Following a warning this week by the Local Government Association (LGA) that local authorities and housing associations should be aware of the importance of updating their policies and procedures to ensure compliance with the Equality Act 2010, we look at the two updated frameworks published by the LGA and how they are intended to help public bodies meet their equality duties.
A majority of the Equality Act 2010 (EqA 2010) came into force on 1 October 2010 replacing, previous discrimination legislation in Great Britain with a single Act. The EqA 2010, and the general and specific public sector equality duties under it, impact on local authorities’ roles as:
- Education providers.
- Employers (including personal and public office holders and employment service providers).
- Landlords.
- Service providers.
- Transport providers.
The general equality duty set out in section 149 of the EqA 2010, requires public bodies to:
- Eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation.
- Advance equality of opportunity between different groups and foster good relations between different groups.
For more information, see Practice notes, Equality Act 2010: local government and Public sector equality duties.
As a legal challenge to a discrimination, victimisation or harassment claim is potentially costly for a public body, it is important that clear evidence of compliance is available.
On 16 February 2012, the Local Government Association (LGA) announced that it had re-launched its:
- Equality Framework for Local Government (EFLG).
- Social Housing Framework (SHF) (revised to take account of the EqA 2010 and other legislative changes).
(The LGA expects to publish a third framework dealing with fire and rescue in March 2012.)
The stated intentions of the two frameworks are to:
- Inform decision-making, to make services more “personalised”.
- Help contribute evidence that will underpin changes to service policy and delivery.
- Help organisations to enhance their reputations.
- Encourage community engagement and empowerment.
- Promote high standards of customer care.
- Offer a standard approach to the integration of equalities into service policy and planning.
- Help organisations to meet their statutory duties under the EqA 2010.
The two frameworks comprise five performance areas:
- Knowing your communities. That is, policies, procedures and actions should all be based on evidence and local data, for local priorities to be established. Public bodies should ensure that they adopt a personalised approach, to ensure that they consider the impact that their policies are likely to have on those with “protected characteristics” in their areas.
- Leadership, partnership and organisational commitment. The chances of achieving successful outcomes are increased by partnership working, information sharing, and through setting equality objectives and then monitoring compliance with them.
- Community and satisfaction. Public bodies should involve local people in developing their policies. This is likely to result in an outcome that is best suited to a community as whole.
- Responsive services and customer care. Public bodies should be able to respond to the needs of their diverse communities and treat service users with dignity and respect, as required under the Human Rights Act 1998.
- A skilled and committed workforce. Public bodies should ensure that, as well as ensuring compliance with the EqA 2010 concerning their service users, they also promote equality and diversity among their staff, by ensuring that their HR policies and procedures are equipped to effectively deal with instances of harassment or bullying, and encourage engagement.
Within these five performance areas are three levels of achievement: developing, achieving, excellent.
Public bodies can also seek a peer review of their policies. The diversity peer challenge provides formal accreditation that a public body’s policies have met the “achieving” and “excellent” levels of the equality frameworks. A peer will act as a “critical friend” and will provide feedback about the policies and procedures in place at the end of the assessment period. For more information, see the LGA equality peer challenge page.
The LGA has also published an EFLG self-assessment guide for local authorities, to help them achieve in the five performance areas and an accompanying guide for social housing providers.
With so many recent cases focusing on local authority compliance with the provisions of the EqA 2010 and whether public bodies have complied with their duties under the EqA 2010 (for example, see Legal updates, Council had regard to public sector equality duty when reducing its adult social care budget (High Court) and Brent Council did not act unlawfully by deciding to close 50% of its libraries (High Court)), it is important that serious efforts are made to comply with the applicable duties and also make it possible to audit the steps that have been taken to do so.