Issue - meetings

Annual Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Report 2020-21

Meeting: 13/09/2021 - Staff and Pensions Committee (Item 3)

3 Annual Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Report 2020-21 pdf icon PDF 240 KB

Additional documents:

Minutes:

Keira Rounsley (Senior EDI Practitioner) outlined the purpose of the report and confirmed that the decisions requested related to the publication of the annual equality information and the gender pay gap to meet statutory government requirements. This report also included the new style Annual Review for EDI 

The mean and median gender pay-gaps reduced since last year and are lower than the national average for gender pay-gap figures including the public sector. Ethnicity pay-gap figures also slightly decreased since last year but both were in negative measure which indicated the extent which Black, Asian, and minority ethnic employees earn on average more than their white British or not sated colleagues. This report for the first time, also reported on the Council’s disability pay-gap figures where the mean reduced and median increased because there was a less even split of employees with and without a declared disability across all the pay band quartiles, i.e. there were more employees with a declared disability in the lower quartiles than the upper quartiles.  

Employee diversity increased across all groups but to increase this further it will be a priority for the ‘Our People Strategy’ and for the revamped Council equality diversity and inclusion group to consider. Staff network groups had been better attended because of homeworking and had been able to contribute to this area of workKeira Rounsley commented that the pandemic caused a shift in prioritising EDI nationally. 

 

Paragraph 3.3 of the report set out EDI related information around engagement taken from the check-in surveys. 83% of survey participants felt that Warwickshire County Council valued EDI, which is an increase of 2% compared to the previous year.  

  

In response to Councillor Simpson-Vince, Keira Rounsley stated that the benchmark figures came from comparing with other authorities; the low national benchmark showed how well the Council was doing in comparison. Following a supplementary from Councillor John Horner, Keira Rounsley confirmed that the national benchmark included all types of local authority including the London boroughs. Councillor Kaur suggested also using government benchmarks as well as local authority.  

 

Resolved

That the Staff & Pensions Committee:

1. Approves the publication on the Council's website of the Equality, Diversity & Inclusion (EDI) Annual Review 2020/2021 at Appendix A, to meet the statutory requirement to publish annually equality information relating to employees, including gender pay gap information.

2. Approves the publication on the Government’s gender pay gap website of the Council’s gender pay gap figures, based on 31 March 2021, as required by the gender pay gap regulations. Appendix B outlines what the Council is required to publish.

3. Notes the performance information in relation to EDI during 2020/2021 and endorses our targets outlined at 3.5, in recognition that continued improvement will take time.

4. Notes the work in our approach to EDI and supports the priority actions for 2021/2022 at 2.7.