[To receive an update from the Equalities Champion on work carried out to date and plans for the future.]
Minutes:
The Chair welcomed Cllr Gakhal to the meeting. Cllr Gakhal updated the Board on the work that had been carried out in relation to equalities in the Council including the 2011 census and the breakdown of ethnicity and religion.
Cllr Gakhal stated that since he had been appointed the Council had undergone a peer assessment and achieved excellent status which he was very pleased about and which highlighted how well the Council was doing. Cllr Gakhal expressed his thanks to the Head of Equalities and all his team who had worked tirelessly to achieve this excellent status.
Cllr Gakhal updated the Board in relation to the new Maternity and Paternity buddy scheme which was now starting and meant that when people come back from maternity leave they would not feel alienated, It was thought that this was a significant change for the Council.
In September 2018 the Council had achieved Pledge 5 in British Sign Language and were now the only council in the United Kingdom with Pledge 2 and Pledge 5.
Cllr Gakhal highlighted the wonderful work that had been carried out in the Windrush Citizen Project and that this had not just been for the Afro Caribbean community, it had been a fantastic job.
Unconscious bias training continued to be rolled out through the Council making us one of a few organisations to do this along with the introduction of name blind job applications.
The Equality Advisory Group continued to do great work including scrutinising work force profile reports to help identify any gaps.
Cllr Gakhal stated that he had attended the last Deaf Forum meeting and that he hoped to take this group back into the community to help increase participation.
Other events of note included the Ceremony for Sri Lankan genocide victims, the Windrush exhibition at the library showing immigrants working in industry and an event on being a female councillor which 14 women had attended.
The Board agreed that the Council was on a journey, and many of them had been there at the beginning with out of date human resources information which was not meaningful. The Council should be very proud of the accreditation and seek to build on it as the job was not yet finished regarding gender, disability or sexuality. Return figures from employees regarding LGBT information were lower than the national and there was still some concern that people were fearful of saying.
The Board congratulated Cllr Gakhal and the Head of Equalities as well as Cllr Paula Brookfield and Ian Claymore who had been at the helm of equalities in the Council.
Cllr Paula Brookfield expressed some concerns regarding feedback from the Future Leaders programme as there appeared to be a real dearth of people from ethnic groups applying to go on it. Cllr Brookfield stated that if the Council could not engage with them at this stage how would they have a chance to move up the organisation?
It was agreed that there should be a bi annual report to Scrutiny Board regarding work being done by the Equalities Champion and the Council. It was also agreed that the Council could look internally at promotion and training packages.
Resolved: That the update be welcomed