Our Gender Pay Gap Report 2022

7 May 2023

At Swim England, our vision of a nation swimming is wholly-inclusive. We believe all of our people deserve to be treated fairly and consistently whatever their background or protected characteristic. As such, we are committed to ensuring equal and fair pay for comparable roles and we will always strive to continuously ensure there is equality.

In preparing this annual report, we’ve assessed the reward received by everyone who worked with and provided services for us personally (employees, casual workers and self-employed contractors) in the April 2022 pay month. In this month, Swim England had 398 workers who received full pay. We had an average (mean) gender pay gap of 10 per cent, and a mid-point (median) gender pay gap of 10 per cent.

Download a PDF of our 2022 report.

Gender pay gap

Difference between male and female	Average (mean)	Mid-point (median)
Gender Pay Gap	10%	10%

Pay quartiles

During the April 2022 pay period, of the workers’ pay, there was an overall gender split of 62 per cent female and 38 per cent male. These quartile graphs demonstrate the proportion of females and males in each pay quartile, with 113 workers in the Lower Quartile, 86 in the Lower Middle, 71 in the Upper Middle and 128 in the Upper Quartile.
Gender pay gap report 2022

In 2022 we continued to abide by our pay principles to ensure pay rates are fairly applied across comparable roles for our employed, casual and contracted workers. In this reporting period Swim England made no bonus payments.

How we will make a difference

Our previous report referenced two specific ambitious projects, our progress in these and other projects is summarised in this updated report.

In 2022, we delivered a targeted insight campaign into the barriers preventing ethnically diverse communities from accessing aquatics. We had initially titled the project ‘Swimming and Me’ yet launched the campaign under the heading of ‘[England] Swims’. We worked with over 100 partner individuals and organisations, including Sporting Equals and the Muslim Sports Foundation, and the campaign brought in more than 4000 responses.

Our Insight Team have been working hard to analyse and share the insight from the campaign. This has included presentations to stakeholders such as Clubs, Operators (Pools), Local Authorities, Active Partnerships, Industry Partners, Supporting Organisations and Commercial Partners. Alongside the Headline Findings, a collection of “spotlight on…” reports, looking at individual ethnic and faith communities have all been published on our website, enabling the research to be accessible to all. We aim to continue to learn from this valuable insight and the partnerships we’ve formed to prevent and reduce the barriers to people from diverse ethnic communities in accessing aquatics.

Work towards our ‘Ripple Effect’ project has continued. We are now working in partnership with National Disability Sports Organisations (NDSOs) to increase inclusion and accessibility across our volunteering structure, by co-producing solutions. The project has so far engaged 32 volunteers and our next step will be to connect the volunteers with local clubs to identify suitable volunteering opportunities. The aim of the project is to increase the inclusivity of our volunteering pathway by learning from our partners and volunteers. The solutions identified will be implemented within the existing pathway to ensure a sustainable impact for current and future disabled volunteers.

In addition, we published our Diversity and Inclusion Action Plan (DIAP). The plan lays out the work that we will be doing across all areas of equality, diversity and inclusion. Our activities are driven by our ambition to promote inclusion in everything we do. Our work is split across our ‘core’ work and work that specifically enhances the understanding of communities who are currently under-served, taking a place-based approach to addressing inequalities.

In 2023, we plan to publish our next 10-year strategy ‘Access Aquatics’, which will be the most ambitious yet in tackling inequalities. We renew our commitment to attracting and retaining the very best people for our sport, from all sectors of the community, as well as continuing to constantly review our pay principles to ensure fairness for all.

With this strategy, our projects and our other ambitions, we can ensure that we take aim at tackling inequalities across all of our work areas, to progress towards our aim of ‘A Nation Swimming’.