Agenda item

Resolved: to note the report; to request that the Cabinet Member for Community Safety consider how best to share the information in the report with all members.

4.1      Stewart Snellgrove (Principal Policy Officer) introduced a presentation; the following key points were noted:

·         The 2010 equality act brought together previous equalities legislation. It also created new duties for public bodies, which required them to have due regard to the need to:

o  Eliminate unlawful discrimination, victimisation and harassment.

o  Foster good relations between those who share a protected characteristic and those who do not.

o  Advance equality of opportunity between those who share a protected characteristic and those who do not.

·         Lewisham’s comprehensive equalities scheme (CES) was developed using a wide range of data and analysis as well as engagement with stakeholders.

·         The Council’s intention was that all parts of the organisation should be responsible for fairness and equality in the delivery of services.

·         The CES set out the Council’s intention to:

o  Tackle discrimination, victimisation and harassment

o  Improve access to services

o  Close the gap in outcomes

o  Increase mutual understanding and respect

o  Increase citizen participation and engagement

·         The CES update was a cross cutting and high level analysis of progress in the past year.

·         The objectives in the CES were met through the day to day delivery of Council services, or ‘business as usual’. Examples included:

o  Safeguarding the wellbeing of vulnerable children and adults.

o  Raising educational achievement for all pupils.

o  Providing social homes for priority homeless people.

o  Implementing the London Living Wage across all new council contracts.

o  Supporting local voluntary and community groups through the council’s grants programme.

o  Supporting citizen engagement through local assemblies.

o  Taking forward the young mayor scheme into an eleventh successive year.

·         The presentation also highlighted good practice and areas of note, including:

o  LGBT history month

o  The creation of London’s first Trans and non-gender conforming swimming club at Glass Mill leisure centre.

o  Be Active, which provides concessionary use of leisure facilities in the borough.

o  The development of Lewisham Health and Wellbeing strategy and recent data on life expectancy

o  Work with the community and voluntary sector.

o  Hate crime reporting

o  Work to tackle violence against women and girls

o  Educational attainment

o  Apprenticeship and employment schemes

o  Work to improve literacy

o  The work of neighbourhood forums

o  Future challenges, including demographic change.

4.2      Stewart Snellgrove (Principal Policy Officer) and Paul Aladenika (Policy and Partnerships Manager) responded to questions from the Committee; the following key points were noted:

·         The Committee would be consulted on the development of the new Comprehensive Equalities Scheme.

·         The previous equalities schemes had reported on a wide range of data sets; actions and targets.

·         A decision was taken as part of the development of the new scheme to reduce the level of monitoring required.

·         The scheme would be revisited in 2016 – at which point the monitoring process; the use of data and the scheme’s targets could be reviewed.

·         It would be over simplistic to look only at the CES in order to define the Council’s approach to equality; there were strategies, plans and interventions across a range of Council functions which contributed to the delivery of the equality objectives.

·         Officers would provide a ‘digest of progress’ against key equalities groups to a future meeting of the Committee.

·         People were asked to fill out monitoring forms at assembly meetings; this could not capture information about the activities that happened outside of meetings.

·         The monitoring did not record the socio economic background of attendees.

·         Officers would provide additional information about measuring illiteracy following the meeting.

·         People who required support with literacy were regularly identified by libraries staff.

·         Officers would continue to work together closely to deliver the main grants programme funding, in line with the objectives of the CES.

·         Officers would provide a further demographic breakdown of educational attainment.

·         The employment scheme being developed in partnership with Lambeth and Southwark would seek to help 3000 people into work. However, the programme’s target would not necessarily be split equally across the three boroughs.

·         Further information would be provided following the meeting about disability hate crime.

Resolved: to note the report; and to request that the Cabinet Member for Community Safety consider how best to share the information in the report with all members.