THERE should not be a gender pay gap for Oxford City Council is the message from a council chief.

The city council's scrutiny committee discussed a new report into the gender pay gap between men and women working for the council at its meeting on Tuesday night.

The report said the gender pay gap between men and woman on the council was 10.4 per cent for 2019, which was an increase from -0.7 per cent in 2018, when women earned slight more than men.

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The huge growth was because the mostly-male workforce of council-owned company Oxford Direct Services was now counted separately from the council in its own report.

But Nigel Chapman, the cabinet member for safer communities and customer focused services, said he would like to see the gap 'to be at zero per cent' in the future.

He added that the report said despite the rise in the pay gap between 2018 and 2019, Oxford City Council still performed well against the average gender pay gap in other organisations, which was approximately 18 per cent.

Committee member Hosnieh Djafari-Marbini asked if it would be possible to 'cross section' the gender pay gap with ethnicity and other characteristics in future reports.