Purpose

It will be the role of the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Group (The Group) to co-ordinate and drive practical action about equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) within the LGSCO and in our external work. The Group is not a decision-making or delivery body. Its role is to provide constructive challenge and ideas to all of the LGSCO on equality and diversity issues and to exercise scrutiny and oversight to ensure that practical action is delivered

The Group will be responsible for mainstreaming EDI understanding and skills within the LGSCO workforce in order to improve employee experience and its capacity to meet the diverse needs of its workforce and complainants in line with the cultural demographic of the country.

The Group will ensure that the LGSCO promotes equality across all protected characteristics and considers all forms of discrimination. Given the current context created by ‘Black Lives Matter’, the group will begin with an initial focus on race and religion – recognising that initiatives to tackle this issue would and should have positive benefits to promote equality and inclusion more widely.

Remit and responsibilities

The Group will take action in four areas to promote the LGSCO’s equality duties:

• As an employer, by ensuring recruitment, training, promotion, and career opportunities are fair and equally open to all
• As a service provider, by ensuring that all communities have equal access to our office and to justice
• As an investigative body, by ensuring that we address complaints about injustice arising from racism and discrimination thoroughly, as part of our core complaints function
• As an organisation that cares about our staff wellbeing, by ensuring that we do not tolerate racism, discrimination, and abuse that is targeted at our staff

The Group will:

• oversee the creation and execution of the EDI action plan which will demonstrate our commitment to diversity and inclusion across the organisation
• prioritise activity within the action plan
• monitor progress against the action plan
• review the Business Plan to ensure that EDI implications have been considered for all BP activities.

December 2020