Agenda item

Diversity Monitoring Form

The Sub-Committee were sighted on a draft proposal for a diversity monitoring form for Members and candidates for the upcoming Court of Common Council elections. Comments were sought from Members of the Sub-Committee, who were also invited to submit their comments separately.

The Sub-Committee commended the positive progress as it has been a long-standing recommendation. The form would be sent electronically and would be voluntary to complete. It would be anonymised for candidates but following the election it would be re-sent to Elected Members, at which point it would not be anonymised.

A Member suggested that given marriage or civil partnership statuses were rarely collected, that this be removed from the form.

Concerns were raised that if the data was anonymised, this would be a detraction from the City Corporation understanding individuals’ requirements (such as access requirements, etc.). The Sub-Committee were reminded that there needed to be secure data governance owing to the granularity of the data, however, even if anonymised, responses would inform the City Corporation of what it needed to provide to candidates.

A Member asked if there would be any measures for success. The response was that this was based on how success was defined – in this instance, it would be that the forms were completed, and not what was statistically significant.