Issue - meetings

Report of Asisstant Director Customer Focus

Purpose of report

To consider the draft action plan for delivering the council’s equality, diversity and inclusion commitments for creating inclusive communities and services, which are set out in its Equalities Framework, Including Everyone.

Recommendations

The Overview and Scrutiny Committee resolves:

1.1     To review the draft action plans for Inclusive Communities and Inclusive Services and provide comments for the Executive to consider at its 8 April 2024 meeting.

1.2     To recommend to the Executive that there is a delegation of authority to the Assistant Director for Customer Focus to make minor amendments to the agreed Inclusive Communities and Services Action Plans in consultation with the Portfolio Holder for Corporate Services and Chair of the EDI working group.

Resolved

(1)        That having given due consideration, the following comments be referred to Executive for consideration at their 8April meeting:

·       Inclusive Communities action plan Commitments EDI 1.03 and 1.04 – consideration be given to amending the wording in the ‘proposed action’ column to acknowledge the work undertaken so far and providing a commitment to build on that work going forward.

(2)        That Executive be recommended to delegate authority to the Assistant Director for Customer Focus to make minor amendments to the agreed Inclusive Communities and Services Actions Plans, in consultation with the Portfolio Holder for Corporate Services and Chair of the EDI working group.

The Portfolio Holder for Corporate Services introduced the Equality, Diversion and Inclusion (EDI) action plan for 2024-35 and advised that this had been produced in consultation with the EDI working group. The Chairman of the working group, Councillor Coton, provided an update on the group’s work over the last year and provided some examples of how the action plan had been delivered across the district. This included the Everybody’s Wellbeing strategy, the establishment of the Resettlement team to help support refugees, asylum seekers and other vulnerable migrants and the production of updated Human Resource policies to reflect the key EDI principles.

Regarding the structure of the plan, the Committee was advised that the working group proposed to deliver nine actions to deliver Inclusive Communities with the focus on reaching out to underrepresented communities and vulnerable residents, eight actions as part of the Inclusive Services Action Plan to ensure services are accessible to all and seven actions to deliver Inclusive Workplace with the emphasis on training to support employees with different needs. The Inclusive Workplace action plan had been reviewed and agreed by the Personnel Committee at its meeting on the 7 February 2024.

Following a detailed discussion regarding action plan commitments EDI 1.03, Work directly with communities to identify inequality and tackle disadvantage and EDI 1.04 Promote equality, diversity and inclusion through our supply chain and strategic partnerships, it was agreed that the proposed actions for these two items, currently shown as “No actions for 2024/25” should be reconsidered and the plan updated accordingly. The Committee acknowledged that the plan was a starting point and further work would take place in the future to enhance and improve the plan.

The Committee thanked Councillor Coton and the rest of the Working Group for their hard work over the last year in producing the EDI action plan.

Resolved

(1)       That having given due consideration, the following comments be referred to Executive for consideration at their 8April meeting:

·       Inclusive Communities action plan Commitments EDI 1.03 and 1.04 – consideration be given to amending the wording in the ‘proposed action’ column to acknowledge the work undertaken so far and providing a commitment to build on that work going forward.

(2)       That Executive be recommended to delegate authority to the Assistant Director for Customer Focus to make minor amendments to the agreed Inclusive Communities and Services Actions Plans, in consultation with the Portfolio Holder for Corporate Services and Chair of the EDI working group.