Women are on average paid 14 per cent more than men by Epsom and Ewell Borough Council according to data from the Government Equalities Office.

This pay gap represents wages across all jobs in the council and so is not an 'equal pay' issue, which addresses pay differences between men and women who have similar jobs.

According to the council, there are equal levels of genders working at the council itself - for instance an equal number of men and women are in the senior leadership team.

However, jobs in lower paying, manual roles which are predominately filled by men - 82 per cent of the Operation Services Team (rubbish collections and street cleaning) are male.

A spokesman for Epsom and Ewell Borough Council said: "Our aim when recruiting is to get the best person for the job, no matter their gender, and to encourage and support each employee with fair and equal opportunity to progress and develop."

New Government regulations require employers to publish their gender pay gap figures for the first time.

The deadline was April 1, 2018.

Organisations had to publish median gender pay gap figures, which represents the ‘typical’ gender difference.

The mean is also published, and this is what takes into account the low and high earners in an organisation.

According to the Equalities Office women are often over-represented at the low earning extreme and men are over-represented at the high earning extreme, although this doesn't appear to be the case with the council.