SALARIES for Trafford Council’s staff have been published, including a gender pay gap and a £170,000 pay check for the chief executive.

The lowest paid council staff member gets just £17,842 a year and the median salary is £24,491.

Sara Todd, the authority’s chief executive and top earner, is earning £169,538 a year – meaning for every £1 earned by the council’s median salaried worker, Ms Todd earns £6.92.

This is marked a ‘minimal’ salary increase on the year before and the ratio of the highest earner to the median earner is the same as it was last year, according to a council report.

Salary figures are always published in the following financial year, meaning these figures are for 2020-21.

The council does not have any pay bonus schemes and all council salaries above £100,000 per year require the approval of full council.

There is currently an overall gender pay gap of 8.14 per cent at Trafford council, and a 10.77 per cent median gender pay gap for its average earners – both in favour of male employees.

The council’s workforce breakdown is 76 per cent female and 24 per cent male.

The council report on the matter said: “We employ a lot of part-time roles in Trafford (49 per cent of posts) which attract females and evidence shows that part-time roles pay less than full-time roles.

“When part-time roles are looked at the gender pay gap is positive for women. We have some large in-house services with lower paid bands which traditionally attract more females – catering, cleaning, passenger assistants, care assistants and support workers. If we remove these groups the gap reduces.

“Some services such as highways and street cleaning services that predominantly attract male workers are not employed in house; this affects our gender pay gap as associated posts tended to be on the lower pay bands. We have an ageing workforce and evidence shows that the gender pay gap

widens above age 40.”

The current gender pay gap for the council’s staff has decreased considerably from last year – when the median gap stood at 15.46 per cent.

Cllr Tom Ross, the council’s executive member for finance and governance, said at a full council meeting on Wednesday: “There are a number of influencing factors which combine to give our gap. The figures have continued to decrease since we started reporting them in 2017 and this is obviously a positive move, but with some way to go.

“We will continue to explore reasons for our gender pay gap and consider what measures we can put in place with the aim of reducing it further. We will continue to work towards reducing this gap, however, due to the make-up of our workforce the reality is that we’ll be unlikely to get to the point of having no gap, unless there’s a huge societal shift in terms of the types of role that men and women undertake.”

The pay policy statement was approved at the full council meeting.