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The government has committed to introducing mandatory ethnicity and disability pay gap reporting for large employers but there’s no timescale yet.

In March 2025 a consultation was published asking for views on how to introduce mandatory ethnicity and disability pay reporting for large employers (those with 250 or more employees), with a view to including this in the forthcoming Equality (Race and Disability) Bill.

In its response to the consultation the government has committed to taking forward all but one of the proposals set out in the consultation – those relating to additional reporting requirements for public bodies.

It will develop guidance and practical tools to support employers with the new reporting requirements, including:

• guidance on how employers can improve employee declaration rates on ethnicity and disability
• detailed step-by-step guidance on how to make the calculations, and
• advice on actions to address ethnicity and disability pay gaps

In brief, the government intend to implement the following:

• align ethnicity and disability pay gap reporting with the existing framework for mandatory gender pay gap reporting - that is, apply mandatory reporting to employers with 250 or more employees, use the same geographic scope, require the same 6 calculations, share the same ‘snapshot’ dates for collecting pay information and statutory reporting dates, require employers to upload their ethnicity and disability pay gap data to an online reporting platform, and be subject to the same enforcement mechanisms
• require employers to report on the overall composition of their workforce by ethnicity and disability (also referred to as ‘workforce reporting’) and the proportion of their employees who have declared their ethnicity and disability data
• require employers to take actions to address any ethnicity and disability pay gaps, in line with the plans being taken forward to introduce equality action plans on gender and the menopause