gender pay gap from 4.14% in 2016 to 2.8% in 2025. 

The biggest improvement over the last has been the reduction of our mean disability pay gap. The mean disability pay gap fell from 9.22% to 7.7% and is significantly lower than in 2018 when is stood at 14.38%. However, progress has not been consistent across all areas. The mean ethnicity pay gap increased from 8.2% to 11.07% over the reporting period. Workforce composition and increase of declaration rates of existing staff help explain this change, but the increase shows that further work needs to be done.

Our Diversity and Inclusion Employer Strategy action plan sets out a range of measures and associated actions we are delivering in working towards closing these gaps further. We will continue to use the findings from this report to inform this action plan. In addition, to improve transparency and help us track our progress more closely, we committed last year to publish this report every year instead of every 2 years.