We are committed to ensuring equality of opportunity, fairness of treatment, and work-life balance for all of our employees, and to offering an inclusive working environment in which our employees are able to make the best use of their skills and maximise their potential, free from discrimination. This is of crucial importance to our business. Entry into, and progression within, our Company is determined by the individual’s ability to do the job – it’s as simple as that.
Across our business we nevertheless employ significantly more women than men. This is not because we favour employing women over men. Rather, it is a reflection of the retail sector as a whole, where men are typically under-represented compared to women.
The gender pay gap shows the difference between the average earnings of women and the average earnings of men. It is expressed as a percentage of men’s earnings. For example, a gender pay gap of 15% means that, on average, the women earn 15% less than the men. A negative percentage means that, on average, the women earn more than the men.
It is important to understand that the gender pay gap differs from equal pay. Equal pay is about men and women receiving the same pay and conditions for doing equal work.
In contrast, the gender pay gap shows the difference between the average earnings of men across all job roles in an organisation and the average earnings of women across all job roles in that same organisation.
At Downtown we are confident that our gender pay gap is not a consequence of men and women who do the same job being paid differently. Rather, it is because men are under-represented in our lowest-paid roles, which is very typical of the retail sector.
Dividing our workforce as at 5 April 2023 into four, equally-sized hourly pay quarters, the proportion of men and women in each of these quarters was as follows:
As at 5 April 2023, our median gender pay gap was 5.0% and our mean gender pay gap was 23.3%.
In addition to looking at hourly rates of pay, we have scrutinised the bonus payments made to our employees during the twelve months ending on 5 April 2023.
97.1% of our male employees as at 5 April 2023 have been classed as receiving a bonus payment during the preceding twelve months. The proportion of our female employees as at 5 April 2023 who have been classed as receiving a bonus payment during the same twelve-month period is almost the same, at 94.2%.
Our mean bonus gender pay gap as at 5 April 2023 was -91.3%. This indicates that during the preceding year our female employees received, on average, almost twice as much in bonus payments as our male employees.
Our median bonus gender pay gap as at 5 April 2023 was 0%.
The data shown in this report is accurate as of 5 April 2023. For further details of the calculations used, please see:
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/gender-pay-gap-reporting-make-your-calculations
Our Gender Pay Gap Reports for previous years are available here:
The gender pay gap information for Oldrid & Co. Limited can also be found on the Government website at:
https://gender-pay-gap.service.gov.uk/Viewing/search-results
I hereby confirm that the data contained within this report is accurate.
Peter Isaac
Managing Director