Equality and diversity

Promoting equality of opportunity and celebrating the diversity of Richmondshire is one of the Council's core values, helping us to achieve our vision of making Richmondshire a place where everyone has "the opportunity to reach their full potential ".

 

 

We are actively committed to ensuring that there is no discrimination, injustice or inequality in the way we plan and deliver our services against individuals or groups on the grounds of disability, race, ethnic or national origin, age, gender, marital status, sexual orientation, social or economic status, religion or political beliefs. Our first Equal Opportunities Statement was approved in 1997, and reviewed in 2004. Our current Equal Opportunities and Diversity Statement, was approved by full Council in December 2004, and renews our commitment to achieving equality of opportunity and valuing diversity. This is currently being reviewed as part of our refresh of our Equality and Diversity Strategy.

 

 

The Council, along with other public bodies, has a duty to promote race, disability and gender equality. In 2002 we prepared our first Race Equality Scheme which was refreshed in 2008. The Race Equality Scheme 2008-11 contains actions to ensure all residents have equal and fair access to services. 

 

Our equality scheme for disability was produced in 2007.  The Disability Equality Scheme 2007-11 and supporting Action Plan sets out what we are doing to improve our service delivery for people with disabilities.  

 

Our third Equality Scheme for Gender was also produced in 2008 and includes an Action Plan to enable us to improve our approaches on gender issues across our services. The Gender Equality Scheme 2007-10 sets out our direction.

 

All three scheme have been prepared at different times by different individuals and therefore work is currently underway to bring all three schemes into a single Corporate Equality Scheme which will be published in 2010.

 

 

Since 2004 a Corporate Equality and Diversity steering group, comprising a cross section of officers together with an Equality and Diversity Spokesperson from the Council's Strategy Board (previously a Member Equality Champion) have been driving forward equality and diversity across the Council. This has included the monitoring of a programme of Equality Impact Assessment for our services. The purpose of the Group is to also co-ordinate a programme of improvements to ensure our services are accessible to all and that they meet the diverse needs of all residents, and that we are an equal opportunity employer. The Group is now using the Local Government Equality Framework to assess Council's progress since 2004 and to identify further work required to move to the 'Developing' level of the framework. The Council met Level 2 of the former Equality Standard. 

 

Our Equal Opportunities and Diversity Strategy and Action Plan 2005-8 , which was approved by full Council in February 2005 is currently being reviewed and refreshed and will be re-published in early 2010.

 

 

Our current 2008-9 performance  is set out in our documents Equality and Diversity Employment Monitoring and Gender Equality Scheme Annual Report.

 

For more information contact:

 

Tony Clark
Executive Director/ Deputy Chief Executive

Tel 01748 827002

 

e-mail: tony.clark@richmondshire.gov.uk

 

If you would like any Council documents in large print or any other format please get in touch.