The Equality Act brings in protected characteristics as the grounds upon which discrimination is unlawful. The protected characteristics under the Act are:
- Age
- Disability
- Gender
- Pregnancy and maternity
- Race
- Religion or belief
- Sexual orientation
- Trans gender
We have arranged our Single Equality Scheme in a manner which takes account of these protected characteristics by setting objectives and having an action plan for each of them. We are looking after pregnancy and maternity as part of our gender strand at the moment. Every year we publish information about who we talked to and what we did to show how our Scheme has advanced Equality and Diversity.
The Equality Act also brought in a new Public Sector Equality Duty made up of general duties for everyone in the public sector plus some specific ones for further education colleges. The general duty covers the protected characteristics listed above and it requires us to have due regard, that is to consciously think about, the need to:
- Eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation and other conduct prohibited by the Act.
This means ensuring that there is no less favourable treatment for protected groups and no factors give rise to indirect discrimination.
- Advance equality of opportunity between people from different groups.
This involves meeting the needs of people with shared protected characteristics and minimising disadvantages they might encounter and encouraging them to participate in college life.
- Foster good relations between people from different groups.
This involves challenging prejudice head on and helping people from different groups understand and respect each other better.
This year we are going to assess how we are doing by using the Equality Framework. We’ll be asking community representatives to join us in this review.
The specific duties require us to publish:
- Equality objectives by April 2012 on a four year cycle.
- Annual information to demonstrate our compliance with the equality duty by January 2012.
We already publish objectives in our Single Equality Scheme which includes the actions we intend to take to achieve them. Our Scheme runs until December 2012 so we will be publishing separate objectives as well in April 2012. We will then use the next Single Equality Scheme as one of the tools by which we will work towards our objectives.
We already publish information to demonstrate compliance with the equality duty. We do this annually in our Single Equality Scheme annual report, so for January 2012 we will continue to publish the information in that document. The information that we are now required to publish relates to our staff and others affected by their policies and practices, such as learners, who share a relevant protected characteristic so the format of our report might be a bit different from last year.
As part of our public duty responsibilities, we need to analyse the impact that our actions may have on advancing Equality and on those people covered by the protected characteristics. This process is called Equality Analysis and its purpose is to:
- identify unintended consequences and mitigate them as far as it is possible;
- consider how developments to policy might support the advancement of equality and fostering good relations.
We need to demonstrate that we have consciously thought about everybody when we want to make changes to our policies or the ways we do things and to provide evidence that we have done this thinking. This means that consideration of Equality issues must influence the decisions reached in how we act as:
- an employer
- developing and reviewing policies
- designing and delivering our services
- commissioning and buying
We have already been undertaking a process which is similar to this which in previous legislation was known as Equality Impact Assessment. You can find our screenings for Equality Impact Assessments at the end of the policies we have on the website. We will continue to make these available until the policies are reviewed so everyone can see that we have been thinking about advancing Equality and Diversity when we write policies.