About the scheme
As a public body, the Equality and Human Rights Commission is bound by equality legislation to comply with the three duties to promote equality in the areas of disability, gender and race. These duties include the requirement to develop and put into place equality schemes outlining what we will do to promote disability, gender and race equality.
We wanted to go beyond our legal responsibilities and produce a single equality scheme that included all areas of equality covered by our remit. As well as disability, gender and race, our single equality scheme therefore also covers age, religion or belief and sexual orientation. We believe we should aim to apply the same high standards to everything that we do.
The scheme contains information about how we promote equality in everything that we do, from recruiting and employing staff to carrying out our services and public activities. Uniquely, the Commission’s core work is equality and human rights. So this scheme should not be taken in its entirety as a model to follow by other organisations with different remits.
The scheme was published on 1 April 2008 and ties in with our business and strategic planning. You can download a copy of the equality scheme below.
2008/09 Equality scheme (PDF 381kb)
2008/09 Equality scheme (Word 685kb)
2008/09 Equality scheme - Easy Read (PDF 1.7MB)
If you would like a printed copy of the scheme or require an alternative format please contact our helpline using the numbers provided below or order online from the Orderable publications page.
Our priorities for 2008/9
These are our main priorities for action in this scheme:
- Make sure that our buildings and working practices are accessible to all.
- Make sure that our website is accessible.
- Consult and involve representative networks covering all equality areas to help inform our future activities.
- Monitor the effectiveness of our helpline services to ensure that they reach all groups and that people are satisfied with our service.
- Prioritise legal cases in new areas of equality in order to build case law.Address gaps in our knowledge base including pay gaps across all equality groups.
- Establish monitoring and analysis systems for our staff across all equality areas.
- Produce an equal pay policy and conduct an equal pay audit.
- Train staff on equality impact assessments, the general equality duties and the implications of these for their work.
- Check that our grants process addresses all equality areas and targets previously underfunded areas.
- Make sure that contractors providing goods, facilities and services to us meet our procurement criteria for all equality areas.
- Set up an involvement strategy that includes all groups of people in order to develop our next equality scheme.
Giving us your comments
From April 2008 we'll be talking to people about this scheme, so that we can get input for our final three-year equality scheme which will be published in April 2009. We hope that individuals, public authorities, voluntary and community organisations, and private sector companies will get involved. Details of what we are doing will be added to this website, but please feel free to get in touch in the meantime by emailing us, or using the contact details below.
You can also sign up for the Commission's equality scheme RSS feed, where you can keep in touch with developments on this, and next year's scheme. 
RSS feed: Equality Scheme
What you have told us so far
In January and February 2008 we contacted various organisations and our staff about our proposed equality scheme. We asked what outcomes we should be aiming for and what actions we needed to take to achieve them. We ran an online questionnaire, as well as events for staff and stakeholders across GB. A summary of what was said is given below, and more details can be found in the equality scheme document.
Who responded
We received responses to our questionnaire from 103 staff and 74 organisations, telling us about specific outcomes and actions they wanted us to achieve. This included the Commission’s disabled staff group.
We held staff events at our offices in Birmingham, Cardiff, Glasgow, London and Manchester. Over 60 staff attended these events and feedback was published on our staff intranet site.
We also invited organisations with a particular interest in our work to attend events in Cardiff, Glasgow, London and Manchester, and wrote to over 230 further organisations to let them know about what we were doing. 78 organisations sent representatives to the events. You can view a list of all the organisations who attended the events here.
How we have used your responses
We analysed all of the responses we received and used these to inform the equality scheme and its action plan, or our business plan if this was more relevant. We have tried to include as many of the things that you have told us as possible and many of the issues will form the basis of the discussion over the next year on our next equality scheme.
You can view a summary of consultation responses here (Word 125kb).
Contacting us
If you would like further information about the scheme, or to comment on it, you can email us at equalityscheme@equalityhumanrights.com or write to:
Equality Scheme Team
Equality and Human Rights Commission
Arndale House
Arndale Centre
Manchester M4 3AQ
Telephone: 020 3117 0235
Fax: 01925 884 275
You can also telephone us on one of the following helpline numbers:
England
Telephone: 0845 604 6610
Textphone: 0845 604 6620
Fax: 0845 604 6630
Scotland
Telephone: 0845 604 5510
Textphone: 0845 604 5520
Fax: 0845 604 5530
Wales
Telephone: 0845 604 8810
Textphone: 0845 604 8820
Fax: 0845 604 8830