Ethnicity Pay Gap Report

This is the fifth year we are voluntarily publishing our ethnicity pay gap report. This helps us to be open and transparent about our people. We want to lead the industry on equity, diversity and inclusion and this report is an important tool to help us achieve our ambition.

Our ethnicity pay gap has been calculated in accordance with Government regulations for calculating gender pay gaps.

The ethnicity pay gap is the difference in average hourly rate of pay between our white and black, Asian and minority ethnic employees across the whole organisation. We acknowledge that our pay gap will fluctuate as we increase the diversity of the organisation, but we remain committed to making our organisation a more inclusive place to work so that we can better represent the passengers we serve.

2023 ethnicity pay gap report

Our 2023 median* ethnicity pay gap is 6.2 per cent. This is a 0.2 percentage point decrease from 2022. It remains above the national average of 2.3 per cent (2019).

8.9 per cent of our colleagues still have not shared their ethnicity with us.  We recognise that our pay gap will change as we improve the quality of our ethnicity data.

Our Race Matters project continues to hold the business to account to increase the ethnic diversity of our organisation, through working to remove barriers that black, Asian and minority ethnic employees and candidates face.

You can read more about our ethnicity data, the pay gap and the Race Matters project in the full report.

It is vital that minority groups can progress through the organisation and that their perspectives are heard. As we navigate the challenging financial climate of the rail industry and prepare for the future, diverse thinking is critical to help us to serve our passenger and freight customers better. Above all, we are committed to creating and nurturing an inclusive workforce where each and every individual takes responsibility for inclusion.

Pauline Holroyd, HR Director and Race Matters Project executive sponsor

Previous ethnicity pay gap reports

Related pages

*We look at both the mean (average) and median (middle) for pay gap reporting. The mean difference is the difference in average hourly pay; adding all pay rates together and dividing by the total number of people. The median difference is the difference in hourly pay between the middle paid (the person at the mid-point if you were to line all employees up from low to high pay) male employee and middle paid woman employee. The median is the most representative measure as it stops a small amount of very high or low salaries skewing the results.