Gender pay gap

Whether we are required to report

An employer must report if it has 250 or more employees on the snapshot date, which for a private employer is 5 April each year. The figures must then be published within twelve months, both on the government’s reporting service and on the employer’s own website, where they must stay for at least three years.

TBD — Bluebell’s employee count. Until that is confirmed we cannot say whether the duty applies.

What we are not going to do is publish a figure we have not calculated. Every number here has to come from actual payroll data on an actual snapshot date, and an illustrative one would be a fabricated statistic about what people are paid.

The six figures, when there are six figures

The Regulations require exactly these, and nothing else is a substitute:

1. The mean difference in hourly pay between men and women.
2. The median difference in hourly pay.
3. The mean difference in bonus pay.
4. The median difference in bonus pay.
5. The proportion of men, and of women, who received a bonus.
6. The proportion of men and of women in each of four equal pay quartiles, from the lowest paid quarter of the workforce to the highest.

The sixth is the one that actually explains a gap. A mean or a median tells you there is a difference; the quartiles tell you whether it exists because women are concentrated in the lowest-paid quarter, which in social care is the usual answer.

A written statement confirming the figures are accurate, signed by a director, has to accompany them.

Why this sector has a gap at all

Worth saying in advance, because it shapes what any future figure will mean. Social care in England is a workforce that is roughly four-fifths women. Men are over-represented in senior and head-office roles and under-represented in frontline care. An organisation can pay every person in every role identically and still report a gap, purely from that distribution.

Which is why a number without a narrative is close to useless, and why a narrative without a number is worse. When we have the figures we will publish both, including the quartiles, and say what we intend to do about what they show.

What we intend to do regardless of the threshold

None of this depends on headcount, and none of it is a substitute for reporting. TBD — Bluebell has not yet confirmed which of these it commits to, and we will not publish a commitment on its behalf. This is what we have proposed:

• Pay rates set by role, not by negotiation, so the same job pays the same.
• Salary ranges published in adverts.
• Flexible and part-time working treated as normal rather than as a concession, at every level including senior roles — because “senior roles are full-time” is one of the mechanisms that builds a gap.
• Promotion routes open to part-time staff on the same terms.

One thing worth knowing about the threshold: “employees” here has a wider meaning than payroll headcount. It covers anyone under a contract to do work personally, so staff on our own bank would count towards the 250 even though agency workers are counted by the agency. A care provider can pass the threshold without it feeling like it.

What is coming

Gender Equality Action Plans. Legislated in the Employment Rights Act 2025 — voluntary from April 2026 and becoming mandatory for employers with 250 or more employees from spring 2027, covering the gender pay gap and support for staff going through the menopause. In a workforce that is largely women, much of it middle-aged, the second of those is not a footnote.

Ethnicity and disability pay gap reporting. The government has said it intends to make this mandatory for large employers on the same model. It is a stated intention rather than law, and we are not going to describe it as a current duty.