News release

Latest gender and ethnicity pay gap reports published

09 December 2022

We have published our latest gender pay gap and ethnicity pay gap reports, and are continuing to encourage others in the legal sector to do the same.

While publication of the gender pay gap report is a legal requirement for organisations with more than 250 employees, there is no current obligation to publish an ethnicity pay gap data.

Our median pay gap between Black, Asian and ethnic minority and White staff reduced from 15 per cent in 2021 to 12.7 per cent in 2022. While heading in the right direction, this is still wider than the ONS UK-wide average of 2.3 per cent. We have also published our dedicated workforce senior ethnicity inclusion action plan, which sets out our targets, steps on career development and recruitment and how we will monitor and assess our progress.

Covering the reporting year up to April 2022, the latest gender pay gap report shows that our median pay gap between male and female staff was 11.2 per cent. This is an increase of 1.9% since 2021, while the median bonus gap has increased by 26.8% from the negative gap last year. The increases are largely driven by changes in the proportion of males and females at the more senior levels.

The pay gap remains narrower than the Office of National Statistics (ONS) figure of a UK-wide average gap of 15.4 per cent, but there is more to do. The report sets out planned actions, which include reviewing our reward strategy and how we recognise staff, as well as our policies, processes and practices. Many of the measures in the ethnicity inclusion plan will also help to address the gender pay gap.

Paul Philip, SRA Chief Executive, said: 'We believe that is it important that we, and others in the legal sector, publish our ethnicity pay gap in order to support and drive on-going change and progress in this area.

'In terms of both gender and ethnicity, we continue to have good diversity in our overall workforce, but these latest figures confirm that we need to do more to reflect that diversity in more senior positions. We have a number of projects and initiatives in place to help us to do that, as set out in our action plans, including a target to double Black, Asian and minority ethnic presence in our senior management team over the next five years. We are looking forward to improving both pay gaps in future.'

Read the SRA's 2022 Gender Pay Gap Report and Ethnicity Pay Gap Report.

Read the SRA's Workforce senior ethnicity inclusion action plan