Our commitment to achieving equality and diversity
poke game online www.vipkacakiddaa.net Cambridgeshire County Council works hard to ensure that we are fair and accessible to everyone, including people who are:
- using our services, in need of our services or may need our services in future
- living in, working in or visiting Cambridgeshire
- colleagues or prospective colleagues; contractors supplying goods or services; or people volunteering with us
We are committed to meeting our duties under the Equality Act 2010. We work to eliminate discrimination and to promote diversity and equal opportunities through our:
- service delivery
- community engagement
- employment practices
We know that the diversity of people and communities in Cambridgeshire helps to make our county the vibrant and creative place it is.
Our Single Equality Strategy
Our strategic objectives
Our single Equality Strategy will help us to achieve our commitment to equality and diversity. The current strategy runs from 2018-2022 and has three main objectives:
- Objective A: Promote equality and inclusion within our workforce, our Members and through our employment and procurement practices
- Objective B: Promote equality and inclusion through fair and accessible services
- Objective C: Promote equality, inclusion and celebrate diversity through engagement between the council and communities, groups and individuals
You can read our full strategy below.
You can read updates of how we are implementing our action plan in our summary document.
The Equality Act 2010 identifies nine protected characteristics:
- Age
- Disability
- Gender reassignment (this category protects the rights of transgender people)
- Marriage and civil partnership
- Pregnancy and maternity
- Race
- Religion or belief
- Sex
- Sexual orientation
We work to meet our legal duties to people with these characteristics.
When this strategy was adopted, we identified two further priority groups at risk of receiving unfair treatment. This commitment was strengthened and extended with our adoption of the Socio-Economic Inequalities Duty in March 2022. Read our press release issued at the time.
Our workforce
We value our diverse workforce and the contribution all our colleagues make to the success of our organisation. We know that having a diverse workforce means we reflect the people in the communities we serve. It also helps us to improve our efficiency and effectiveness.
We have an active Equality and Diversity Network. This group is for colleagues and Members who have protected characteristics and / or have interest in supporting people with protected characteristics. The Network holds regular meetings, runs awareness events for colleagues, and provides valuable feedback on how we can continue to improve our support for our diverse workforce.
We have a number of processes in place to support the recruitment, retention, promotion and engagement of colleagues with protected characteristics.
Anti-racism charter
On 24 May 2022, Cambridgeshire County Council joined in partnership with the trade union UNISON to becoming an anti-racist organisation. This committed the Council and its senior management to a range of pledges designed to prevent racial bias being put in place over the next 12 months. Read our press release issued at the time.
Our organisation pledges we will introduce the following ongoing commitments within 12 months of signing:
Our leaders will
- Recognise the need and benefit in championing a racially diverse workforce.
- Challenge racism internally and externally wherever it arises in relation to the organisation.
- Recognise the impact of racism upon staff members’ wellbeing.
- Set and regularly review strategy to improve racial equality, diversity and inclusion so that the organisation reflects the communities it serves.
Our organisation will
- Have a clear and visible policy championed by leadership.
- Have a clear and visible anti-racism programme of initiatives and actions.
- Undertake equality impact assessments for all strategic-level decisions.
- Undertake ethnicity pay gap recording and publicly publish results.
- Undertake workforce ethnicity recording and publicly publish results.
- Provide comprehensive equalities and anti-racism training for all staff members.
- Provide a racism reporting process for notifying, investigating and recording outcomes.
- Provide robust equality training for managers involved in recruiting, promotions and investigating allegations.
- Provide a wellbeing support facility for staff experiencing racism in the workplace.
- Will be anti-racist, not just non-racist in all we do.
Our equality auditing process will review
- Recruitment processes to identify and address race disparities in equality of opportunity.
- Exit interview results to identify and address race disparities in retention of staff members.
- Promotional processes to identify and address race disparities in equality of opportunity.
- Discipline and grievance to identify and address race disparity in outcomes of comparable cases.
- Policies and research under a duty or commitment to promote solidarity and tackle racism.
- Our mission, values, and support to removing racial discrimination in all its forms.
The Charter was signed on behalf of the employer by Stephen Moir, Chief Executive of Cambridgeshire County Council on 24 May 2022.
Disability confident employer
We are a disability confident employer.
Our services
We provide a wide range of services, used by people from all backgrounds who have a wide variety of experiences, preferences and aims.
We work hard to meet the needs of all our customers, service users and members of the public. However, we know that it is always possible to improve how we do things. So, we’re making changes to our systems so they are even better at helping our services to meet the needs of all the people who use them.
We want to support managers and colleagues to improve how they think about equality and diversity when making decisions about our services. We are currently working to put in place the following changes to improve our equality and diversity performance:
- Updating our equality impact assessment process to make it more robust
- Enhancing the system of checks and balances we use to ensure that assessments are carried out effectively, and are properly documented
Our Communities
Since our Single Equality Strategy came into force in 2018, we have completed two major pieces of work to support the communities we serve.
AccessAble Cambridgeshire
AccessAble provides information on the accessibility arrangements at places members of the public visit. Accessibility arrangements are things put in place to support disabled visitors, people with long-term health conditions/impairments etc.
We commissioned AccessAble to review 200 venues in Cambridgeshire. AccessAble selected the venues they assessed, following research and consultation with disabled people.
You can find out more about the Cambridgeshire AccessAble project in this video.
You can see all AccessAble’s reviews for Cambridgeshire venues on their website.
White Ribbon Campaign
We have achieved White Ribbon accreditation. The mission of White Ribbon is to end male violence against women, once and for all by working with men and boys to challenge those male cultures that lead to harassment, abuse and violence.
You can learn more about the White Ribbon Campaign on their website.
