Valuing Diversity - The Council's Equality Strategy

Valuing Diversity

North East Lincolnshire Council recognises and values the diversity of the community living, working, visiting and learning in North East Lincolnshire.

The Council also recognises that genuine equality of opportunity for all has yet to be achieved and that discrimination, whether intended or not, is still a fact of life for many.

The Council is therefore committed to working towards developing an environment in which all residents, visitors and employees enjoy equality of opportunity in both service delivery and employment by integrating consideration of diversity and equality issues into everything we do.

What is Diversity?

Diversity is a natural progression from equalities. Where equalities focussed on everyone being treated equally, diversity recognises that some individuals and groups may need different treatment to secure an equal outcome. It may be helpful to use an example to illustrate the point.

A class of children from different ethnic backgrounds is each given a standard comb - they have all been treated equally. Those children from an Afro-Caribbean background cannot use the comb with their curly hair - they do not have equality of outcome.

Using a diversity approach, each child would be given the type of comb needed for their particular hair type, thereby giving equality of both treatment and outcome.

By valuing diversity we recognise that each individual is unique and that our service delivery and employment practice must reflect that fact.

How Will We Do This?

The Council will do this by

Ensuring that equality and diversity are built into our employment practices
Ensuring that equality and diversity are built into our service provision
Promoting equality and diversity with local organisations and partners
Promoting equality and diversity within the local community
This commitment is set out in the Council's revised diversity policy statement

Diversity Policy Statement

The Council is fully committed to the broad principles of social justice and is opposed to any form of discrimination or oppression.

It therefore willingly accepts not only its legal responsibilities but also wishes to embrace best practice in all areas of its work in order to secure equality of both treatment and outcome for all.

The Council is therefore committed to ensuring that no-one is treated in any way less favourably on the grounds of personal differences such as race; colour; national, ethnic or social origin; gender (including reassigned gender); sexual orientation; religious belief; age; disability; marital status; caring responsibilities or political or other personal beliefs.

The Council will implement all necessary action and training to ensure its commitments with regard to equality of treatment and outcome are fulfilled and will regularly monitor and review progress made in this respect.

What are our Strategic Aims?

In order to put this commitment into practice we have identified 5 strategic aims. They are

• To ensure that equality and diversity are seen as a priority in all policy development and planning
• To take positive action to ensure that all sections of our community have equal access to information and to our services
• To consult, involve and encourage the participation of all sections of the community
• To work towards building a workforce that reflects the diversity of our community
• To ensure that our workforce has equality of treatment and outcome in our employment practices

How Will We Achieve our Strategic Aims?

Corporate and directorate level action plans will be developed following an audit of current practice and will ensure that appropriate steps are taken across the Council to make consistent progress.

Action plans will be regularly reviewed and updated to ensure continuous improvement.

The Council will use the overarching Equality Standard for Local Government as the tool to ensure that these aims are achieved and progress will be monitored through BVPI 2.

The Equalities Standard provides a 5-stage framework to achieve a comprehensive approach.

Level 1: Commitment to a comprehensive equality policy
Level 2: Assessment and consultation
Level 3: Setting equality objectives and targets
Level 4: Information systems and monitoring against targets
Level 5: Achieving and reviewing targets

We recognise that we are starting from a low base. Our commitment is, therefore, to achieve Level 5 by the end of 2006/07 at the latest.