Our response: Consultation on draft Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Strategy

On 5 November 2021 we published a consultation on our draft Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Strategy and a revision of our updated draft Equality Impact Assessment (EqIA) documentation. The consultation covered England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Details of the consultation were made available on our website. We also alerted over 100 stakeholders to the consultation directly by email.

We extended the deadline for responses from 28 January to 14 February 2022 to allow more time for responses.

We received five responses on the Strategy, four from organisations and one from an individual. No comments were received on the EQIA documentation.

We are discussing both the Strategy and the EQIA documentation with the Equalities Commission of Northern Ireland.

Points were made on a variety of themes. We summarise them here alongside our response.

We are able to adopt suggestions made in the following areas and have updated our strategy accordingly. We will:

• include statistical data on the numbers of people within the UK population who identify as LGBTI
• specify the target audiences for Learning and Development and ensure senior management engagement with it
• consider creating a mentoring opportunity for underrepresented groups
• commit to increasing and improving the collection of data
• acknowledge that our current workforce data is under-representative of the UK ethnic minority population
• celebrate diversity, achievements and planned improvements through events
• detail how we will mitigate concerns about disclosing data for those with protected characteristics
• consider how we will support career progression for staff in under-represented groups
• commit to exploring and educating ourselves on reasonable adjustments
• continue to ensure recruitment practices do not disadvantage disabled applicants.

Some further actions were suggested which we have not accepted for one or more of the following reasons:

• We do not have the power or remit to take the suggested actions
• Our size makes it impractical to take suggested actions
• We already take the actions suggested or are planning to take them