Equality policy and plan | BETA - South Gloucestershire Council

We work with all communities and individuals to create good relationships, eliminate discrimination and advance equality of opportunity. We do this through meeting the objectives in our equality policy and plan.

Through our community leadership we promote tolerance, understanding and respect across all our diverse communities.

We aim to create a fairer, safer, accessible, and inclusive South Gloucestershire where disparities in life chances and outcomes are proactively eliminated.

This aim is at the heart of our organisational values and in delivering this aim, we will mainstream equality, diversity, equity and inclusion into all aspects of our policy development and service delivery.

We champion and fight for fairness and will not accept inequality in any form.

We will not tolerate harassment, victimisation or discrimination in any form. Working closely with service providers, the police, other enforcement agencies, the community and groups, we will deal robustly with any incidents of harassment, victimisation or discrimination within the council or our services.

Taking action to encourage reporting, reduce hate crime and discrimination to achieve successful prosecutions wherever this occurs.

Our equality policy

Our corporate equality and diversity policy details our commitment to valuing and treating all people with dignity and respect.

To do this we:

recognise that individuals and communities have specific needs that have to be understood and addressed for them to develop their full potential
acknowledge that the rights of minority communities need to be protected
make sure all aspects of our policy development and service delivery take equality and diversity into account

Tackling inequalities plan 2024 to 2028

Our tackling inequalities plan takes a comprehensive and inclusive approach to tackling inequalities. It takes into account geographical and socio-economic inequalities as well as protected characteristics set out in law and other groups known to be particularly vulnerable to inequalities and their impacts.

The plan:

establishes 10 priority areas where national and local research, and our engagement and consultation with organisations, groups and residents combine to evidence the largest and most significant inequalities which ultimately impact residents, their families and our area as a whole
sets out specific and measurable objectives against each of these priority areas
ensures that robust governance is in place

The plan also recognises that inequalities are inter-related and sets out governance arrangements in relation to how we will drive work across the priority areas – this includes internally and system-wide so that we maximise the positive impacts which the plan seeks to deliver.

Monitoring reports

You can find our progress reports on the equalities monitoring page. These reports are published annually and measure progress against our objectives and the Priority Areas, as well as communicating actions which are being taken by individual service areas.

Equalities organisations we work with

We have an agreement with CVS South Gloucestershire to support the needs of local equalities groups through the South Gloucestershire equalities voice partnership. The members are:

They co-ordinate the South Gloucestershire Equalities Forum which brings together organisations that represent equality communities in the district.

Membership of the forum is open to any organisation working in the area that is committed to promoting equality of opportunity.

Forum members meet quarterly to:

share information about equality issues and examples of best practice
establish informal working groups to work on issues of concern
organise an annual event on a chosen topic
feedback on services to help contribute to changes in practice that will benefit equality communities

For more information you can contact: equalities@southglos.gov.uk