A councillor claims Kent County Council is not doing enough to close its gender pay gap.

Cllr Dr Lauren Sullivan (Lab) believes more needs to be done to ensure women are generally not paid less than men.

On average their male employees earn 11.1% more than women.

Cllr Sullivan said: "The whole point of this gender pay gap is to look at the fundamental reasons why this is an issue.

"So we have got to look at what we are doing about flexible working and career progression.

"There are so many case studies where women have to take certain jobs because there is nothing else available because of caring responsibilities.

"This is just about all women, flexibility affects all jobs and it's good for men as well."

Head of human resources Paul Royel told the personnel committee there were a "whole host of activities" to break down barriers for people to develop their careers.

He added: "There are many other organisations that have huge differences in their gender pay gap and some that have smaller.

"We don't believe we have an equal pay issue and the gender pay gap is not a significant one we need to address."

According to the latest figures, there has been an improvement since last year but Mr Royel said more time was needed.

He said: "Although we have reduced it by 1.5%, it would be quite ambitious to say that it is because of actions that have been taken.

"It has taken the national gap 20 years to reduce so I wouldn't expect there to be huge changes from year to year.

"We are talking about the position that women are in within the organisations structurally rather than whether they are paid equitably.

"It's only when you see that movement in staffing population in grades and jobs, you will start to see an impact."

Cllr Sullivan highlighted how even though the top corporate director team is mostly made up of women, the top-earning male director's yearly salary is almost £51,000 more than the top-earning female.

KCC's corporate director of strategic and corporate services David Cockburn earns £194,000 per year while corporate director of growth, transport and transport Barbara Cooper earns £143,236.

However, corporate director in charge of HR Amanda Beer, who has the second-lowest salary among the directors, explains this is due to pay negotiations.

She said: "As a general rule in setting the salary of anyone in the organisation, we have pay bands.

"There are so many case studies where women have to take certain jobs because there is nothing else available because of caring responsibilities" - Cllr Lauren Sullivan

"People will be appointed somewhere in that band.

"In light of the things we always take into account, is the previous experience of individuals whether they are a new recruit or people coming up internally."

However, she added the new corporate director of finance Zena Cooke was paid the same amount of her male predecessor Andy Wood, who retired with an annual salary of £139,469.

Cllr Bryan Sweetland (Con) criticised this negotiation tactic for not rewarding loyalty to those who say with KCC and favouring external candidates.

He said: "If you move around three or five times, you are going to go further up the pay scales than if you stay here.

"If you've got people who want to work their way right through the ranks up to director level, we don't reward that loyalty.

"They are just going to stay at the bottom of the pay scale."

Amanda Beer admitted this was an issue but added most of the positions throughout KCC were filled by existing staff.

She also added "this often is the right thing" as moving jobs involves risk particularly if the employee has to move with their family.