Gender pay gap reporting: the complete UK guide
If you run an organisation, sit in HR, or simply want to understand the numbers behind the headlines, gender pay gap reporting can feel like a maze of dates, definitions, and figures that are easy to misread. It does not have to be.
This guide pulls the whole thing together in plain English. You will learn what the report actually measures, who has to do it, the six figures every qualifying employer must publish, when they are due, what happens if you miss the deadline, and why a pay gap is not the same thing as unequal pay. Everything here is based on UK government guidance, the Equality and Human Rights Commission, and Office for National Statistics data.
What is gender pay gap reporting?
Gender pay gap reporting is the legal duty for larger UK employers to measure and publish the difference in average pay between the men and women they employ. It was introduced by the Equality Act 2010 (Gender Pay Gap Information) Regulations 2017, and the first reports were published in 2018.
The key idea is simple. You take everyone’s hourly pay, line the men up on one side and the women on the other, and compare the averages. The gap is expressed as a percentage of men’s pay. A gap of 10 per cent means that, on average, women earn 10 per cent less per hour than men across the whole organisation.
It is worth being clear about what this figure does and does not tell you. A gender pay gap is a measure of workforce composition and progression, not a measure of whether two people doing the same job are paid fairly. We will come back to that distinction, because it is the single most misunderstood part of the topic.
Who has to report?
Any employer in Great Britain with 250 or more employees on a specific date each year must report their gender pay gap. That date is called the snapshot date.
The 250 threshold counts most people on a contract of employment, including full-time, part-time, and many casual workers. Partners in a partnership are generally excluded. If you sit just below 250, you are not legally required to report, although the government encourages smaller employers to do so voluntarily, and many do because candidates increasingly look for it.
The snapshot date depends on the type of organisation. Public sector employers use 31 March. Private sector and voluntary sector employers use 5 April. Whatever your headcount is on that day sets whether you report for that year.
The snapshot date and the deadline
Once you have your snapshot, you have a full year to crunch the numbers and publish them. Public sector employers must report by 30 March the following year. Private and voluntary sector employers must report by 4 April the following year.
So a private employer taking its snapshot on 5 April 2026 must publish its figures by 4 April 2027. You report in two places: you upload the figures to the government’s gender pay gap service at gender-pay-gap.service.gov.uk, and you publish them on your own website where they must stay accessible for at least three years.
That three year rule matters more than people expect. It means your gap is not a one-off disclosure, it is a public track record. Anyone, including a candidate weighing up an offer, can look back and see whether your numbers are moving in the right direction.
The six figures you must publish
A gender pay gap report is not a single number. Every qualifying employer has to publish six specific figures. Here is what each one means.
The mean gender pay gap in hourly pay is the difference between the average hourly pay of all men and all women. The median gender pay gap in hourly pay takes the middle-ranked man and the middle-ranked woman and compares them. The median is usually the headline figure because it is less distorted by a handful of very high earners.
The mean bonus gap and the median bonus gap apply the same logic to bonus pay over the year. The proportion of men and women receiving a bonus shows how widely bonuses are shared across each group. Finally, the proportion of men and women in each pay quartile splits your workforce into four equal pay bands, from lowest paid to highest, and shows the gender balance in each band.
That last figure, the quartiles, is often the most revealing. A large median gap usually traces back to too few women in the top quartile rather than to women being underpaid for identical roles. The quartile breakdown shows you exactly where the imbalance sits.
Pay gap versus equal pay: the crucial difference
This is where most confusion lives, so it deserves its own section. A gender pay gap and unequal pay are two different things, and conflating them leads to bad conclusions.
Equal pay is the legal right, set out in the Equality Act 2010 and dating back to the Equal Pay Act 1970, for men and women to be paid the same for the same work, or work of equal value. Paying a woman less than a man for the same job is unlawful. Full stop.
A gender pay gap, by contrast, can exist even when every single person is paid fairly for their role. If a company employs mostly women in junior roles and mostly men in senior ones, it will show a pay gap even if pay within each role is identical. The gap reflects who holds which jobs, not whether the law on equal pay is being broken.
Understanding this helps you read any employer’s figures honestly. A gap does not automatically mean discrimination in pay. It does, however, raise a fair question about progression, recruitment, and why the senior roles skew one way. For more on how to interpret these numbers when you are job hunting, see our guide on how to read a company’s gender pay gap figures.
What the national numbers look like
To put any individual employer in context, it helps to know the national picture. According to the Office for National Statistics, the median gender pay gap among full-time employees was 6.9 per cent in April 2025, down slightly from 7.1 per cent the year before. Across all employees, full-time and part-time together, the median gap was 12.8 per cent in 2025, down from 13.1 per cent in 2024. These are provisional ONS estimates from the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings.
The gap has narrowed over the long term, but slowly, and it widens sharply with age, opening up most after many women have children. So when you look at a single employer’s number, the national figures give you a yardstick. A median gap well below 12.8 per cent is doing better than the national all-employee average, though the quartile data will tell you far more than the headline alone.
What happens if you do not report?
Reporting is a legal duty, and the Equality and Human Rights Commission is responsible for enforcement. An employer that fails to report, or publishes inaccurate figures, can face enforcement action from the EHRC, which can include an investigation and, ultimately, a court order. Beyond the legal risk, there is a reputational one. A missing report is published as missing on the government service, visible to anyone who looks.
For most employers the bigger pressure is not enforcement, it is talent. Candidates, especially women weighing up where to build a career, increasingly treat pay gap data as a signal of whether an employer is serious about fairness. A blank where a number should be tells its own story.
How reporting connects to wider pay transparency
Pay gap reporting is one part of a broader move towards pay transparency across Europe and the UK. The EU Pay Transparency Directive, which member states are transposing into national law through 2026, goes considerably further than UK reporting, covering pay ranges in job adverts and the right of employees to ask for pay information. UK employers with operations or staff in the EU will feel its effect even though the UK is not bound by it directly. We cover this in detail in our explainer on what the 2026 EU pay transparency directive means for UK employers.
The direction of travel is clear. Pay is becoming less of a secret, and the organisations that get ahead of that, by reporting well, explaining their numbers, and acting on what they show, tend to be the ones women want to work for.
Turning a report into action
The figures are only useful if they change something. The most effective employers treat the annual report as a diagnosis rather than a grade. They look at the quartile data to see where women drop out of the progression pipeline, examine how they recruit and promote, and check whether flexible working and returner support are real or just words. If you are hiring with fairness in mind, our guide to diversity and inclusion jobs in the UK is a useful companion on building teams that reflect that intent.
A shrinking gap, backed by a credible explanation of what you changed, is one of the strongest recruitment signals you can send. It says you measured an uncomfortable truth and did something about it.
Frequently asked questions
Do employers under 250 staff have to report their gender pay gap?
No. Only employers with 250 or more employees on the snapshot date are legally required to report. Smaller employers can report voluntarily, and many choose to because candidates value the transparency.
What is the difference between the gender pay gap and equal pay?
The gender pay gap is the difference in average pay between all men and all women across an organisation, regardless of role. Equal pay is the legal requirement to pay men and women the same for the same work. An employer can have a pay gap while still meeting its equal pay duties, usually because of how roles are distributed by seniority.
When is the gender pay gap reporting deadline?
Public sector employers must report by 30 March, using a 31 March snapshot from the previous year. Private and voluntary sector employers must report by 4 April, using a 5 April snapshot from the previous year. Figures must also stay on the employer’s website for at least three years.
Where can I see a company’s gender pay gap figures?
All reported figures are published on the government’s gender pay gap service at gender-pay-gap.service.gov.uk, and on each employer’s own website. You can search by employer and compare figures across reporting years.
At RecruitHer, we believe pay data should help women choose where to build a career, not sit buried in a spreadsheet. If you are hiring women, get early access to RecruitHer for stronger signals and less inbox noise.
This is educational information, not legal advice. Reporting duties, deadlines, and your specific obligations can depend on your organisation type, headcount, and sector. For guidance on your situation, see the gov.uk gender pay gap reporting guidance and the Equality and Human Rights Commission, or speak to a qualified adviser.
Last reviewed: June 2026