The gender pay gap in English local authorities 2025/26

• Women in English local authorities were paid 2.1 per cent less than men according to mean pay and 0.8 per cent less than men according to the median pay in 2025/26. This means that the gender pay gap has fallen since the previous financial year (2024/25) when it was 3.0 per cent and 1.6 per cent respectively. This has fallen significantly when compared with 2018/19 when the mean pay gap was 6.1 per cent and the median pay gap was 4.0 per cent.
• According to median pay, in 2025/26 women were paid less than men in 143 local authorities, in 34 authorities the pay gap was zero, and in 116 authorities women were paid more than men.
• The proportion of women in highest quartile pay band has increased to 58.7 per cent, compared to 57.3 per cent in 2024/25. Also, the percentage of women in the lowest band has fallen from 59.0 per cent in 2024/25 to 57.7 per cent 2025/26.
• The median gender pay gap for English local authorities in 2025/26 (0.8 per cent) was lower than the median pay gap for the civil service in 2025 (6.4 per cent).

In the 2017/18 financial year the Government introduced a mandatory requirement for all organisations with 250 or more employees to submit certain data on their gender pay gap with a commitment to make the data available publicly. This data can be downloaded from the Government’s gender pay gap service’s web page.

The key findings in this report show that the gap between the earnings of men and women in our sector continues to reduce. This reflects work across the sector make a combination of structural and cultural changes within councils over a number of years. Local authorities have been steadily modernising pay and reward frameworks, while also actively addressing legacy pay inequalities. 

This has been supplemented by work to increase the recruitment and progression of women into senior and professional posts (like in Essex County Council), resulting in more female representation at leadership level and in high-skilled professions. By actively challenging occupational segregation through targeted workforce strategies, including apprenticeship programmes and national initiatives such as the LGA recruitment campaigns, councils have supported more diverse entry routes into local government careers. Women in local government are now increasingly represented in areas like planning, legal services, digital and technology, and finance, roles that typically sit in higher pay bands and have clearer progression pathways. 

This report summarises the 2025/26 data submitted by English local authorities at the end of the financial year. The information organisations were required to publish follows as below:

• the difference between the mean hourly rate of pay of male full-pay relevant employees and that of female full-pay relevant employees
• the difference between the median hourly rate of pay of male full-pay relevant employees and that of female full-pay relevant employees
• the proportions of male and female full-pay relevant employees in the lower, lower middle, upper middle and upper quartile pay bands.

At the time the analysis for this report was conducted, there was a total of 293 submissions to the gender pay gap service for 2025/26, this includes five councils with fewer than 250 employees which submitted data voluntarily. One of the submissions was for two local authorities therefore the analysis in this report covers 294 local authorities in total.

This is an updated version of the 2025/26 report. This is in part due to some councils submitting their gender pay gap data after the report’s original publication.

The mean and median gender pay‑gap rates are calculated across an organisation’s entire workforce, without adjusting for comparisons between individuals in similar roles or pay bands. Because local government employs over 800 distinct job types, nuances in men’s and women’s pay can be concealed when only looking overall figures. In particular, the Government Equality Office (GEO) applies equal weighting to each council regardless of size, so in smaller authorities a handful of highly paid senior staff can disproportionately influence the reported gap.

Differences in organisational structure, the mix of services provided, and the degree of outsourcing all contribute to variation in pay gaps between councils. Moreover, councils have not been weighted by workforce size in these analyses, so each authority’s contribution to the overall sector‑wide figures is equal, regardless of how many people it employs. Consequently, the summary statistics in this report reflect a simple average of submissions from a diverse set of councils, smoothing over the local differences in services delivered and operating models used.

Since women are underrepresented in the highest paid roles, their lower numbers at the top end of the pay scale skew the mean more than the median. As a result, the gender pay gap measured by average (mean) earnings typically exceeds the gap measured by the midpoint (median) of the earnings distribution. The UK Statistics Authority observes that “the median is generally considered to be the better indicator of ‘average’ earnings because the mean can be skewed by fewer individuals earning more in the upper ranges. The median therefore gives a better indication of typical pay than the mean”.

When the calculated pay gap is above zero per cent, it signifies that men earned more than women on average, a numerically ‘positive’ gap, whereas a gap below zero indicates that women’s average pay exceeded men’s, a numerically ‘negative’ gap. It is important to note that all figures in this analysis are presented exactly as submitted to the gender pay gap reporting service and have not undergone further verification or quality control.

Percentages in this report may not appear to add up to exactly 100 per cent due to rounding.

Mean gender pay gap

This is the difference between men’s mean pay and women’s mean pay expressed as a percentage of men’s mean pay.

• On average, women were paid 2.1 per cent less than men. This has fallen by 0.9 percentage points since 2024/25 and by 4.0 percentage points since 2018/19.
• Women were, on average, paid less than men in 187 authorities, for one authority the mean pay gap was zero, and in 105 women were paid more than men.
• The largest positive mean gender pay gap in an authority was 22.3 per cent (men were paid more than women).
• The largest negative mean gender pay gap was -21.0 per cent (women were paid more than men).

Median gender pay gap

This is the difference between men’s median pay and women’s median pay expressed as a percentage of men’s median pay.

• On average, women were paid 0.8 per cent less than men. This has fallen by 0.8 percentage point since 2024/25 and by 3.2 percentage points since 2018/19.
• Women were paid less than men in 143 authorities, in 34 councils the median pay gap was zero, and in 116 women were paid more than men.
• The largest positive median gender pay gap in an authority was 29.8 per cent (men were paid more than women). 
• The largest negative median gender pay gap was -28.0 per cent (women were paid more than men).
• Table 1 shows that 34 councils had a positive gender pay gap over 10 per cent, down from 45 in 2024/25. In comparison, 29 councils had a negative gender pay gap of less than -10 per cent, up from 17 in the previous financial year.

As shown in Table 2, by type of authority, the pay gap was highest in county councils (5.3 per cent) and Metropolitan districts (1.8 percent). The other council type to have a ‘positive’ gender pay gap were unitary authorities (1.3 per cent). For the first time since this analysis of council gender pay data began there are council types that have a median pay gap below zero per cent. London boroughs had a ‘negative’ pay gap of -0.1 per cent and -0.2 per cent for district councils.

Table 3 shows that councils in the South East had the highest median gender pay gap (2.5 per cent) followed by councils in the North East and East of England (1.3  and 1.2 per cent respectively). Three regions have a ‘negative’ gender pay gap. Yorkshire and the Humber and Greater London councils both a had a pay gap slightly under zero (both -0.1 per cent) while the East Midlands had a median gender pay gap of -1.2 per cent.

Proportion of men and women in each quartile pay band

The male and female composition of each pay quartile is summarised in table 4. Quartiles are the values which divide a distribution of earnings, once it has been arranged in order, into four equal parts.

• The proportion of women in the upper quartile band has increased to 58.7 per cent, an increase of 1.4 percentage points.
• The proportion of women in the upper middle quartile has fallen to 62.2 per cent since 2024/25 (62.5 per cent).
• There was a very small change in the proportion of women in the lower middle quartile band compared to the previous financial year (63.5 per cent and 63.4 per cent respectively)
• The percentage of women in the lowest band has fallen to its lowest level (57.7 per cent). This represents a 1.3 percentage point drop since 2024/25.

Comparisons with other sectors

These should be treated with a degree of caution as workforces can vary widely in their composition, and it is difficult to accurately identify employment sectors from the data.

• The mean gender pay gap across all UK organisations was 11.5 per cent, compared with 2.1 per cent in local authorities. (Employers with fewer than 250 employees are not required to submit gender pay gap data which may influence the gender pay gap for ‘all UK organisations’)
• The median gender pay gap across all UK organisations was 11.1 per cent, compared with 0.8 per cent in local authorities.
• Across all organisations, women comprised 42.0 per cent of the top pay quartile band and 54.8 per cent of the lowest pay quartile, compared with 58.7 per cent and 57.7 per cent respectively in English local authorities.
• The latest median gender pay gap reported by the UK Civil Service, in 2025, was 6.4 per cent.

Individual authority data from the gender pay gap service. The data was downloaded on the 27 April 2026.