Equality

Equalities

Equalities

Stroud District Council is firmly committed to providing and promoting equality for all its employees, service users and the wider community.


We aim to ensure that no one living, working or visiting the district is unfairly discriminated against on grounds of age, disability, gender reassignment, pregnancy, maternity, marriage, civil partnership, race, religion, belief, sex (gender) or sexual orientation. We will work with our partners in the private, public and community sectors to achieve our equality objectives.


Equality Act 2010

About the Equality Act 2010

The Equality Act 2010 came in to force on 1 October 2010.

The Act brings together separate pieces of legislation into one single Act simplifying the law and strengthening it in important ways to help tackle discrimination and inequality.

The nine main pieces of legislation that have merged are:

  • the Equal Pay Act 1970
  • the Sex Discrimination Act 1975
  • the Race Relations Act 1976
  • the Disability Discrimination Act 1995
  • the Employment Equality (Religion or Belief) Regulations 2003
  • the Employment Equality (Sexual Orientation) Regulations 2003
  • the Employment Equality (Age) Regulations 2006
  • the Equality Act 2006, Part 2
  • the Equality Act (Sexual Orientation) Regulations 2007

The Government Equalities Office has produced a series of summary guides explaining how the changes to the law affect different people and organisations and providing practical examples. Equality Act 2010: What do I need to know?

Provisions from 1 October 2010

  • The basic framework of protection against direct and indirect discrimination, harassment and victimisation in services and public functions; premises; work; education; associations, and transport.
  • Changing the definition of gender reassignment, by removing the requirement for medical supervision.
  • Levelling up protection for people discriminated against because they are perceived to have, or are associated with someone who has, a protected characteristic, so providing new protection for people like carers.
  • Clearer protection for breastfeeding mothers;
  • Applying the European definition of indirect discrimination to all protected characteristics.
  • Extending protection from indirect discrimination to disability.
  • Introducing a new concept of "discrimination arising from disability", to replace protection under previous legislation lost as a result of a legal judgment.
  • Applying the detriment model to victimisation protection (aligning with the approach in employment law).
  • Harmonising the thresholds for the duty to make reasonable adjustments for disabled people.
  • Extending protection from 3rd party harassment to all protected characteristics.
  • Making it more difficult for disabled people to be unfairly screened out when applying for jobs, by restricting the circumstances in which employers can ask job applicants questions about disability or health.
  • Allowing hypothetical comparators for direct gender pay discrimination.
  • Making pay secrecy clauses unenforceable.
  • Extending protection in private clubs to sex, religion or belief, pregnancy and maternity, and gender reassignment.
  • Introducing new powers for employment tribunals to make recommendations which benefit the wider workforce.
  • Harmonising provisions allowing voluntary positive action.

The 'protected characteristics' referred to above are:

  • Age
  • Disability
  • Gender reassignment
  • Marriage and civil partnership
  • Pregnancy and maternity
  • Race
  • Religion and belief
  • Sex
  • Sexual orientation

For more information see http://www.equalities.gov.uk/equality_bill.aspx

The general duty (effective 5 April 2011)

The general duty, in summary, requires public bodies, and other organisations exercising public functions, to have due regard to the need to:

  • eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation and other conduct prohibited by the Act.
  • advance equality of opportunity between people who share a protected characteristic and those who do not; and to
  • foster good relations between people who share a protected characteristic and those who do not.
  • For more information see www.equalities.gov.uk/equality_bill.aspx

Useful Links and Documents

Workforce Equalities Data

We are in the process of updating our monitoring systems and further information will be available in March 2013.

Human Rights

Human rights are rights and freedoms that belong to all individuals regardless of their nationality and citizenship. They are fundamentally important in maintaining a fair and civilised society.

Equality Framework for Local Government

This framework is designed to ensure that local authorities consider equality issues at all levels of council policy and practice. It acts as a framework to help local authorities introduce a comprehensive and systematic approach to dealing with equality issues and enables them to meet their obligations.

Corporate Equality & Diversity Policy

Hate Crime

Hate crime is when someone attacks another person verbally, in writing, or perhaps physically, and the crime is driven by the attacker's prejudice against a particular group of people. It include things like name calling and verbal abuse, bullying and harassment, physical attacks, damage to property, graffiti, and written notes, emails and text messages. While more hate crime is verbal than physical, that does not mean it's not serious, or very upsetting for the person being harassed.

The important thing with hate crime is that it's down to the attacker's perception of the other person. For example, John writes Paul a nasty email because he thinks Paul is gay. Even if Paul is not actually gay, John was still attacking him because John thought he was. That is still a homophobic hate crime, because of the motivation of the attacker.

The most common forms of hate crime are racism, homophobia and disablism.

  • Racism: When a person commits a crime against someone because of the colour of their skin, their ethnic background, their accent or use of a foreign language; that is racism - a hate crime.
  • Homophobia: When someone is victimised because of their sexuality, because they are, or the attacker thinks they are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transsexual, that is hate crime.
  • Disablism is the disadvantage faced by disabled people. It happens when they are singled out, excluded or treated badly because they have an impairment.  Hate crimes against disabled people are a form of Disablism. 
  • Other kinds of hate crime: Violence or harassment against people because of their religion, refugee or asylum seeker status, age or gender identity is also hate crime. Domestic violence can also be considered by the police to be a hate crime, but is treated separately.

Hate Crime Film

This film is to raise awareness of what a hate crime / hate incident is; to encourage reporting of such events; how to report one; and the support you can expect.

This film has been produced by the Gloucestershire Hate Crime Partnership and the National Star College.

What should you do if it happens to you or someone you know?

Don't retaliate: you could risk violence or make the situation worse.

Do tell someone about it: hate crime is inexcusable and should be dealt with as soon as possible. If you're at school or college, tell a teacher or staff member what has happened and they'll help you sort it out and help you decide whether you want to inform the police.

If you prefer to talk to someone independently, you can call the free phone helpline on 0800 077 8460 or use the reporting form.

If an incident goes unreported, the perpetrators are free to do the same thing again to you or someone else. Some individuals within our communities are seen as easy targets because they suffer in silence.

Reporting these incidents, even anonymously, helps us to pinpoint problems so we can do something about them and make our communities safer for everyone.

The Gloucestershire Hate Crime & Incident Group is committed to identifying and combating hate crimes and hate incidents. Our partnership agencies have trained and experienced staff who deal with enquiries in strictest confidence.

Tell us what happened; don't suffer in silence.

Equality Impact Assessments (EIA)

The purpose of these impact assessments is to ensure that our activities do not disadvantage a particular section of the community (in respect of a protected characteristic) in any way. They can also identify any adverse impacts or missed opportunities and encourage change in order to create a positive impact.

Employment Data

Health

Housing

Housing Need

The Council has assessed the housing needs for particular groups. Details can be found below (chapter 13).

Community Data

To help services make informed decisions about the impacts of what they do, proposals for change and development, they need to know about the communities they serve.

Some information is gathered from customer feedback, complaints, monitoring forms etc.

Other information relies on looking beyond the Council for information. Here are some web resources available to provide information

Gloucestershire Research and Intelligence – In form

In form Gloucestershire provides a comprehensive source of current statistical Information about Gloucestershire. It is designed to meet the needs of a range of users from partner agencies in the Gloucestershire Conference through to the general public.

Neighbourhood Statistics

Free to access. Lots of information about local communities and lifestyles in local areas. Can be searched by post code or other types of area.

Labour Market Statistics - Office of National Statistics

Equality Measurement Framework

A framework that can be used to assess equality and human rights on things people say are important to them, such as standard of living, being healthy, opportunities for education, being free from crime and the fear of crime. It is particularly concerned with the position of individuals and groups with regard to characteristics such as age, disability, ethnicity, gender, religion or belief, sexual orientation, transgender and social class.