We must do more to address gender pay gap

Following our questions for Wokingham Borough Council at their meeting on Thurs 23 January, I am disappointed by the brevity of their responses, and the lack of attention and effort that this issue has received from WBC.

When asked what policies have been put in place to address their Gender Pay Gap of 13.9%, the answer given by Cllr John Halsall was essentially, none.

In accordance with the report they have issued for the last two years, they explain the GPG as being caused by more women in low paid, flexible roles, rather than focusing on the opportunity to put measures in place to address the GPG.

This response throws up two important questions:

1. If the gender pay gap is caused by women in lower paid, part time roles, why is the GPG for full-time workers at WBC 12.3%?

 and

2. Why is the council not looking at promoting flexibility in all roles, regardless of seniority? Women do not “choose” to earn 13.9% less than their male colleagues. Rather, they are forced into these “choices” due to societal pressure to be the primary care giver (of either children or elderly relatives) and low paid roles are the only options which offer the flexibility they need.

Cllr John Halsall suggests that it will take a “society shift” to change this, and I would like to ask what measures the council are taking to effect this change within their own organisation?

The guide “Reducing the gender pay gap and improving gender equality in organisations: Evidence-based actions for employers” is a helpful, practical, and as it says, evidence-based, 12-page guide which encourages employers to offer all jobs as flexible. This could include part-time work, remote working, compressed hours or job sharing. Unfortunately, despite this guide being available from the home page of the government’s Gender Pay Gap webpage, Cllr John Halsall was unaware of its existence. 

When asked which organisations the council had consulted to ensure they have an informed action plan, the answer was none. He did state that they are sharing best practice and action plans with other Berkshire Authorities. Presumably he means the other authorities are sharing their plans with WBC, since WBC does not have an action plan.

Cllr Halsall’s response that 3 out of 5 of the council’s senior lead team also concerns me. What steps are these female senior leaders taking to ensure that women on the council are being treated fairly, and given equal opportunity to progress to higher paid roles, as they themselves have?”

Louise Timlin, 

Leader, Reading and Wokingham Women’s Equality Party, 

Woosehill, Wokingham

Who needs taxi ranks? 

Further to the letter in a recent edition of the Wokingham Paper about the perceived shortage of town centre parking, does Broad Street really need three blocks of parking reserved during the day for taxis? Each of them has space for at least 3 vehicles. The one outside the NatWest bank is the most heavily used, but even that one is completely empty at times.

Couldn’t two of those taxi ranks be converted to two-hour parking for shoppers? Taxi drivers could manage with the block of spaces outside Natwest, and call up fellow drivers from e.g. the station rank, when spaces become available; the number of taxis waiting at the station often exceeds the eight or nine spaces available there, causing them to back up into the station car park exit.

Michael Storey, Wokingham

For the planet

Members of Extinction Rebellion (XR) Reading and XR Wokingham have been delighted to meet up with Gregor Murray, Wokingham District Council’s Executive Member for climate change, and Daniel Hinton, head of Greener Wokingham. 

We have had 2 lively and productive meetings since Wokingham DC declared a climate emergency in July, at which Gregor and Daniel have outlined exciting plans to reduce the carbon footprint of the borough and cut waste over the coming 10 years. 

We look forward to working together to strengthen and revise the plans as they become actions. 

Much will need to change in Wokingham if we are to reach our goal of carbon-neutral by 2030. These plans are an ambitious first step in the right direction.

We hope that central government and other local authorities will follow Wokingham’s lead and start doing much more in 2020.

On a similar theme, Glasgow will be hosting the COP26  summit in November. The UK government needs to make good use of this crucial opportunity, not just to set ambitious targets, but to demonstrate an honest intention to meet those targets.

Look out for some positive changes coming up if you live in Wokingham Borough – and in the meanwhile, remember that each one of us can bring our carbon footprint down in our daily lives. Everything each one of us does makes a difference.

Helen Palmer, Woodley

Donations

It is good that Wokingham United Charities are supporting local charities with unrestricted funding – as you report in the Wokingham Paper – [January 23rd]. It was also good to read, in a previous edition of the Paper, that the JAC Shop is open, and is flourishing, once again.

 Just Around the Corner, are better than we are, at meeting the needs of young people, with mental health problems, because our ambience is not sufficiently active, for energetic teenagers! 

The New Year certainly has made a good start for us – with donations. 

On Friday 24th January, a service user, who suffers from a chronic mental illness, and whom we have known for 25 years, walked into the crisis house, and said that he wanted to make a donation. ‘Very kind; it all helps,’ I replied, expecting, perhaps, to receive ten pounds. He then handed me two rolls of banknotes – total – two thousand pounds! 

So what is it that the crisis house provides, which the mentally ill find, so precious, that they will give me, literally, thousands of pounds, to keep it going for them? I can give you the answer in one word. It is what they, so desperately, need, and of which we have deprived them, with the wholesale closure of the old mental institutions. ‘Asylum!’

This is why I have chosen the title – ‘There’s a Place for Us’ – for the book which I am, currently, in the process of completing. 

Sequel to my 2016 publication – ‘Triumph and Tragedy’ – this new book is due to be published early next year –  Deo Volente – to mark the Thirty Year Anniversary of the crisis house. The Wokingham United Charities’ unrestricted funding, will come in particularly useful – since we like to be in a position to pay for treatment for people – if they need this, but are unable to access such treatment and therapy, within the National Health Service. 

I like to get them to see the top experts, but this is, of course, very costly. We pride ourselves upon being totally lay, wholly dedicated to self-help, and we make no attempt, whatsoever, to ape the professional medical services. Nothing, in my opinion, can be more dangerous, than the situation of an individual attending a couple of day courses, and then to start considering himself to be Sigmund Freud The Second! 

 So we stick, firmly, to mutual support, and befriending, but we greatly appreciate the funding that enables us to provide people with the things that we DON’T do!

Pam Jenkinson – The Wokingham Crisis House.

Retail rackets?

By way of introduction to this rather important subject, I throw out a challenge to Readers! Do you know of any other country where retailers spend more time juggling prices, as they do in UK supermarkets? In all my travels, and having lived on the Continent, I have never got more fed-up with shopping locally.

In order to get the best prices available, I am forced to shop at five supermarkets in Wokingham – excluding Sainsburys and Asda as being outside my walking area. Over the past two days, I have been disgusted by Morrisons and Tesco, over their prices for cat food (and probably dog food).

What the public need, and in particular the retired and elderly who have pets and want to provide good care and food for them, is price stability and minimal mark-up on suppliers’ prices. A 50% increase in the price of one dry cat food today (Saturday 25)  is just a racket. Increases may be expected as a creeping disease in this country, but at what rate? A few perc ent – at most surely?

We need a review of retail pricing, from pet food, to medical items. 

My ‘nag’ is mainly about animal feed that affects so many of the population, but it is a reminder of how not to run a decent/trustworthy retail business.  We do not want the participation of jugglers.

Reg Clifton, Wokingham

Not time for a trim

I observed with utter disbelief gardeners cutting down the town’s hedges by half, not a trim but chopping more like it, in January. 

Everybody knows that hedging is done in October. 

Is there nobody of authority in landscapes intelligent enough to listen to what wildlife, RSPB and British Nature is asking people nationally? They want us to help wildlife by not hard cutting shrubs, hedges to give shelter to the birds and leave the grass to grow around the base of trees to feed the birds. 

One part that was chopped is a home for nesting. Now it is dangerous for them to nest. Shame on you for what you have done. 

H Boyed, Wokingham

Out of control or out of their minds?

Wokingham Borough Council’s draft local plan (The Wokingham Paper, January 16) must surely have many of those likely to be affected asking, ‘Are they (WBC) out of control, or out of their minds?’

It would be all too easy for someone of my age to simply shrug their shoulders and say, it’s not my problem, I won’t be around to witness the social and environmental damage, let alone the financial burden of such a plan if implemented. 

Unlike the inmates of Shute End Towers, I have more concern and respect for the future, albeit not my own. 

Following the pillaging of the town centre, this latest act of local government vandalism must be challenged. 

The powers-that-be will, of course, claim that they have a mandate to carry their proposals forward, acting only after public consultation. Council speak for whatever your views, we are going to ignore them and go ahead anyway. 

Even if, as a last resort, a local referendum were to be petitioned, its result would not be legally binding and likely, because of the dictatorial nature of the incumbents, brushed aside. 

You can bet, were such development to impact of their own personal, domestic or environmental space, the executive would be less enthusiastic about what they have in mind. 

One councillor has warned, “The borough would become an enormous rat run”. The borough already is an enormous rat run, with traffic pouring into and through the town to get elsewhere. 

There was a time when folk lived in Wokingham. Today, it has become little more than a dormitory, with great numbers commuting daily, travelling further afield to do their serious shopping at weekends.

Rather like global warming, if such reckless overdevelopment is not halted in its tracks, then the point of no return will have been passed, making it too late to avoid creating an environment which future generations will have little to thank us for. 

J W Blaney, Wokingham

What do you think?

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