Housebuilders and housing associations report mixed gender gap progress

The UK’s leading housebuilders and housing associations reported mixed progress towards narrowing the pay gap between male and female employees in 2018.

Of the leading listed housebuilders only Taylor Wimpey reported a zero median pay gap, while at the other end of the scale some firms paid men significantly more than women (see table below).

While the UK average gender pay gap sits at 10%, meaning women earn on average 90p for every £1 that men earn, leading UK housebuilders recorded an average pay gap of 14.4%.

Companies with more than 250 staff are required to publish a series of figures each year, with the latest numbers indicating a snapshot of the firm’s demographics and pay on 5 April 2018. 

Countryside Properties reduced its pay gap from nearly 40% to 33%, Crest Nicholson’s pay differential slimmed down from 33% to 25%, and Bovis shaved 0.7 percentage points off its 2017 figure, posting a 27.7% gap in 2018.

Telford Homes also cut its pay gap by more than three percentage points to 16%.

But some firms saw the gap increase, notably Bellway, up from 19.7% to 24.8%, and Barratt Developments, whose gap rose from 0.9% in 2017 to 3.5% in 2018.

Bovis acknowledged it had an employee base which was “predominantly male, and this is more pronounced at senior levels, with higher salaries, within the business”. But it said it was “encouraged” to have seen an improvement across most measuring points in the past year.

The firm was “continuing to raise awareness across the business of the importance of diversity and inclusion, which includes gender equality”.

The percentage of highly paid women also fluctuated across the housebuilding sector. At Keepmoat Homes only 18% of women were in the top 25% of earners at the company in 2018, down from 28% in 2017. 

Keepmoat’s gender pay gap report noted that it was “no secret” that the housing industry suffered from gender imbalance, particularly at senior levels. “We want to recruit the best people and are keen to support initiatives to attract more women into the industry”, it said.

The group was “working hard to break down the perceptions which have made the industrry less attractive to women”, it added.

In its gender pay gap report Redrow said its challenge was “to ensure more women progress through to senior roles in the business”. Currently Barbara Richmond, the housebuilder’s finance chief, is the only executive member of its board.

Redrow, along with Avant Homes, was the only leading housebuilder to have a median pay gap which favoured female employees.

Barratt Developments said it was tackling its gender pay gap through a number of initiatives, including increasing the number of female applicants for positions within the company, “particularly in leadership roles”.

Among leading housing associations the average median pay gap was just shy of 10%. Across individual organisations the gap tended to be smaller than for housebuilders, and in the case of Peabody there was no gap at all (see table below).

There were exceptions, notably Southern Housing, whose gap rose seven percentage points in 2018 to 22.4%, A2 Dominion, which reported a near-21% gap in 2018, virtually level with 2017, and Metropolitan Thames Valley which saw its gender pay gap rise from 13.7% in 2017 to nearly 20% in 2018.

In its gender pay gap report A2 Dominion said there “many possible reasons for our gender pay gap, which we continue to explore”. More men were employed at a professional level in the industries in which the group was active than women, including technology, property services and land and development.

A2 said it had commissioned diversity specialist Peran Kandola “to conduct an audit so we can fully understand the current diversity climate across the group and determine our next steps for creating an inclusive culture across the organisation”.

Women also featured more among a number of leading housing associations in the upper pay bracket compared with housebuilders, a feature of the number of women in senior roles in such organisations.