Equality and diversity

This part of our website sets out our approach to equality and diversity. It shows how we are complying with the new public sector equality duty, which is part of the Equality Act 2010.

We recognise that everyone is different, but this doesn’t mean that people should be disadvantaged as a result. We will eliminate unlawful discrimination; promote equality of opportunity; and, foster good relations between people who are different to each other.

We articulate our commitment to equality and diversity in our corporate strategy through one of our three strategic priorities: strong communities. We’ve set the following goals under this priority:

Target services and support to those who need them most.
Provide great value services.
Listen to communities and to support people to play an active role in their communities.

These are our current equality objectives. Over the next couple of months we will develop a short document setting out our approach to equality in a bit more detail. As part of this we may set some additional equality objectives.

We compile and publish information about the Wychavon district and its residents in our Knowing Wychavon Communities report, which we publish at least once a year. This contains information about the district’s population (age, gender, ethnicity and religion), levels of deprivation, income, poverty, household groups and types. The document provides us and our partners with a comprehensive, up-to-date overview of the district to support strategic priority setting, decision making and planning of services to meet customers’ needs.

We monitor the equality characteristics of our work force and publish a Knowing our People report each year. We carry out diversity impact assessments to examine whether different communities or groups of people are likely to be adversely affect by a current or proposed policy, service or project. We take the results of these assessments into account in our decision-making.