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Resources Paper 3 - Equal pay audit

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Resources Com­mit­tee Paper 3 28 Novem­ber 2026 Page 1 of 12

For dis­cus­sion

Title: Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity equal pay audit 2025⁄26

Pre­pared by: Kate Christie, Head of Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment Pip Mack­ie, Human Resources Manager

Pur­pose

The pur­pose of this paper is to high­light the Park Authority’s 2025⁄26 gender pay gap, using data as at 31 March 2025. The gender pay gap across the organ­isa­tion as a whole is iden­ti­fied, as well as across dir­ect­or­ates, grades and con­tract type (full time and part time). The paper also explores recruit­ment data and iden­ti­fies pos­sible reas­ons for the pay gap.

Recom­mend­a­tions

The Resources Com­mit­tee is asked to:

a) Com­mit­tee are asked to note the gender pay gap.

Exec­ut­ive summary

  1. Across the organ­isa­tion as a whole, there are 81 female staff and 46 male staff – so female staff make up 64% of the work­force. The over­all aver­age male hourly salary is £26.65, and the over­all aver­age female salary is £22.73 (the aver­age hourly salary across the organ­isa­tion is £24.15). This makes the 2026 mean gender pay gap 14.72%. This fig­ure is mar­gin­ally high­er than the Park Authority’s 2025 Gender Pay Gap of 13.67%, the 2024 Gender pay Gap of 13.14%, and 2023 Gender Pay Gap of 9.55%, as well as the 2022 fig­ure of 12.49%, but rep­res­ents an improve­ment on the fig­ures in 2021 of 17.44%, 2020 of 17.92%, 2019 of 19.25%, 2018 of 20.20%, 2017 of 21.47%, and 2015 of 23.64%. This fig­ure includes the CEO’s pay. If we remove the Chief Exec­ut­ive Officer (CEO) hourly pay, the mean gender pay gap is 12.01% (in com­par­is­on to 11.55% in 2025)

  2. If we use the medi­an meth­od­o­logy to cal­cu­late the Gender Pay Gap, the fig­ure is 9.92%, which is high­er than the 2024 medi­an of 9.05%.

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Resources Com­mit­tee Paper 3 28 Novem­ber 2026 Page 2 of 12

  1. Accord­ing to the Annu­al Sur­vey of Hours and Earn­ings (ASHE) report pub­lished by the Office for Nation­al Stat­ist­ics (ONS) in Octo­ber 2025, the nation­al mean Gender Pay Gap has reduced to 12.8% in April 2025, from 13.1% in April 2024 with male employ­ees earn­ing more than female work­ers. So, the Park Authority’s mean pay gap is slightly high­er that the nation­al mean. The nation­al medi­an pay gap is 6.9%, and the Park Authority’s medi­an pay gap of 9.92% is there­fore above the nation­al medi­an as well.

  2. As a small organ­isa­tion with just 127 staff, gender pay gap res­ults can be sig­ni­fic­antly impacted by only small changes in staff­ing, as is illus­trated in the detail of the paper below.

Back­ground

  1. An equal pay audit is designed to scru­tin­ise all aspects of pay includ­ing pro­files of the dif­fer­ent grades and dir­ect­or­ates across the organ­isa­tion, as well as recruit­ment and pro­mo­tion in order to high­light any areas where dir­ect or indir­ect dis­crim­in­a­tion may be impact­ing on pay equal­ity. The Park Author­ity is com­mit­ted to con­duct­ing an equal pay audit as part of its approach to equal­it­ies, and we assess pay for gender equal­ity on an ongo­ing basis.

  2. The Park Author­ity has a robust and object­ive job eval­u­ation sys­tem which is designed to elim­in­ate all ele­ments of poten­tial dis­crim­in­a­tion in the grad­ing of dif­fer­ent jobs, but it is import­ant that our pro­cesses are scru­tin­ised to ensure that inequal­it­ies are not allowed to devel­op inad­vert­ently. There may be socio-demo­graph­ic reas­ons behind dif­fer­ences in pay or vari­ations in num­bers of male or female staff at dif­fer­ent grades with­in the organ­isa­tion which acts to skew some res­ults, but it is not suf­fi­cient to assume that this is the case. Hence, we under­take a detailed review to seek to under­stand our equal pay pos­i­tion as fully as possible.

  3. The gender pay gap is the dif­fer­ence between women’s and men’s aver­age earn­ings. It is a com­plex issue and there is no defin­it­ive way in which to report a single fig­ure which fully cap­tures those com­plex­it­ies. There are typ­ic­ally two dif­fer­ent meth­ods to cal­cu­late the pay gap:

    a) The medi­an aver­age gender pay gap is cal­cu­lated by find­ing the mid­point in all employ­ees’ hourly pay and dis­card­ing the low­est and highest rates of pay

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Resources Com­mit­tee Paper 3 28 Novem­ber 2026 Page 3 of 12

– such that half of the employees' earning will be above and the other half below the mid-point. The median is therefore not skewed by very low hourly pay of very high hourly pay. However, as typically men account for the majority of those with very high rates of pay and women account for the majority of those with very low rates of pay, the median can obscure some gendered differences.

b) The mean average gender pay gap is calculated by adding all employees' rates of pay together and dividing by the total number of employees. It therefore includes the lowest and highest hourly rates of pay. International measure use the mean when calculating the pay gap which enables comparisons to be made with other countries. Guidance suggests that preference should be given to the mean, as it gives a deeper understanding of any pay gaps. This paper is based on the mean for the calculations across grade and directorate, but we have also provided the median figure for the overall pay gap.

  1. Where there is a ​“minus” pre­ced­ing the pay gap per­cent­age fig­ure, this indic­ates a neg­at­ive pay gap and that female staff in these pos­i­tions earn more than their male counterparts.

  2. Pay data of all staff in post on 31 March 2026 informed the gender pay gap calculation.

Gender pay gap res­ults for full-time and part-time staff

  1. Of our total 87 staff who work full time, there are more women (49) than men (38). The full-time pay gap across the entire organ­isa­tion (com­par­ing women’s full-time aver­age hourly pay with men’s full-time aver­age hourly pay) is 17.88%. This is an increase on last year’s fig­ure, which was 15.58%. Of the 49 full-time female staff, 45% are in the lower graded / paid bands (A – C); 29% are in band D; and 26% are in the high­er graded / paid bands (E – G). Of the 38 full-time male staff, 24% are in the lower paid bands (A – C); 34% are in band D; and 42% are in the high­er bands. So, the major­ity of full-time male staff are at the high­er paid bands, where the major­ity of full-time female staff are in the lower paid bands.

  2. 40 staff work part-time. 32 of the organ­isa­tions’ part-time staff are female, and eight are male. The aver­age part-time female salary hourly rate is £23.17, which is

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Resources Com­mit­tee Paper 3 28 Novem­ber 2026 Page 4 of 12

only slightly lower than the aver­age male part-time salary of £23.44, mak­ing the gender pay gap for part-time staff 1.18%, which is slightly high­er than last year’s fig­ure which was 0.25% but an improve­ment on the 2024 fig­ure of 4.52%. Of the lower graded posts bands A – C, there is one part-time male mem­ber of staff, but 11 part-time female staff; at the middle band D range, there are 15 part-time female staff, and six male; and at the high­er salary bands E — F, six are female and one is male. There con­tin­ues to be more female part-time staff spread over the salary bands.

Chart: Aver­age Hourly Salary Com­par­is­on Full Time Vs Part Time (FTE Figures)

  • Full Time: Av Female £22.44, Av Male £27.33, Aver­age £24.57
  • Part Time: Av Female £23.17, Av Male £23.44, Aver­age £23.22

Chart: Num­bers of Male and Female Staff Full Time or Part Time Work

  • Full Time: Female 49, Male 38, Total 87
  • Part Time: Female 32, Male 8, Total 40

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Resources Com­mit­tee Paper 3 28 Novem­ber 2026 Page 5 of 12

Res­ults by Grade

  1. The Equal Pay Audit found that there were vari­ances in salary aver­age between male and female across the grades, with the female aver­age high­er than the male in some grades (bands B1, C, D); and lower than the male aver­age in oth­er grades (bands C1, E, F). There are no males in the lower salary bands A and B and no females at the highest paid band G, so there is no pay gap repor­ted at these bands.

  2. Of the 43 staff in the lower graded bands A to C, 33 (77% of lower paid staff) are female. There are no males in salary bands A and B. There is a 0% pay gap at Band B1, ‑2.98% at band C and 0.87% at band C1.

  3. Band D is the largest band, with 48 staff, com­pris­ing 29 female staff and 19 male staff. This is a Policy Officer level of grade / pay. The gender pay gap for this grade is ‑2.51%. This neg­at­ive pay gap indic­ates that there are more female staff at the high­er end of the pay scale in band D than male staff.

  4. Band E has 24 staff, 16 female and eight male staff (in com­par­is­on to 14 female and 11 male staff in 2024). This is a man­ager level of post, and it has been encour­aging to note that we recruited two more women in this grade than last year. How­ever, the con­sequence of this suc­cess is that we have more female staff toward the lower end of their pay bands (new recruits are placed at or near the band min­im­um) which explains why there is still a pay gap of 4.99%.

  5. Band F has eight staff of which three are female. The gender pay gap is low in this band, just 0.40%

  6. It should be noted that of the 36 man­age­ment posts (bands E to G and CEO), 19 (53%) are female (this is an improve­ment on the 46% from last year and 40% from 2024) and rep­res­ents an increase of female staff in man­age­ment posts. The major­ity (75%) of seni­or man­age­ment roles (F, G and CEO) are held by male staff, and this fig­ure also remains the same as in the pre­vi­ous three years (2025, 2024 and 2023).

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Resources Com­mit­tee Paper 3 28 Novem­ber 2026 Page 6 of 12

Res­ults by Directorate

  1. An ana­lys­is of the salary levels by Dir­ect­or­ate across the organ­isa­tion showed that the aver­age female salary was lower than the aver­age male salary in the Com­mu­nic­a­tions, Cor­por­ate Ser­vices, and Plan­ning and Place Dir­ect­or­ates. Much of this dif­fer­ence appears to be due to the high­er levels of female staff at admin or sup­port officer levels with­in these Dir­ect­or­ates, com­bined with sig­ni­fic­antly more males than females at the high­er paid bands F and G across the organ­isa­tion. The female salary is also lower than the male in the Nature and Cli­mate Change Dir­ect­or­ate. This is a change on last year, where the female fig­ure was slightly high­er. This can per­haps be explained by the fact that there have been recent female appoint­ments to the lower salary bands in this directorate.
Dir­ect­or­ateGender pay gap
Cor­por­ate Ser­vices and Communications19.85% (13.14% excl CEO)
Nature and Cli­mate Change1.75%
Plan­ning and Place16.85%

Chart: Aver­age Hourly Salary by Directorate

  • CS & Comms: Female 22.79, Male 28.44, Aver­age 24.51
  • N&CC: Female 25.05, Male 25.50, Aver­age 25.24
  • P&P: Female 21.34, Male 25.67, Aver­age 23.07

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Resources Com­mit­tee Paper 3 28 Novem­ber 2026 Page 7 of 12

Chart: Num­ber of Female and Male Staff by Directorate

  • CS & Comms: Female 39, Male 17
  • N&CC: Female 15, Male 11
  • P&P: Female 27, Male 18

Over­all Organ­isa­tion­al Results

  1. Across the organ­isa­tion as a whole, there are 81 female staff and 46 male staff, so female staff make up 64% of the work­force. The over­all aver­age male hourly salary is £26.65, and the over­all aver­age female salary is £22.73 (the aver­age hourly salary across the organ­isa­tion is £24.15). This makes the mean gender pay gap 14.72% (and lower at 12.01% if you removed the CEO from the cal­cu­la­tions). This fig­ure is mar­gin­ally high­er than the 2025 fig­ure of 13.67%, the 2024 fig­ure of 13.12% and the 2023 fig­ure of 9.55%, and 2022 of 12.49%, but lower than the pre­ced­ing five years (2021 of 17.44%, 2020 of 17.92%, 2019 of 19.25%, 2018 of 20.20%, 2017 of 21.47%, and 2015 of 23.64%). The gender pay gap has gone up in the pre­vi­ous two years but does show an ongo­ing over­all down­ward trend when com­pared with 2015, with a 10% reduc­tion in gender pay gap since 2015.

  2. If we use the medi­an meth­od­o­logy to cal­cu­late the Gender Pay Gap, the fig­ure is 9.92%. This is an increase on the fig­ures from 2024 of 9.05%

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Resources Com­mit­tee Paper 3 28 Novem­ber 2026 Page 8 of 12

Chart: Mean Gender Pay Gap (Per­cent­age)

  • 2017: 21.47
  • 2018: 20.21
  • 2019: 19.25
  • 2020: 17.92
  • 2021: 17.44
  • 2022: 12.49
  • 2023: 9.55
  • 2024: 13.12
  • 2025: 13.67
  • 2026: 14.72

Chart: Aver­age Hourly Salary Whole Organisation

  • Av Female: £36,923.43
  • Av Male: £46,566.23
  • Aver­age: £40,416.10
  1. The stat­ist­ics show an increase in the mean pay gap gen­er­ally. But the ana­lys­is of the data presen­ted in the table below actu­ally high­lights that the gender pay gap is neg­at­ive or at 0% across three grades – ie female hourly rate is high­er or equal to the male hourly rate. There is a mar­gin­al pay gap at band F, where the male hourly rate is slightly high­er than the female rate. The pay gap has reduced at band C1 and there is an increas­ing pay gap at band E. How­ever, at band G pay, rep­res­ent­ing the highest paid staff there are no female staff at this grade. By com­par­is­on, there are no male staff in grades A or B, rep­res­ent­ing the low­est paid

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Resources Com­mit­tee Paper 3 28 Novem­ber 2026 Page 9 of 12

staff. As such, while there is no stat­ist­ic­al pay gap at these grades, when these grade are included in the total organ­isa­tion­al pay gap, they has the effect of dis­tort­ing the over­all gender pay gap, and actu­ally masks the fact that across all oth­er pay bands, the organ­isa­tion is doing pretty well, and when com­pared to the fig­ures for 2024⁄25, there is an improv­ing pay gap in five grades (high­lighted green), and a worsen­ing pay gap in one grade (high­lighted in red)

Pay Gap

Grade2025⁄262024⁄252023⁄24
ANulNul15.99%
BNulNul0%
B10.00%-0.52%-0.30%
C-2.98%-4.32%-4.05%
C10.87%5.43%2.55%
D-2.51%-4.43%-2.55%
E4.99%3.19%1.29%
F0.40%0.56%3.48%
GNulNulNul

Recruit­ment Stat­ist­ics (Janu­ary to Decem­ber 2025)

  1. In 2025, a total of 21 roles (37 posts) were advert­ised, with 35 posts recruited. The major­ity of posts were advert­ised intern­ally in the first instance. Of the two posts that were not recruited, these were advert­ised late in 2025 and appoin­ted to in early 2026.

  2. There were 24 intern­al applic­ants with five intern­al appoint­ments. Of the 24 applic­ants, 12 were female and 12 were male. For the intern­al appoint­ments three were female and two were male.

  3. In 2025, of a total of 856 extern­al applic­ants there were 421 (49%) female, 412 (48%) male applic­ants and 23 not dis­clos­ing. Of the 30 appoint­ments through the extern­al round, 21 were (70%) female and 9 (30%) were male.

  4. So, look­ing at over­all totals, there was a slightly high­er num­ber of female applic­ants (421) to male (412). There were also a sig­ni­fic­antly high­er num­ber of female to male appoint­ments, female 24 (69%), male 11 (31%). This help to explain

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Resources Com­mit­tee Paper 3 28 Novem­ber 2026 Page 10 of 12

why the organ­isa­tion­al pay gap has gone up mar­gin­ally, as when someone is newly appoin­ted to a role, they are typ­ic­ally appoin­ted on or near the band min­im­um. This pro­por­tion will drive a tem­por­ary increase in the gender pay gap calculations.

  1. An ana­lys­is of the recruit­ment data high­lights the following:

    a) There were slightly more female appoint­ments to the lower graded band A / A1 posts than before with four females to three males being appoin­ted. b) There were no appoint­ments at band B. c) In the last year, there have been a high­er num­ber of female (eight) / male (four) appoint­ments at band B1 (sea­son­al ranger level). d) Bands C / C1 included three male appoint­ments and four female appoint­ments. e) There were six female appoint­ments at band D and one male. f) There were two female appoint­ments at band E. g) There were no appoint­ments at bands F and G.

  2. As part of our com­mit­ment to our Equal­ity Out­comes regard­ing improv­ing the diversity of our staff makeup and increas­ing the num­ber of women at seni­or pos­i­tions, we have con­tin­ued to take the fol­low­ing actions:

    a) At recruit­ment we have reduced the num­ber of essen­tial cri­ter­ia to ensure those that remain are indeed essen­tial (research has indic­ated that women are less likely to apply for pos­i­tions if they do not meet all the essen­tial cri­ter­ia). All job descrip­tions have to be approved by the HR team, who will robustly chal­lenge the per­cep­tion of the neces­sity for each essen­tial cri­terion. b) Most posts are now advert­ised with the poten­tial of being part time or job share. c) The recruit­ment page of the web­site provides links to all our equal­ity policies, like the men­o­pause policy, sup­port for preg­nancy loss policy etc. d) All recruit­ment pan­els con­tain male and female mem­bers. e) Recruit­ment advert­ising has been revamped to high­light the bene­fits of flex­ible work­ing. f) Recruit­ment advert­ising includes nar­rat­ive to encour­age applic­ant diversity. g) We are sup­port­ive, when pos­sible, of second­ment oppor­tun­it­ies. h) We removed core hours, adop­ted a hybrid work­ing policy and have sig­ni­fic­antly improved remote access­ib­il­ity to IT facilities.

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Resources Com­mit­tee Paper 3 28 Novem­ber 2026 Page 11 of 12

i) Ongoing review of organisational structure with more policy positions being developed at lower grades, which were traditionally where only “admin” roles, more heavily slanted towards women were graded.
j) We have developed a Women Advancing to Leadership network. This network includes female staff in bands E and F who meet quarterly to network and share experiences. They also did a Women Advancing to Leadership training course which provided excellent and useful tools for management and and progression.

Con­clu­sions from the Audit

  1. It is worth not­ing that as an organ­isa­tion of 127 staff, the medi­an and mean cal­cu­la­tions can be impacted by just small changes in staff positions.

  2. The recruit­ment of more women than men, and the res­ult­ing place­ment of more women on or near the lower pay band will also cre­ate a pay gap. But this should be tem­por­ary at a moment in time and should even out over the com­ing years as the staff will pro­gress by annu­al pro­gres­sion awards to the top of the scale.

  3. Park Author­ity jobs are eval­u­ated to determ­ine which band they should be placed in. The poten­tial for all forms of inequal­ity is thus reduced by the fact that jobs are object­ively eval­u­ated, and salar­ies alloc­ated accord­ing to the job con­tent rather than the per­son. There is still poten­tial for inequal­ity with­in eval­u­ation sys­tems, such as the weight­ing giv­en to par­tic­u­lar types of work, for example caring tasks have often attrac­ted a lower weight­ing than manu­al labour in the past, which indir­ectly favours more men than women. The Park Author­ity eval­u­ation sys­tem has been designed and equal­ity impact assessed to ensure this type of dis­crim­in­a­tion does not hap­pen with­in the Park Author­ity. There have been no instances of intern­al com­plaints nor alleg­a­tions of any inequal­it­ies arising from our eval­u­ation sys­tem in the last 10 years.

  4. The Park Author­ity has a num­ber of policies designed to ensure that male and female mem­bers of staff have equal access to career pro­gres­sion. Male and female staff are giv­en sup­port in man­aging child­care com­mit­ments and in deal­ing with oth­er work life bal­ance issues, to enable them to work effect­ively at any level of the organ­isa­tion. We have a range of part time, job-share, annu­al­ised hours and

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Resources Com­mit­tee Paper 3 28 Novem­ber 2026 Page 12 of 12

hybrid work­ing arrange­ments which have been accessed equally by men and women across the organisation.

  1. As a pub­lic sec­tor organ­isa­tion com­mit­ted to no com­puls­ory redund­an­cies and staff reten­tion meas­ures, there is little scope for the Park Author­ity to pro­act­ively address the gender pay gap pos­i­tion oth­er than through wider work being done on broad­en­ing applic­a­tions from wider ranges of people as and when turnover arises. Our cur­rent turnover levels are his­tor­ic­ally low, which exacer­bates this issue.

  2. Whilst the gender pay gap has mar­gin­ally increased in 2026 it is still broadly improv­ing in the time since we star­ted report­ing on this data and we are start­ing to see the impact of the inter­ven­tions imple­men­ted to sup­port the Equal­ity Out­comes of ensur­ing there is a gender bal­ance in the seni­or pos­i­tions. How­ever, we can­not become com­pla­cent and recog­nise that con­tin­ued work and mon­it­or­ing must be an organ­isa­tion­al pri­or­ity going for­ward. The extern­al Equal­ity Advis­ory Pan­el and the Intern­al Equal­ity Advocacy Group will play a key role in scru­tin­ising, chal­len­ging and sup­port­ing this action.

Kate Christie 07 August 2026 katechristie@​cairngorms.​co.​uk

Pip Mack­ie 07 August 2026 pipmackie@​cairngorms.​co.​uk