Equality Information
Equality Public Duties – (Information publication)
The Council has a statutory responsibility under Equality Law, known as the "General Public Sector Duty" to have "due regard" to the need to –
• Eliminate discrimination, harassment, victimisation and other prohibited conduct
• Advance equality of opportunity
• Foster good relations between different (defined) groups*
In order to fulfil this general duty, the Government has powers to require public bodies to undertake defined actions – which are known as the “Specific duties” and are implemented by Ministerial Orders. Previously, the specific duties included the requirements to produce an Equality Scheme for a number of key Equality strands including Race, Disability and Gender.
The Government has now changed these requirements in order to promote greater transparency and more flexibility in how public bodies fulfil these obligations.
The new requirements are to agree Equality Objectives (by April 2012 and every four years thereafter) and annually publish information that relates to workforce equality and service delivery.
This page of our website contains information about our workforce and services. We will add to this as more information becomes available. In particular, from April 2012 we will be conducting a new equality monitoring exercise with all our staff to provide us with fresh data on the protected characteristics of our workforce relating to for example, disability, ethnicity, sexual orientation and religion/belief.
Attached to this page are facts and figures relating to our work force and service provision.
Work Force Equality Report- Data Tables December 2011 (142KB - PDF)
Key findings of the data can be summarised as :
Gender
Overall the Council’s workforce is predominately male (ratio 3:1) and this pattern is broadly repeated through the grades and al management level.
Race
Very few staff have declared their ethnicity, reinforcing the need to conduct a new staff survey (see above)
Disability
Very few staff have declared a disability, reinforcing the need to conduct a new staff survey (see above)
Religion/ Belief
Very few staff have declared a their religion, reinforcing the need to conduct a new staff survey (see above)
Sexual orientation
Very few staff have declared a their sexual orientation, reinforcing the need to conduct a new staff survey (see above)
Age
The overall pattern of age distribution of the Council’s staff is significantly weighted towards the older range of age 40-49, and 50-59
*As abbreviated from section 149 of the Equality Act 2010, summarising the (General) Public sector equality Duty
