Our equality objective from 2012
Our equality objective relates to being a fair employer. We aim to ensure there is no difference in employment outcomes for our staff or potential recruits because of their age, gender, disability, gender reassignment, pregnancy and maternity, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or religion and belief.
We have set only one equality objective for 2012 in recognition of the Commission's changing work. We will update our equality action plan each year. Our plan for 2012-2013 is available.
Our work
The work of the Commission has changed significantly over the last eighteen months. Inspection and Comprehensive Area Assessment (CAA) has ceased. 'Value for money' audit work in local authorities and NHS bodies has come to be focussed on financial resilience and the ability of an organisation to get more for less in its spending, reflecting the financial pressures they face. We have also cut back on our research and studies.
Equalities issues remain relevant to all our work however. This includes not only the way staff are managed and relate to colleagues and clients, but also understanding the importance of equality and diversity to the delivery of services by local public bodies. These points are reflected for example in the Audit Manual for staff in our Audit Practice and in policy documents ranging from HR to procurement.
Our equality information
Our workforce has reduced by 365 people since we last published our workforce information in March 2011. This decrease is largely due to cuts in our research staff and the ending of CAA in 2010 and the resultant redundancy of staff associated with it.
The reductions were implemented in a fair and consistent manner by ensuring that the exercise was in accordance with our Management of Change procedure. At each stage of the process we assessed the impact of proposed redundancies and reductions to ensure compliance with our policies and to identify any equality issues.
For 2012/13 our workforce will reduce further. We expect that most of our Audit Practice staff will transfer to the private sector later this year. At the same time, or soon after, many of the central directorate staff who support them will be made redundant. We aim to ensure that our redundancy selection processes are non-discriminatory and that as far as reasonably practicable, we will seek to maintain the representativeness of our workforce.
Equality information about our staff, relevant to December 2011 is available below. We will keep this information under review and update it as necessary.
Equality information we have used for our main activities is available in our equality impact assessments. From 2012 we will publish relevant information as part of our annual review.
Get free PDF Reader from Adobe