At VWV, we are committed to treating all of our staff equally across all of our locations. This includes opportunities for reward, recognition and support for career progression.
A positive approach to diversity and inclusion is central to our recruitment and employment practices. This is also reflected in our core values. We are confident that we have robust policies and procedures in place to achieve equal pay but we have a gender pay gap as we have set out below.
We think our pay gap arises predominantly because the majority of our support staff are female. Those roles are paid less when compared with the majority of our male employees who are in qualified roles in our business, which attracts higher pay. As our bonus scheme is based on a percentage of pay, our bonus pay figures reflect a similar pay gap.
We are committed to exploring further the reasons for the gender pay gap and will look at ways to narrow the pay gap where possible.
Simon Heald
Managing Partner
We are required to publish an annual gender pay gap report on our website and to also upload the statistics to the government website. Data has to be gathered on a snapshot date (5 April 2017) and our data statistics are as follows:
We are required to publish overall gender pay gap figures calculated using both the mean and the median average hourly pay which has been calculated in accordance with guidance contained within the regulations.
| Mean | Median |
| 21.9% | 32.0% |
Statistics available from the Law Society state that across all private practice solicitors in England, the gender pay gap is 30% (Law Society 2016). The wider UK average gender pay gap at the end of 2016 is 18.1%.
Set out below is the proportion of male and female employees in each of four pay quartiles, based on our overall pay range (not making any distinctions in relation to roles or whether qualified staff or not).
The proportion of male and female employees who received a bonus in the same 12 month period is 63.6% of female employees and 67.4% of male employees. Information of our gender bonus gap (ie the difference between men and women's mean and median bonus pay over a 12 month period) is set out below:
| Mean | Median |
| 24.6% | 26.6% |
