Agenda item

Councillor Glynnis Phillips, Cabinet Member for Corporate Services, Councillor Michael O’Connor, Cabinet Member for Health and Inequalities, and Stephen Fairhurst Jones, Senior Policy Officer have been invited to present the Council’s EDI Action Plan.

The Committee is recommended to consider the report, ask questions and AGREE any recommendations they may wish to make to Cabinet accordingly.

The Committee AGREED to a change in the order of the agenda to bring forward the EDI Action Plan 2023/24 item ahead of the remaining items.

Councillor Michael O’Connor, Cabinet Member for Public Health and Inequalities, Councillor Glynis Phillips, Cabinet Member for Corporate Services, Lorna Baxter, Director of Finance, and Steven Fairhurst-Jones, Senior Policy Officer, presented to the Committee a report on the Council’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Policy and Action Plan 2023/24.

Steven Fairhurst-Jones was invited to introduce the report. It contained three elements – the Council’s Action Plan for its equality, diversity and inclusion activity, the ‘Including Everyone’ inequalities framework, and the RACE equalities code.

Under the Public Sector Equality Duty the Council was required to have a 4-year strategy for tackling inequalities, and an annual action plan to implement it. The action plan in the report had been signed off and was the Council’s live plan for the current year.

“Including Everyone” was likely familiar to members having been adopted some time previously as the Council’s inequalities framework and the Council could point to a number of successes inequalities through the framework, including being awarded a Stonewall gold award earlier in the year in recognition of our commitment to LGBTQI+ inclusion at work, running  a successful campaign to recruit on-call fire fighters from different backgrounds – as a result women made up over 10% of the service’s operational workforce, and supporting 51 people with long-term health issues or a disability to gain or maintain employment. Good work aside, inequalities remained, and the Council’s action plan sought to focus in on the actions which would make the biggest difference, or which most effectively act on feedback from our staff, Staff Networks or residents. The framework would be due for renewal by October 2024, and whilst councillors would have additional opportunities to comment, they were invited to give early feedback.

Finally, the RACE equalities code was introduced as an external source of accreditation around racial and ethnic issues, an area in which the Council’s own staffing diversity did not necessarily mirror its population. Senior officers were keen that the accreditation be earned as a means of addressing this issue.

Councillor O’Connor further introduced the details of the action plan; the Council’s main areas of focus were fostering inclusive communities, inclusive service delivery and an inclusive workforce. An area of particular interest was whole-Council approaches to delivering these actions, particularly the outward looking ones, such as the promotion of social value and tackling inequalities through the way the Council procures its goods and services. The proposed RACE equality code accreditation was welcomed on the basis of its high level of accountability and clear actions needing to be taken.

Councillor Phillips referenced the latter paper on the workforce report to highlight to the Committee the distance the Council needed to travel if it wished to have a representative workforce. According to the 2021 census data, 23.2% of the Oxfordshire population were from non-white backgrounds, compared to 9.85% working for the Council. In view of the scale of the challenge, contributions needed to be made to its achievement across the entire organisation.

In response to the report the Committee raised a number of points, including:

-        The accessibility of the action plan. A number of members, including those without visual impairments, struggled to read the action plan owing to the font size. Members were assured that for those who requested it the action plan could be made available in large print. A further aspect of accessibility concerned the language used, and concerns were raised that regular residents of Oxfordshire may be unable to understand sufficiently the action plan owing to its use of technical language.

-        Stonewall accreditation. In view of the number of organisations who were consciously ceasing to secure Stonewall accreditation it was requested that the justification for including the accreditation as part of the Council’s plan was questioned. Though it was recognised by officers that the feedback received as part of the accreditation had been helpful to the Council in informing its action plan, little further discussion was held in response, and it was requested that a written response be provided instead.

-        Positive discrimination. Assurances were sought that the Council was avoiding positive discrimination and diversity targets. It was put forward in response that the aim of the Council was to create a welcoming and inclusive environment, whilst also recognising that to deliver for residents in the best way possible it was necessary to ensure the Council’s workforce understood and reflected the diversity of its population. The action within the action plan which best reflected stated that the Council would be more welcoming and attractive towards candidates from diverse backgrounds, but did not set any specific targets for recruitment diversity needing to be achieved.

-        A question was raised concerning direct-entry into management positions within the fire service, but the matter was not discussed owing to the issue primarily falling within the remit of a Cabinet Member who had not been invited to the meeting, Cllr Kate Gregory.

-        Monitoring. The Council’s accountability for following through on its actions was queried. In response, it was put forward that the actions within the action plan were SMART and benchmarked, and that a named Cabinet member and corporate director was allocated to each action allowing more granular accountability than simply that from overall corporate responsibility.

-        Digital  connectivity. The issue of digital connectivity was raised as an example of what might happen to the Council’s aspirations when providing for harder to reach residents was difficult or expensive. It was pointed out in response that the Council’s activity around digital connectivity had been a success in that it had ensured digital access for areas of the county which would otherwise be unserved by commercial suppliers.

-        Co-production. More information was sought regarding the precise outputs of the Council’s undertakings to engage in 12 co-production meetings around adult social care. In response it was explained that these meetings provided the platform to hear from service users about how services were being delivered, and it would not be until their feedback was heard that further actions would be identified.

ACTION: For a large print version of the Council’s EDI Action Plan to be distributed to committee members.

It was AGREED to submit a report to Cabinet outlining the Committee’s observations concerning the accessibility of language within the EDI action plan, and the physical size of the text in the plan, the importance of continued monitoring. In addition, the report should include a recommendation that the Council provide an appraisal of the relationship with Stonewall and the justification for continued decision to seek Stonewall accreditation.