Equalities in Hastings

Hastings is a vibrant town. It is culturally, economically and socially diverse. We value this diversity and aim to support and encourage it.

What Hastings Borough Council is doing

1. The vision in our corporate plan sets out our ongoing commitment to ensure equalities underpins all that we do.

2. We provide training for our staff about the Equality Act.

3. We carry out equalities monitoring to ensure our policies and services affect people fairly.

4. As part of our developing corporate standard, we will consider equality impacts equality impacts for major new or changed proposals to our policy or services.

5. We publish a workforce profile to demonstrate that the staff we employ are composed of people from a wide range of backgrounds.

6. We have signed the Hastings and St. Leonards Equality Charter  and will be looking to update and refresh this document during 2021/22 in line with the commitments set out in the corporate plan.pdf.

Our Commitment

Our values and our intentions in our Corporate Plan set out how equalities underpin council activity. These inform how we plan, finance, deliver, commission and review our services.

The Equality Act

The Government's Equality Act was introduced on 1st October 2010. The Act aimed to:

• protect people's rights and encourage equal opportunity
• update, simplify and improve the previous legislation
• to be a simple and accessible framework of discrimination law

Under the Act, people are not allowed to discriminate, harass or victimise anyone because of the following 'protected characteristics':

• Age
• Disability
• Gender reassignment
• Marriage and civil partnership
• Pregnancy and maternity
• Race
• Religion and belief
• Sex
• Sexual orientation

The Government decided not to take forward the socio-economic duty on Public Bodies (November 2010), but the Local Strategic Partnership and the Council agreed this should be included when we consider equalities.

The Equality Act includes a Public Sector Equality Duty. This says we must show 'due regard' to:

• eliminating discrimination, harassment and victimisation
• advancing equality of opportunity
• fostering good relations between people who share a protected characteristic
• fostering good relations between people who have a protected characteristic and those who don't
  

Equalities Monitoring

The council must consider how different people will be affected by the decisions we make and services we provide. We are required to do this by law, under the Equality Act 2010. Therefore on certain occasions we may ask questions about you.

If you do not want to give us equalities information - you don't have to. It won't affect whether we can help you or not.  There are options on the form if you'd 'prefer not to say'.

With up-to-date and accurate information we are able to better understand who uses our services, meet specific needs, identify possible barriers to our services and work to remove them. The council carries out Equality Impact Assessments to support this.

Equalities Impact Assessments

What is an Equalities Impact Assessment?

An Equalities Impact Assessment (EIA) is essentially a risk assessment which allows the Council to ensure that we are not at risk of breaching equalities legislation.

The main focus of impact assessment will be around the groups mentioned in the Equality Act 2010.

Under the Act, people are not allowed to discriminate, harass or victimise anyone because of the following, referred to as 'protected characteristics':

• Age
• Disability
• Gender reassignment
• Marriage and civil partnership
• Pregnancy and maternity
• Race
• Religion and belief
• Sex
• Sexual orientation

The Government decided not to take forward the socio-economic duty on Public Bodies (November 2010), but the Council agreed to give this due consideration as part of consider equalities and wider impacts as part of our developing corporate standard.

However, impact assessments are not restricted to these groups and enable us to consider any group which may experience disadvantage.

The Equality Impact Assessments we conduct are attached to the relevant Cabinet reports. See Decision Making.

Workforce Profile

Under the Equality Act 2010 we are required to publish information about the people we employ.

• Workforce Profile for April 2019 including Gender Pay Gap information (.pdf 207KB)

Equalities Charter

On 11th April 2011, the Local Strategic Partnership adopted an Equality & Human Rights Charter for Hastings and St. Leonards. The Charter was a set of shared principles based largely on the Government's Equality Act, introduced on 1st October 2010. Led by the Council, this initiative was the first joint agreement of its kind to be launched in East Sussex. The Charter was launched with an official signing by major organisations including the Council on 26th September 2011. 

• Equality and Human Rights Charter (.pdf 350KB) 

Plans are in place to refresh this document with partners during 2021/22.  A refreshed draft charter is available on our consultation pages and you can share your views: Have your say on Hastings Equality Charter.