Each year we publish our Gender Pay Gap statistics for the UK in 2025, which is a legal requirement in the UK. We published our 2025 statistics on 1 April.
Here’s what Will Gardiner, Drax CEO said about our commitment to improve gender balance and equity:
“At Drax I want everyone, whatever their role or background, to feel valued, included and able to fulfil their potential. That is why we’re building a Drax for all, a great place to work for everyone.
Our Gender Pay Gap Report is one way we hold ourselves accountable. It gives us an important checkpoint to understand where we are making progress on gender balance and equity, and where we need to go further. We want to build a workplace where everyone has access to opportunities to grow and succeed, and where our workforce reflects the communities around us.
There’s still more to do, but we are committed to taking meaningful action to build a fair, safe and inclusive Drax for all.”
Understanding our Gender Pay Gap Reporting
At Drax, we work hard to ensure we pay all colleagues consistently and fairly and in line with the market. The way the Gender Pay Gap is calculated doesn’t necessarily mean that men and women are being paid unfairly for the same work. Instead, it reflects the impact of many different issues from broader economic, social and cultural trends that can impact pay.
All UK companies with 250 or more employees to report their gender pay gap, for us this includes Drax Power Limited (DPL) and Drax Energy Solution (DES). Our Gender Pay Gap uses a reporting snapshot date of 5th April 2025 and shows the average (mean) and median pay & bonus difference between all men and women, no matter their role in Drax.
The gap can be measured in various ways, and it’s important to understand how, in any specific context, the gap is being measured.
Mean
The mean is worked out by adding together all the hourly rates of pay for each gender and then dividing the total by the total number of people of that gender. The mean pay gap is the difference between the two numbers, expressed as a percentage. The same calculation is also done for bonus pay in the same period, to find the mean bonus gap.
Median
If all women were lined up in order of how much they are paid, the median would be the amount paid to the woman in the middle of the line. The same applies to men. The median pay gap is the difference between these two numbers, expressed as a percentage. As above, this calculation is also done for bonus pay.
What’s our Gender Pay and Bonus Gap for 2025?
This year we saw an overall reduction in our Mean Gender Pay and Bonus Gaps compared to 2024. Both DES and DPL saw a slight reduction in their Mean Gender Pay Gap compared to 2024: DES have a 1.4% reduction and DPL have a 0.5%. As well as a significant reduction in their Mean Bonus Pay Gap compared to 2024: DPL have a 19.5% reduction and DES have a 4.7% reduction.
| Mean | Median | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DPL | DES | DPL | DES | |
| Gender Pay Gap | 12.19% | 17.7% | 14.86% | 24.99% |
| Gender Bonus Gap | 19.47% | 35.98% | 19.66% | 47.85% |
Quartiles
To help explain our Gender Pay Gap, we sorted all colleagues from highest to lowest pay and split them into four equal groups, called quartiles.
What we found is that men are more likely to be in the highest paying jobs, while women are more often in the lowest paying jobs at DPL and DESL. This is partly because there are more men in senior leadership roles but is also impacted by the kinds of roles men and women do at Drax and the typical pay those jobs bring.
| 2024/25 Quartiles | DPL | DESL | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Men | Women | Men | Women | |
| Upper Quartile | 73% | 27% | 68% | 32% |
| Middle to Upper Quartile | 80% | 20% | 54% | 46% |
| Lower to Middle Quartile | 74% | 26% | 34% | 66% |
| Lower Quartile | 53% | 47% | 36% | 64% |
Making progress on Gender Balance
In 2027 we will be publishing an action plan that addresses how we intend to continue to reduce our gender pay gap in the UK.
As part of addressing our Gender Pay Gap at this time, we are working to ensure inclusion, safety and fair representation and progression for women at Drax.
How we’re doing that:
- Improving talent attraction and recruitment processes, to increase the volume and quality of women candidates applying to and joining Drax, with emphasis on senior management hiring and the executive search firms Drax partners with.
- Enhancing succession planning processes, to increase the volume of women identified as succession to senior management positions.
- Increasing the percentage of women involved in management development and high potential programmes.
- Women@Drax, our Colleague Resource Group has around 200 members, who alongside their Chairs and senior sponsor celebrate women and advocate for gender balance.
- All major sites across Drax have now introduced workwear that is tailored to fit all bodies, and specifically for women alongside free menstrual products.
- We have extensive support around women’s health through fertility, sexual health, and extensive menopause support through our partnership with Peppy.
And we’re making slow and steady progress in some areas with increases across many of our key gender balance measures, but we know we need to do more.
| Global Gender Balance | Feb-25 | Feb-26 |
|---|---|---|
| Total Women in Leadership (ExCom & their Direct Reports) | 33% | 34% |
| Total Women in Middle Management (2nd & 3rd line reports to ExCom) | 40% | 42% |
| Total Women at Drax | 29% | 28% |
