Pay Transparency in Job Adverts: What the Government's Consultation Could Mean for Bury Employers
Updated: Oct 24
A consultation with a real deadline
If you've taken on staff recently, you'll know the usual debate: do we put a salary on the job advert, or leave it as "competitive"? The government now wants to settle that question for good. A consultation launched over the summer proposes requiring employers to include pay and conditions information in job adverts, or to give candidates that information in writing before interview where there's no advert at all.
The consultation closes on 27 October 2026, just three weeks from now. It won't become law overnight, and the government itself has described a "long implementation process" after the consultation ends. But the direction of travel is clear, and it's worth understanding now rather than scrambling later.
What's actually being proposed
The headline measure is straightforward: pay information would need to accompany a job advert, or be shared with candidates ahead of interview if no advert was used. The detail is less settled, and is exactly what the consultation is trying to pin down, including:
How wide a salary range can be before it stops being meaningful ("£25,000 to £60,000" tells a candidate very little)
What counts as "pay and conditions" beyond basic salary, including bonuses, overtime and benefits
Whether recruitment agencies share responsibility for getting this right alongside the employer
This sits inside a wider package of equal pay and pay discrimination reforms, which also touches on extending protections beyond sex-based pay claims, mandatory pay audits following tribunal findings, and a proposed Equal Pay Enforcement Unit.
Who would be affected
This is the part that matters most for local employers: as currently drafted, the duty would apply to all employers, with no size or sector exemption mentioned. That's a different shape to existing gender pay gap reporting, which only bites once you have 250 or more employees. A five-person Bury retailer advertising for a bookkeeper would be in scope just as much as a national chain.
Why it's happening now
The consultation is part of a broader push on pay fairness that also looks at outcomes for disabled employees, workers from ethnic minority backgrounds, and outsourced staff, groups the government says are currently underserved by existing equal pay protections. Whatever view you take on the policy itself, the practical reality for employers is the same: more documentation, more consistency, and less room for ad hoc pay decisions made on the fly.
What Bury employers can do before the rules land
Nothing is confirmed yet, and nothing needs signing off this week. But a few sensible, low-effort steps now will save a scramble later:
Start drafting indicative pay ranges for your main roles, even informally, so you're not starting from nothing when a template is needed
Review how pay decisions get made for new hires, and whether there's a consistent process or it varies by who's doing the recruiting
If you use a recruitment agency, ask how they currently handle pay information in the adverts they place on your behalf
Keep half an eye on the outcome of the consultation after 27 October, since final requirements, including any detail on range width, will follow from there
The bigger picture
This is one more example of employment administration creeping into territory that used to sit purely with HR, but increasingly touches payroll, recruitment and record-keeping all at once. For many owner-managed Bury and Greater Manchester businesses, that means pay-related decisions need the same kind of paper trail as tax ones already do.
At Jackson Lee Accountants, we keep an eye on exactly this kind of change so our Bury clients aren't caught out when a consultation turns into a requirement. If you'd like a sense-check on how your current pay and recruitment processes might need to adapt, get in touch, there's no need to wait for the final rules to start thinking it through.
Need a hand with this? We're accountants in Bury, and our payroll and auto-enrolment service covers it for a fixed fee.
Talk it through with us
If this affects you, book a free, no-obligation 30-minute chat by phone, Teams or at our Bury office, or see your fixed fee online in 2 minutes. Prefer to talk now? Call 0161 327 0047.
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