This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has pledged to take action after a pioneering pay audit found that the city’s black and minority ethnic public employees were paid anything up to 37% less on average than their white counterparts, with an especially severe difference in the police.

The ethnicity earnings audit covered all organisations in the Greater London authority group, which covers the mayoralty and City Hall, Transport for London (TfL), the city’s police and fire services and various development corporations.

The ethnicity audit found that the pay gap was “particularly stark” at the Met police, the Greater London authority and the two development corporations.

It found varying pay gaps, ranging from none at all in the London fire brigade to 9.8% at TfL, 16.7% at the Metropolitan police and 37.5% at the Old Oak and Park Royal development corporation, which runs a major redevelopment project in the north-west of the city.



A report into the gaps found they were caused not by black and minority ethnic (BME) employees being paid less for the same job, but by an under-representation of people from such backgrounds in senior jobs.

This mirrors the findings of a gender pay audit published by the mayoralty in late 2016, which found gaps ranging from nothing to more than 30% because of a lack of women in top jobs.

Khan said: “I am deeply troubled that members of the black, Asian and minority ethnic community who work at these organisations earn on average less than their white counterparts, and I am determined to confront this inequality.



“This sort of injustice takes many years to develop and it becomes deeply entrenched. My administration is finally beginning the process of turning this around.”

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Steps introduced to try to close the gap include anonymised recruitment, which removes names from applications, as well as unconscious bias training and a new diversity and inclusion management board.

Khan said he urged all London businesses and public bodies to take similar action, and said the government should consider legislation to make ethnicity pay audits a legal requirement, as they are for gender pay.

Scotland Yard said in a statement: “The report makes it very clear that the pay of police officers and staff in the Met is determined by role, with no reference to ethnicity. Individuals of different ethnic backgrounds who undertake the same role, have the same length of service and work the same hours, receive the same pay.

“However, a gap emerges when the average pay of BME officers and staff in the Met is compared to the average pay of their white colleagues due to a number of factors including; less length of service for BME officers and staff; fewer BME officers and staff in higher-paid roles; and historical allowances such as rent and housing allowance that some colleagues with longer service still receive. The Met is working hard to address the gap.”

The ethnic pay gaps for the organisations were: