Report of the Director of HROD attached

This is a revised report containing a more detailed summary and conclusion.

The report sets out a strategy for achieving workforce equality in Manchester City Council.  The strategy covers many of the protected characteristics under the Equality Act, specifically race, disability, age and sexuality.  The strategy also contains an emphasis on analysis and actions relating to race equality, and in particular to the review carried out last year of race relations and discrimination within the City Council.

The Committee considered a report of the Director of HROD, which set out the strategy for achieving workforce equality in Manchester City Council.  The strategy covered some of the protected characteristics under the Equality Act, specifically race, disability, age and sexuality and contained an emphasis on analysis and actions relating to race equality, and in particular, to the review carried out last year of race relations and discrimination within the Council.

Key points and themes in the report included:-

·                It was the ambition of the Council to achieve a workforce that would reflect at all levels and in all professional and vocational groups, the diversity of Manchester’s working age population;

·                Through the strategy, the Council intended to be more diverse at senior levels in the Council, through progression of existing staff and external recruitment, particularly from Manchester;

·                The Strategy would enable Managers to be more confident in their understanding and creation of racial equality and have a better understanding of the lived experience of the Council’s Black, Asian and ethnic minority staff;

·                It was envisaged that the Strategy would enable Black, Asian and ethnic minority employees across the Council to realise their full potential;

·                Through the strategy the Council would aim to employ more Asian and particularly Pakistani, and Chinese staff;

·                The Council would endeavour to improve its equality data collection in order to have better data on which to make decisions; and

·                The Strategy would change the culture of the Council, making it a more inclusive organisation which better valued diversity and focussed on outcomes.

The Executive Member for Children and Schools briefly commented on the report and hoped that the Strategy put some of the Committee’s previous discussions around the feedback of the Race Equality Working Group into more context and reassured the Committee as to how much of a priority this was for the Council.

The Director of HROD commented that the action plan within the Strategy provided the building blocks to where the Council needed to concentrate its efforts in improving monitoring; developing Black, Asian and minority ethnic staff; engagement and communication; HR policies; and leadership.

A thorough debate on the issue then took place and some of the key points that arose from the Committees discussions were:-

·                The Strategy was a positive starting position for the Council, however some Members felt strongly that Race Equality should be a separate strategy to the Workforce Equality Strategy;

·                It was felt that monitoring of race equality with tangible outcomes was needed;

·                It was commented that there was a lack of Black employees at senior levels in the Council and the Strategy needed to acknowledge this as this was a key aspect of the Race Review;

·                It was felt that there was a need to put active measures in place in terms of addressing race inequalities;

·                There was concern that the number of staff identified in any characteristic was very low and the Strategy needed to address this lack of data and improve staff trust in using this data to improve outcomes;

·                There was a need to truly embed the change of culture that the Strategy looked to bring about to make any real long term change;

·                Clarity was sought on the number of people who had been engaged with from the various protected characteristics in forming and developing the strategy;

·                There was concern of the lack of data collected from transgender and non-binary staff;

·                Further work was needed in standardising aspects of the strategy as information and data on different protected characteristics was being collected from multiple facets;

·                The Council needed to demonstrate it understood what it meant to be a disabled person when trying to identify staff classed as disabled;

·                It was hoped that the spirit and approach to addressing race equality would spread to the other protected characteristics;

·                There needed to be strengthening in the proposals for leaders and managers to behave in a particular way in order to deliver equality and held accountable, not just gain a better understanding of, as the Strategy referred;

·                It was suggested that training awareness of racism was put in place for all staff and Councillors, and Councillors should be afforded the opportunity to be part of the working groups that had been set up;

·                It was asked if the Lead Members for the various equality strands had been consulted on the draft;

·                It would be appreciated if there was clarity around the quantitative and qualitative date in the final version of the strategy; and

·                How was it envisaged that the Council’s Senior Management would reflect the city, when it recruited from further afield.

The Director of HROD commented that the separate Race Review and Race Equality Steering Group generated a lot of the recommendations within the Strategy and a Project Manager had been appointed to progress those recommendations associated with race and ethnicity.  However, it needed to be acknowledged that there were intersectionalites that needed to also be addressed through the Equalities Strategy.  The Executive Member for Children and Schools commented that the Strategy should be viewed as a complementary piece of work to the Race Equality Review and Action Plan addressing the lack of a council wide equality strategy and clarified that it was not intended to subsume the work of the Race Review.  The Executive Member for Neighbourhoods commented that the Strategy did not shy away from the issues regarding race inequalities within the Council.

It was commented that the collection and monitoring of data would be critical to any successful progress and the building of trust and understanding from staff would be essential for improvements to be achieved.  The Chief Executive added that the power of the strategy was in the conversations that needed to be built with staff in relation to changing the Council’s culture and enabling it to be at the progressive forefront.

The Director of HROD explained who had been consulted with from the various protected characteristic groups so far and the Executive Member for Children and Families added that the consultation had not yet completed, and more consultation was planned with a wider staff cohort as well as trade unions, and the Lead Members for the various equality strands.

It was reported that the Council did not hold any data on staff who were transgender but the Director of HROD would be meeting with the LGBT Staff Group to plan a course of action to address this. It was also commented that as the last round of census data was now so old, personal independence claims were used as a way of understanding the disability in the working age population as the best comparison method. Members of the Committee queried this, as PIP payments were dependent on a more significant level of disability than would be covered by the Equality Act definition of disability, which would cover much larger numbers of people. It was suggested by the Committee that the model of disability being used required greater clarity. It was proposed that if it was felt that this was not appropriate Officers could look at what other information was available to compare with the rest of the population. 

Members queried the lack of reference to religion and belief as a protected characteristic. It was also explained that it was not possible with the data collected to draw conclusions for actions against all of the nine protected characteristics, such as religion.

The Chair recommended that Officers collected more information on those protected characteristics where not enough data had been gathered to form any actions, as it was not appropriate to just ignore those characteristics on the basis that the Council had not enough information. Both Executive Members acknowledged that data collection and monitoring would be a critical part of the action plan and in some areas the data collected to date had been inadequate.  An undertaking was given to take up the point made around the lack of data collected on Religion.

The Deputy Chief Executive and City Treasurer acknowledged the points that had been made by the Committee but commented that the Strategy would be a starting position for the Council with specific action plans underpinning it that Officers could be held accountable to.

The point raised on strengthening the proposals for leaders and managers to behave in a particular way in order to deliver equality and held accountable was supported by the Executive Members and Officers.

The Chair then sought the Committee’s vote as to whether the race equalities aspect should be separated from the Strategy.  On putting it to the vote there was not a majority of Committee Members in support of recommending that the race equality aspect be separated from the strategy.

Decisions

The Committee:-

(1)      Requests that Officers take on board the comments made by the Committee in finalising the Strategy.

(2)      Recommends that training on race awareness is provided to all staff and Elected Members.

(3)      Requests that the lead members for the other protected characteristics are engaged with prior to the final iteration of the Strategy being submitted to the Executive for adoption.