Equality and Diversity

Our vision, according to our Corporate Plan, is that Breckland is a place of opportunity and ambition for all.

The council is fully committed to eliminating discrimination and actively promoting equality of opportunity for everybody who lives in, works in, or visits Breckland. The council believes that its performance and achievements will be enhanced in an environment where equality of opportunity exists and prejudice and discrimination are not tolerated.

The council will work with its partners and the local community to challenge discrimination, celebrate diversity, and promote cohesion. We will ensure it complies with race, disability, gender and wider equality legislation.

View Equality and Diversity Policy (PDF) [298KB] (opens new window)

Equality and Human Rights

The Equality and Human Rights Commission works to eliminate discrimination, reduce inequality, protect human rights and to build good relations.

It is a non-departmental public body established under the Equality Act 2006 and it opened on 1 October 2007. It combines the responsibilities and powers of the three previous equality commissions that had responsibility for promoting racial, disability and sex equality in Britain. 

• The Commission for Racial Equality (CRE)
• The Disability Rights Commission (DRC)
• The Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC)

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (opens new window) provides details of the duties and responsibilities of public authorities in Britain. It covers the statutory equality duties and the implications of the Human Rights Act 1998 for all public sector organisations.

Modern Slavery Act

The below statement details the steps the council has taken to ensure slavery or human trafficking is not taking place within any part of our organisation, or with any of the contractors that we work with.

Modern Slavery Act Transparency Statement

Legislation Overview

There has been a considerable body of legislation that concerns equality, particularly in the work place.

Most recently there are two main acts that place specific equality duties upon the council:

• The Equality Act 2010 (replaced 2006 Act and Disability Discrimination Act)
• The Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000

Public Sector Equality Duty

The Public Sector Equality Duty, at section 149 of the Equality Act 2010, requires public bodies such as the Local Authority to consider all individuals when carrying out their day to day work.

This includes consideration in shaping policy, in delivering services and in relation to their own employees. It requires public bodies to have due regard to the need to eliminate discrimination, advance equality of opportunity, and foster good relations between different people when carrying out their activities.

The Equality Duty supports good decision making by encouraging public bodies to understand how different people will be affected by their activities. This helps ensure that their policies and services are appropriate, accessible to all, and meet different people's needs.

By understanding the effect of their activities on different people, and how inclusive public services can support and open up people's opportunities, public bodies can be more efficient and effective. The Equality Duty therefore helps public bodies to deliver the Government's overall objectives for public services.

Specific duties

Due to the number of employees at Breckland Council the Act requires us to publish a workforce profile (PDF) [560KB] (opens new window)  by 31 January each year.

Public Sector Equality Duty

The Public Sector Equality Duty 2010 (section 149) requires Local Authorities to devise and publish equalities objectives. The purpose is to strengthen performance in general equalities duties and demonstrate that practical action is being taken to address equalities issues. This includes both inside the organisation and in the wider community. 

Our objectives are as follows:

• To ensure we are compliant with the Equalities Act, 2010 through the business planning process.
• To ensure that all staff are aware of duties under the Equality Act 2010 through training and knowledge transfer.
• To complete Equality Impact Assessments when making changes to policies and services provided by the council.

Our Equality Objectives need to be examined and commented on by community members to make sure that they are meeting the needs of the community. If you would like to comment on any of our equalities work or would like to be consulted with when they are updated please let us know by emailing us.

Protected characteristics

The Equality Act 2010, which came into force on 6 April 2011, introduced Protected Characteristics which replaced Equality Strands.

The protected characteristics are:

• Age
• Gender
• Disability
• Gender reassignment
• Marriage and civil partnerships
• Pregnancy and maternity
• Race
• Religion
• Sexual Orientation

These have been introduced as a further step to eliminate and tackle discrimination and ensure fairness within society, regardless of belief or preference.

To meet new requirements and fulfil our duties under the Act, the equality monitoring questions within Breckland Council have been revised, and updated. These questions are widely used across the organisation in employment application forms, customer feedback and questionnaires.

Why we monitor

Breckland Council has adopted a core set of corporate equality monitoring questions.

They were updated in 2011 to reflect the new protected characteristics that were introduced in the Equality Act 2010.

Equalities Monitoring form (PDF) [23KB] (opens new window)

We are committed to Equality Monitoring in order to improve our services. We need to know which groups are using our services and the reasons why some people may not use our services. This is so that we can identify access issues and barriers to our services which some people may face in order to remove them and make improvements. We also want to make sure that everybody who accesses our services is equally happy with the outcome.

If you look at the range of legislation that the council complies with, you will see that there are primarily seven types of personal information we will ask you to provide for us:

• Age
• Gender
• Marital status
• Whether you are disabled
• Ethnicity
• Whether you hold religious views
• Sexual orientation (if you are aged over 18)

We collect this information so that we can adequately monitor how we provide services for you.

All monitoring data is classed as personal data under the Data Protection Act and will be treated confidentially. We will only use this information for statistical purposes.

It will be a great help to us if you fill in all our monitoring questions but if you do not wish to complete all of them, the ones you do fill in will be of assistance to us. More information can be found in our  Equality Monitoring Leaflet (PDF) [286KB] (opens new window)

Equality Impact Assessments

Legislation requires public bodies to consider whether there is any reason to believe that people are, or could be, differently affected because of their age, sexual orientation, gender, racial group, religious beliefs/faiths, or if they have a disability.

Breckland council is fully committed to these principles and conducts equality impact assessments when considering any major decisions.

Please email us if you have any questions about the council's Equality Impact Assessments.