Women are paid more than men at Hackney Council, a new report shows.

The town hall has published its gender pay gap papers ahead of the full council meeting tomorrow night. It shows that, going by the average figure, women are paid 2.8 per cent more. Using the median – or middle figure – as the measure, they are paid 8pc more.

Chiefs are also “confident” that men and women are paid the same for equivalent jobs.

The reason for the difference is that there are more men than women in the lower paid roles, and there are more women than men in the two middle tiers.

The report states: “The council operates an equality proofed pay and grading structure, which is a points based system used to allocate jobs to specific grades.”

There is, however, a big difference in the percentage of women and men who receive a bonus – 7pc of men to 0.1pc of women. Officers say this is because the only bonus scheme is for certain workers in the housing sector, a workforce that is “overwhelmingly male”. They say this will be looked into over the coming year.