The gender pay gap for staff working at the University of East Anglia is almost 20%, new figures show.

The Norwich university has reported its gender pay gap, as all organisations with more than 250 employees will be required to do by law from next Wednesday, April 4.

Its gender pay gap report reveals a mean gender pay gap of 18.93%, with women earning an average of £14.86 an hour compared to men's £18.33.

The gender pay gap measures the difference between total earnings of men and women.

In its gender pay gap report, UEA said the differences 'largely' resulted from lower paid roles at the university being 'typically occupied by women'.

It added that it was a direct employer of campus-based operational service and support roles, a high proportion of which are part-time.

The mean gender bonus gap was 71.09%, with men earning an average of £7,986 in bonuses compared with £2,308 for women, but the university cautioned that this gap reduced to 12.09% once NHS Clinical Excellence Awards were removed.

UEA said the proportion of women receiving a bonus is 1.86% (54 women out of 2,900 employees) and the proportion of men receiving a bonus is 2.67% (53 men out of 1,987).

Pro-vice-chancellor for equality and diversity at UEA, Sarah Barrow, said: 'We welcome the opportunity to publish our first report on gender pay and highlight the work we are doing to ensure gender equality.

'As an employer we are committed to ensuring equality of opportunity and equality of pay; our equal pay audit is conducted every two years and we carry out robust job evaluation methodologies to ensure people are paid according to the levels of responsibility within their roles.

'We value equality and have worked consistently to address the issue; this first gender pay gap report highlights that we have much more work to do in certain areas, that the causes of the gap are complex and often reflect the distribution of roles at the university which in itself needs to be challenged.'

UEA said it promotes equality through a 'supportive' work environment, continual professional development, policy reviews and recruiting, retaining and promoting women.