Agenda item

The Director of Delivery, Communications and Political Governance submits a report that describes the way equalities considerations are supported and embedded into council business. The commission is asked to note the way in which equality considerations are addressed and to note that it has responsibility to pay ‘due regard’ to the equality implications of the decisions/recommendations it makes in its reports as part of the council’s decision making process.

The Director of Delivery, Communications and Political Governance submitted a report that asked the scrutiny commission to note the way in which equalities considerations were addressed and to note that the commissions had a responsibility to pay ‘due regard’ to the equality implications of the decisions and recommendations they made in their reports.

The Corporate Equalities Lead presented the report and explained that the key focus of their work was to ensure that the council met its equality duties.

The Chair thanked the Corporate Equalities Lead for the report and added that she believed that it was relevant item for consideration by all the scrutiny commissions. 

The following comments were made:

·         It was queried whether an exercise had been carried out to establish what the council were trying to change; should a benchmark be set so that achievement could be measured? Could some of the things the council do be improved to ensure that services fit the needs of local people?

The Director of Delivery, Communications and Political Governance responded that the Research and Intelligence team had been established to help provide a greater understanding of needs in the city and that such information was an important basis for any policy or service change.

·         A query was raised as to how the needs of specific communities were assessed.

It was explained that the equalities team worked with and facilitated divisions assessing the implications of proposed policy and service changes on different groups of local people based on their protected characteristics, and made sure those assessments were robust and evidence based. The Assistant City Mayor for Community Involvement, Partnerships and Equalities responded that the city was very diverse with many minority communities. Consideration was given to meeting the needs of those minority groups. 

It was reported that there are seven established employee groups in the local authority and they played an important role in highlighting needs and workplace issues faced by different groups of staff. The Chair added that she had attended the Equality and Diversity Launch; and that the second part had been particularly insightful as attendees had heard from representatives of the different employee groups.

A member commented that there were no electronic links on the council website to the different employee groups within the local authority.  Officers explained that the groups were advertised on the council’s interface and also in FACE (the staff newsletter). The Chair asked officers to double check as to how the equality groups were advertised externally.

·         It was noted that the report referred to the Stonewall Workforce Equality Index which was focused on lesbian, gay and bisexual staff. It was noted that progress had been made in increasing the council’s rank against the Stonewall index.

·          A question was raised regarding information on the council’s workforce representation in general and Members heard that in the past there had been reports relating to this.

The Director for Delivery, Communications and Political Governance explained that an annual Workforce Monitoring Report was produced and that the Vice Chair of the Overview Select Committee had very recently requested that a review be undertaken focusing on workforce representation. The Director had suggested that this report could be used as a basis from which the review could progress.

·         It was noted that in some circumstances a full Equality Impact Assessment need not be undertaken and the Corporate Equality Lead confirmed that this was the case; however it was important to ensure that the processes were robust and that evidence of consideration of potential equality issues was available in the event of a challenge.

The Chair concluded the discussion and stated that she welcomed the raising of the issue which was becoming increasingly important.

RESOLVED:

                        that the report be noted.