Agenda item

Report of the Director of Human Resources.

The Committee considered a Report of the Director of Human Resources providing an update on the equality and inclusion action plan and the gender, ethnicity, and disability pay gap data.

In response to a query, officers confirmed that the Corporation sought advice from Stonewall when drafting the recruitment monitoring form, as well as taking on board views from internal stakeholders. The form incorporates the nine protected characteristics and it can be easily benchmarked against the recruitment forms of other similar organisations.

In response to a discussion, Members asked the Town Clerk to circulate a glossary and framework of the officer only boards/groups for their greater clarity; the TC would look to distribute the relevant information by the end of the week.

In response to a query, officers confirmed that the final plan should be ready by the end of March 2021. As an aside, Members expressed concern at the somewhat fragmented timelines/delivery dates across various plans the Corporation had undertaken recently. Officers were aware of this and explained that the impact of the pandemic on day-to-day work had compounded the issue, by pushing back timelines/delivery dates in some areas. Officers were now working to try to align delivery dates where possible.

Turning to the recommendations, the Chair informed Members that some tidying up was required for Appendix 7 and asked that Members provided delegated authority to the Director of Human Resources to ensure that the appendix was finalised.

RESOLVED – that the Committee approved the following:

• the Equality and Inclusion Action Plan 2019 – 2021 attached at Appendix 6

• the revised categories included in the Equal Opportunities Recruitment

Monitoring Form at Appendix 7 (subject to the tidying up of the appendix by the Director of HR, as outlined above).