We are very pleased to welcome Tom Farman back to the Jordans Corporate Law blog to discuss developments in compulsory gender pay reporting as a follow up to his previous post on the subject. Tom is a qualified solicitor and partner with Gummer & Co Legal Consulting where he advises on a variety of strategic HR and employment law issues.

By Tom Farman

The Government has recently published draft regulations on compulsory gender pay reporting. The short consultation period came to an end on 11 March with the regulations expected to come into force in October this year.

The main points are:

• Publication will need to be annually every April;
• The mean and median gender pay gaps, as a snapshot on 30 April 2017 and each following year, will need to be published;
• Employers will need to calculate a gross hourly rate for each relevant employee;
• The gender difference between mean bonus payments will need to be published;
• The proportion of men and women who receive bonus payments will need to be published;
• The number of men and women in each quartile of the pay distribution will need to be published;
• Results will need to be published on the employers' UK website;
• Employers will be required to retain this information online for three years to show progress being made.

It is not anticipated that the draft regulations will change significantly although the government has recently confirmed its intention for the reporting requirements to apply to "employees" in the wider sense. This widens the scope of the draft regulations as originally understood by many, and means that, for example, LLP members and some self-employed contractors are likely within the ambit of the reporting requirements.

The data will need to be published for the first time no later than 30 April 2018. However, given that the bonus calculations apply to a 12-month period preceding 30 April 2017, payments from next month may fall within the reporting period.

This re-enforces the need for employers to start taking urgent action to review their data and consider what further steps they should be taking to address any issues identified. Many employers are choosing to engage external lawyers to assist with this process so that the reporting is subject to legal privilege and not subject to disclosure should any claim be made in the future.