Decisions

The Committee was asked to consider two reports.  The Gender Pay Gap Report 2025 and the Ethnicity Pay Gap Report 2025 with a view to forwarding the reports to Council.

The Interim Strategic Pay and Reward Manager summarised both reports.  Members raised issues and the officers responded as follows:

·         It was difficult to put a value on the cost in monetary terms of closing the gender pay gap as it works on the mean and median figures at a point in time, but the smaller the gap, the lower the cost.

·         Similarly, it was difficult to put a timeline on when the gap could be closed to zero but the gap was closing with officers exploring further improvement works and examining the reasons why there were fewer females in higher positions in order to develop attraction techniques to tackle that.

·         Benchmarking the Ethnicity Pay Gap Report may be a challenge as this is not yet a statutory obligation for employers and so there will be few similar published reports to compare to but officers agreed to work with South East Employers on this.

Members also noted:

·         The figures were probably affected by the fact that work contracted out was not included.

·         Those in caring jobs sometimes did not want to be promoted but wanted to continue using their caring skills.  Those positions should be better paid

·         There were different ways of categorising groups of people.  The report compared White ethnic backgrounds and Black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds.  Reports from other sources might categorise by British and non-British.

·         More explanation of the figures would benefit understanding for members of the public.

The Chair moved the recommendations and they were agreed.

RESOLVED to:

a) Note the 2025 gender equality and ethnicity pay gap reports.

The Committee is RECOMMENDED to RECOMMEND COUNCIL to:

b) Note Oxfordshire County Council’s (the Council) statutory Gender Pay Gap report of 2025 and approve it for onward submission to the Gender Pay Gap Service by 31 March 2026.

c) Note the Council’s voluntary Ethnicity Pay Gap report of 2025.

Council noted that the Chair of the Council decided that the Council meeting originally scheduled for 7 July 2026 will be brought forwards to 30 June 2026 in accordance with Council Procedure Rule 2.1. This is in order to avoid a clash with the Local Government Association Annual Conference.

The motion was carried with 61 votes in favour, no abstentions and none against.

The motion was carried with 49 votes in favour, 2 abstentions and 10 against.

The motion was carried with 61 votes in favour, no abstentions and none against.

Recommendation approved unanimously.

Recommendations 1 and 5 were approved with 44 votes in favour, 17 abstentions and no votes against.

Recommendation approved with 44 votes in favour, 7 abstentions and no votes against.

Recommendations approved with 61 votes in favour, one abstention and no votes against.

Recommendations approved with 60 votes in favour, 2 abstentions and no votes against.

Approved.

The decision enables the signing of a grant agreement to provide the above funding.

To provide £150,000 grant funding (£50,000 per annum in each of 2025/26, 2026/27 and 2027/28) for Oxfordshire Youth’s Business Guardians programme.

This decision is not exempt.