NEW figures show that North Yorkshire Police has a median gender pay gap of 20.8 per cent - and that there are fewer women than men in the top pay bands.

The figures cover all employees of the Chief Constable - police officers, community support officers and some police staff.

Deputy Chief Constable Lisa Winward said: “It is very important to remember that the gender pay gap is not the same as equal pay. Men and women are paid the same rates for doing the same job at North Yorkshire Police – that is the law.

"What the gender pay gap figures really highlight is that we have more men than women in higher-paid jobs across the organisation.

"There can be lots of different reasons for that, so over the coming months we’re going to do a lot more work to understand what really sits behind our gender pay gap figures, so we can make changes where we need to."

She added: “We already do a lot to encourage women to develop their careers into the higher positions, and the fact that the majority of our chief officer team are women shows we have no glass ceiling.

"Nevertheless, we don’t have an equal split of men and women in other higher-paid parts of the organisation, which is contributing to our gender pay gap.

"Changing the make-up of an organisation can’t be done overnight, but we are making the gender pay gap part of our regular “health-check” and we will be working to narrow that gap over the longer-term.”

All the gender pay gap calculations for North Yorkshire Police are available at northyorkshire.pnn.police.uk/gender-pay-gap