Agenda item
Diversity and Equality Action Plan 2009/10 - End of Year Monitoring Report
To consider the attached report.
(Time allocated – 30 minutes)
Minutes:
Councillor Rachel Saunders, Lead Member for Health and Wellbeing, introduced the end of year monitoring report informing the Overview and Scrutiny Committee of the Council’s progress in implementing its Diversity and Equality Action Plan (DEAP) for 2009/10.
The report also included an annual summary of progress against the Council’s Age, Disability, Gender, Race, Religion/Belief, and Sexual Orientation Equality Schemes in 2009/10.
Councillor Saunders advised that the report gave a narrative of each Directorate’s achievements on schemes, and although there were afew actions identified as ‘red’, this was not unreasonable given the total number of actions. She further advised that Tower Hamlets was the second Council nationally to be externally validated as being at the highest level ‘Excellent’ of the Equality Framework for Local Government (EFLG), which had replaced the Equality Standard for Local Government (ESLG).
Hafsha Ali, Acting Service Head, Scrutiny and Equalities, stated that the assessment was a significant achievement following the realisation that many authorities were becoming obsessed with the process itself instead of the outcome that the schemes produced, and this had led to the replacement of the ESLG by the EFLG.
Members of the Committee raised a number of questions in relation to the actual format of the report and how this could be improved, the real cost of implementing the plan and whether or not value for money was being achieved, the use of resources for the ‘No Place for Hate’ campaign, how particular schemes were chosen by Directorates and how these could be accelerated by Overview and Scrutiny, issues around addressing health inequalities with local partners, and the need to closely monitor the ‘green’ lights in case these also required further scrutiny.
Councillor Lesley Pavitt also raised a question concerning the consultation process for disabled residents in the development of the Disability Equality Scheme but agreed to follow this up outside of the meeting as Councillor Saunders had not been the portfolio holder when this had taken place.
Councillor Saunders agreed that the document was very comprehensive, but she felt it was important that Members were kept fully informed. She noted the request to incorporate the short précis which was included in papers for the Cabinet, and stated that she was happy to discuss separately ways of making the document more user-friendly.
Councillor Saunders stated that in the light of the urgent budget reductions it was inevitable that the level of service provided for the current schemes would be affected.
Hafsha Ali advised that Equality Scheme actions were all mainstreamed into service plans and delivered through existing budgets. Services that developed and designed services that were tailored to effectively meet the needs of communities reduced waste and would lead to increased cost savings and efficiency. The Single Equality Framework was intended to support services to rethink the effectiveness of our interventions to tackle inequality.
The Chair asked Councillor Tim Archer, Chair of the Health Scrutiny Panel, to comment on questions concerning the acceleration of schemes and how health inequalities could be addressed.
Councillor Archer advised that the Health Scrutiny Panel could raise awareness of issues and target particular areas of the NHS.
Councillor Saunders advised that her portfolio also included Health and Wellbeing and she would be able to feed in concerns to the PCT Board on which she sat.
The Chair thanked Councillor Saunders for her participation in the meeting.
The Chair moved and it was RESOLVED
That the progress in implementing the Council’s Diversity and Equality Action Plan 2009/10 be noted.
Supporting documents:
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FINAL DEAP, item 7.1
PDF 124 KB
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FINAL DEAP APPENDIX 1 - 24.6.10, item 7.1
PDF 150 KB
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AES APPENDIX 2, item 7.1
PDF 108 KB
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GES APPENDIX 3, item 7.1
PDF 94 KB
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RES APPENDIX 4, item 7.1
PDF 133 KB
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RBES APPENDIX 5, item 7.1
PDF 52 KB
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SEOS APPENDIX 6, item 7.1
PDF 116 KB