The gender pay gap at Cambridgeshire County Council has not budged from the level it was a year ago – 13 per cent.

The county council has reiterated its message from last year that there is "no quick solution to reduce the gap".

The council uses salary data from the previous year to calculate the discrepancy, and a spokesperson said the authority expects to see evidence of an improvement in the data reflecting 2019 salaries when it is released next year.

According to the latest figures, the mean average salary is 13 per cent lower for women than men at the council. The authority's workforce is majority female, with women making up 80 per cent of staff.

One of the larger disparities in the figures published last year was the high percentage of men in the corporate leadership team, which has the highest pay grades. The number of women in these senior roles has increased from 55 per cent to 62 per cent in the latest figures, which closely reflects the council's gender balance. The council report says "this is a positive move and demonstrates that females within the council are progressing to senior roles".

Elsewhere in the report, the council says its data "would suggest that we have no problem in recruiting females to senior roles, but their salary level is slightly less than their male counterparts". But it also notes an increase in women paid over £100k compared with last year's data.

The mean gender pay gap in the UK fell from 17.8 per cent in 2018, to 17.3 per cent in 2019, according to the Office for National Statistics.

A Cambridgeshire County Council spokesperson said: "We are very serious about improving equality and diversity within our workforce of almost 4000 employees, which is why we take this matter seriously.

"Although we have less of a gender pay gap than the mean national public sector average of 17.5 per cent, we are not complacent and believe we can do better.

"Given the size of our workforce and the diversity of roles we have, there is no quick solution to reduce the gap. We have an action plan in place to do this and a recent review shows that we have already made improvements which the Staffing and Appeals Committee will continue to monitor.

"The gender pay gap publication uses data from the previous March (2018), and so we anticipate the data due to be published in March 2020 will evidence how this plan is leading to improvements."