Agenda item

The Director of Delivery, Communications and Political Governance submits a report providing an update on progress against actions identified in the Equality Action Plan 2018/19 and an overview of the draft refreshed action plan for 2019/20.  The Committee is recommended to note and make comment on the progress made against the previous year’s action plan and the draft action plan for 2019/20.

The Director of Delivery, Communications and Political Governance submitted a report providing an update on progress against actions identified in the Equality Action Plan 2018/19 and an overview of the draft refreshed Action Plan for 2019/20. 

The Equalities Manager introduced the report, making the following points:

·           The Action Plan would help the Council deliver inclusive and responsive services;

·           Good feedback had been received from the Equality Impact Assessment (EIA) workshops held to date;

·           Deaf and hard of hearing service users had been invited to use the Customer Services in Granby Street, to help identify how deaf awareness training and other recommendations could be developed and the Council’s work on the British Sign Language Charter progressed.  This was an ongoing area of work;

·           Two important areas of focus for the coming year would be digital inclusion and the new City Listening Project;

·           It was hoped to expand the successful “Don’t judge a book by its cover” (human library) event.  A Lived Experience Panel would support this;

·           Work to address the under representation of officers from black or minority ethnic (BAME) backgrounds at the most senior levels of the Council was ongoing;

·           Work also would continue to raise awareness of the guidance for supporting trans staff;

·           The Plan outlined the Council’s commitment to improve access to work.  This included the intention to introduce a portal offer by the end of next year to enable staff to self-serve to get reasonable adjustments made to their working environment; and

·           Problems previously had been experienced with obtaining information from voluntary and community services about digital support on offer in Leicester, but approaches were now being made to social workers and some mapping was being undertaken in the community.

The Committee welcomed the work being done through the Action Plan and the robust way in which equality challenges were being addressed.  The offer of an EIA workshop for Chairs and Vice-Chairs also was welcomed.

It was questioned how service users could engage in digital transformation.  The Equalities Manager explained that it was recognised that this was a wide subject, so as a first stage work was ongoing to map current provision of digital services in the Council.  Work also was being done on communicating with service users more effectively about the services and improving sign-posting to services.  The next phase of the work would be to decide how this should be monitored.

In response to a question on how the private sector assisted people without IT skills and equipment and those experiencing language barriers, the Equalities Manager explained that various companies, such as banks, had programmes of assistance.  This also could come from “social value”, which the Council now looked for in contracts it procured.  In the meantime, work was underway to identify the channels currently used to reach people and the range of help that they needed.  The Equalities team was working with the Smart Cities team to embed this in the latter’s work. 

Some concern was expressed that, despite stated intentions to the contrary, the recruitment of senior staff from BAME backgrounds had regressed.  The Director of Delivery, Communications and Political Governance advised the Committee that the City Mayor chaired a group of officers and Councillors considering BAME representation.  A lot of work had been done to remove unconscious barriers from job descriptions and anonymised short listing was used.  A report giving further information on this could be presented to the Committee in due course if wished.

The City Mayor confirmed that the overall composition of the Council’s workforce was generally representative of the city, but not at senior level, although it was recognised that recruitment at that level tended to be from a national pool of candidates.  The Council was not complacent about this and acknowledged the need to encourage existing staff to apply for senior roles. 

Members reported that feedback they received as Ward Councillors was that some residents found various barriers to accessing services.  It therefore was suggested that it would be useful to have a central point to report these occurrences to, so that opportunities people were missing, or situations they were having difficulties with, could be used to inform future work.  The City Mayor undertook to advise the Assistant City Mayor with responsibility for Equalities and Special Projects of this suggestion.

In summary, the City Mayor welcomed the work that was being done and thanked the Council’s employee groups for their support of it.

AGREED:

1)     That the report be noted;

2)     That the Director of Delivery, Communications and Political Governance be asked to provide this Committee with a report at an appropriate time on work being done to improve black and minority ethnic representation at senior officer levels in the Council;

3)     That the Assistant City Mayor with responsibility for Equalities and Special Projects be asked to liaise with Members to consider the suggestion that a central point be established to which incidences of people experiencing difficulties accessing aspects of the Council’s work can be reported and used to inform future work; and

4)     That the Equalities Manager be asked to advise the Council’s employee groups of the City Mayor’s appreciation of those groups’ input to the development of Equality Action Plans.