Agenda item

Report of the Corporate Director of Resources

The Committee received the report of the Corporate Director of Resources which set out equality monitoring data on a range of employment matters.  A further report analysing the data and addressing the issues would be brought to the ECF meeting on 28 January 2014.

An officer introduced the report and explained that the Council had a statutory duty to publish equalities data, which was presented to the Employees’ Consultative Forum in this report. Officers sought comments from Members on the data to be analysed, which, together with actions proposed to address issues of concern, would form the second part of the report, to be brought to the Forum in January 2014. 

The officer explained that a number of errors had been identified in the data, and a corrected version of the report would be circulated with the minutes of the meeting.

She commented that the new style of presentation made it easier to identify areas of concern and track any trends.  She then noted a number of issues:

·                    the requirement to publish ‘protected characteristics’ had increased from four categories to eight.  As a consequence there was no historical data for comparison of the new categories: religion or belief; sexual orientation; pregnancy or maternity; and gender reassignment;

·                    the need to publish more data required greater resources than for previous reports;

·                    the 2011 census data for Harrow had been used as a comparator where appropriate;

·                    the proportion of BAME staff employed by the Council was lower than that of the Harrow community, and had not changed significantly over the last few years;

·                    the representation of BAME staff at senior level in the Council was very low;

·                    the number of women at senior level in the Council was very low and the proportion of women applying for and being promoted internally was lower than their representation in the workforce;

·                    concerns about the low proportion of employees under the age of 24.

The officer explained that Directorate Equality Task Groups (ETGs) would consider data relating to their own workforce and report any major issues for inclusion in the January ECF report.  The Corporate Equalities Group would review any actions proposed to address issues and these would also be included in the report.

Members considered the data provided, and discussed the following points:

·                    errors and transpositions in the data provided;

·                    the lack of senior management response in providing protected characteristic data, and the message this conveyed;

·                    addressing low response rates by Directorate and / or rank;

·                    the mismatch between declared and known levels of disability;

·                    the ability to make meaningful comparisons across Directorates from the data provided and its style of presentation.

Members agreed that it was difficult to draw reliable conclusions from the report, where there were errors and transpositions.  They also noted with serious concern that where figures were low in any particular category, it was possible to determine the identity of those involved.  Officers agreed to remedy this in future reports.

Members then considered the following:

·                    the breakdown of figures for disciplinary procedures, and over-representation among certain groups at different stages in employment procedures;

·                    the length of time taken to respond to requests for reasonable adjustments and the need to record and address delays;

·                    the number of BAME applicants progressing from application to shortlist stage, and appointment;

·                    the diminishing proportion of BAME staff as pay grades progress;

·                    the absence of applications from individuals aged over 65 years.

An officer explained that panels reviewing applications for shortlisting were not given any personal or equalities information on applicants prior to interview.

In response to a query from Unison in respect of timescales for implementation of reasonable adjustments, an officer explained that this could not be monitored as cases were submitted on an individual case-by-case basis, and records were kept locally.

The Chair asked that HR look into the process for assessing requests for reasonable adjustments, and at how complaints or failures were recorded and addressed.   He also asked that officers look into the over-representation of certain groups in employment procedures as a priority, and for inclusion in the January report to ECF.

RESOLVED:  That the report be noted.