Braintree Council is bucking the national trend and paying female employees more than men, new figures have revealed.

Companies across the UK with more than 250 employees had to officially declare their findings over the gender pay gap last week.

The official stats show the average man at Braintree Council is paid 22 per cent less than the average woman.

Just 14 per cent of companies who declared data had a pay gap which favoured women, with a massive 78 per cent of business favouring men with pay rates.

Andy Wright, chief executive of Braintree Council, said: “We operate a fair and equal method of evaluating job roles regardless of gender.

“Our gender pay gap reflects the distribution of male and female staff across pay grades, with a balanced proportion of male and female staff in higher graded roles and a significant amount of male staff in front line operational roles.”

At the council, women make up 51.8 per cent of higher-paying jobs and just 24.1 per cent of lower-paid jobs.

One of the area’s biggest employers Stansted Airport pays women on average 7.9 per cent less than it pays men.

Women make up just 26.7 per cent of higher-paid roles at the airport, and 48 per cent of the lower salary roles.

Liz Austin, London Stansted Airport’s HR director, said:“Stansted Airport believes in fair pay for our colleagues for the contribution they make to the business, irrespective of gender.

“We are committed to developing a modern and dynamic workforce with firm commitments to diversity and inclusion and we will continue to reduce our pay gap even further by ensuring that these values are embedded in our culture.

“Stansted’s current gender pay gap reflects the prevalence of men within our engineering and fire service departments which are shift working roles that attract additional payments. We also have a number of key initiatives, including development and coaching programmes for our senior female leaders, to drive a more gender balanced senior leadership population.”

At our hospitals, women are on average paid 7.1 per cent less than men. Women made up 65.2 per cent of high-paid roles and 78.8 per cent of low paid roles within Mid Essex Hospitals Trust.

Ryanair, whose UK base is at Stansted Airport, was had a massive 71.8 per cent gender pay gap in favour of men.

Many high street brands, including KFC, Costa and McDonald’s, reported no gender pay gap at all.

The average pay gap across all companies which declared data was 9.7 per cent in favour of men.