THE pay gap between white and Bame (black, Asian, minority ethnic) staff working at the council is to be made public.

Brighton and Hove City Council said it plans to publish the data in March next year. It comes after a petition requesting that median pay for workers be shared with the public

The petition from Bruno DeOliveira urges the council “to release biannually information on the ethnic minority pay gap” among its employees.

The Argus:

It adds: “The median pay gap to be calculated by comparing the difference in pay between the median pay of white British employees of all genders and the median pay of Bame employees of all genders.”

The petition has been signed by 44 people since it was published online a week ago.

Analysis from the Office of National Statistics shows that employees of Chinese, Indian and mixed or multiple ethnicity all had higher median hourly pay than white British employees in 2018.

However, employees in the Pakistani and Bangladeshi ethnic groups had the lowest median hourly pay.

The Argus:

In 2018, on average, employees from the Chinese ethnic group earned 30.9 per cent more than white British employees; while employees from the Bangladeshi ethnic group, on average, earned 20.2 per cent less than white British employees.

Councillor Carmen Appich, chairwoman of the council’s tourism, equalities, communities and culture committee, said: “We are committed to understanding all inequality issues across the council, and have recently published our anti-racism pledge which we hope will play a crucial part in Brighton and Hove becoming an anti-racist city.

“Part of this work relates to our role as an employer and ensuring we have a fair and inclusive workplace.

“We publish gender pay gap information in March each year and in March 2021 we are planning to publish ethnicity pay gap information.

“We want to be open and transparent about our workforce data and make sure we have clear actions to address any issues this identifies.”