Equality Objectives Annual Report 2023-24

The focus of this objective is to continue to improve our equality data and use local intelligence and data insight to inform future service planning and formal decision making.

Areas of activity

A) Building our data and insight capability within the organisation

The Council created a dedicated Data and Insight Team in 2020. The team helps the Council to better understand, manage and utilise our data. It also helps us to collect data effectively and in ways that our consistent with our equality duties and other responsibilities; this data collection activity is supported through the work of a dedicated Research Officer.

The Council operates a ‘Consultation Toolkit’, which provides officers with information on how to conduct consultation in a way that delivers the data we need and reflects equality, diversity, inclusion and wider ethical considerations. The toolkit covers elements such as stakeholder mapping, survey design, and reaching target audiences, as well as the value of feedback.  Supporting our equality duties, it covers points around considering the potential needs of the audience, how accessible the content and presentation is, and where any extra steps might be needed. Related actions might include ensuring that paper copies are available, or if translation might be required.

Our team and Research Officer also promote general best practice around research methods and ethics. This means such actions as avoiding bias, and making sure that nobody’s responses are excluded. One tool we’ve started working with to support these goals is machine learning, which can help us to analyse the sentiment from large numbers of responses and reveal themes within responses more independently of any individual. This technique was used to support our consultation this year on public space protection orders, where we received a high level of response.

We’re also continuing to build our understanding of data across the organisation. An example of this is the Council’s Data Community, which brings together officers from various services to look at topics of interest and areas for learning. A recent presentation to the group looked at inclusion and exclusion and considered aspects such as practical advice on pitfalls to avoid, information on unconscious bias, and considering the Council’s values and behaviours.

B) Improving the availability of equality data, and raising awareness of service users’ needs to inform service design across the Council

Workforce equality data

In 2020, as part of a wider review of the accuracy of employee data held by the Council, staff were encouraged to update their personal details on the Council’s HR system. Although remaining optional for staff to complete, this information helps us comply with our Public Sector Equality Duty in relation to workforce reporting. Updated workforce equality information is now published annually on the Council’s website and is available to all those officers involved in service design across the Council. The data was most recently updated in March 2024.

Borough equality data

An overview of the Borough Equality Characteristics is published on the website, providing useful borough and ward level information about those in the borough with protected characteristics. This includes data from the 2021 Census, representing the latest information on various equality related characteristics. Whilst Census information doesn’t necessarily cover all aspects of equality information, it provides some of the best quantitative and top level information to help us understand the borough, and the latest census provides a wider range of data relating to protected characteristics than was the case for previous years. To help make best of this data, we have promoted its availability within the organisation and encouraged teams to make use of it to inform their service planning.

The Data and Insight team have also supported fresh primary research into specific local community needs through various projects, and provided information to support services deliver on others. Related projects in the last year included: 

• Administering round four of the Household Support Fund. We have been able to analyse data and build a model to help us identify households at risk of hardship and reach those in greatest need.
• Shaping our customer contact approach. We compiled information from multiple sources to build better understanding of customer needs, which enables use to build these into service design.
• Our Safer Streets project in Redhill. Our data helped us to hear more voices from groups that are more often underrepresented or at risk of exclusion.

Without primary research the baseline information that the council uses would be narrower in scope, and would potentially not represent the diversity of our borough’s residents and other service users.

Data and insight about our most vulnerable residents and those needing extra support

The Council’s teams need to understand the needs of our residents and communities to enable us to provide appropriate services and assistance, particularly for those working directly with our residents and supporting the most vulnerable.
Information on these needs comes from a variety of sources. Our frontline teams are extremely useful in enabling us to build a picture of the concerns that residents have and how they change over time. This helps us to target our resources and support effectively to benefit those most in need.

We also rely upon our partners to maintain a full picture of the needs of the borough. These partners include charities, the NHS and health sector, community and faith groups and registered housing providers. We maintain strong relationships with our partners, but we’ve also recently been looking at how we can work together even more effectively. Work to enable better collaboration and shared understanding has included the Better Together conference with eighty local partners and a continued focus on strengthening our connections to the health sector. We also conducted a survey and listening event in summer 2023 with voluntary, community and faith sector partners, and sought views from the sector on our community workplan for 2024/25.

A reflection our use of insights and partnership working to support residents has been the establishment of the Council’s Welfare and Discharge team. The team coordinates with health partners to assist those leaving hospitals and similar. This approach supports the NHS by increasing the availability of hospital beds and related resources, and benefits both vulnerable local residents and the Council by proactively enabling those supported to access suitable accommodation, advice and information and preventing potential issues arising. These efforts are only possible due to our work with partners and the information they provide.

Where the Council holds personal information, it is handled securely and sensitively, in accordance with our published privacy notice, which notes that information around a range of protected characteristics is treated with particular care.

Future Focus

Looking to the year ahead, the effective use of data will continue to be an essential part of the Council’s work. Recent economic pressures are now starting to ease somewhat, but their impacts will continue to be felt by many residents. Understanding the extent of such pressures will continue to be important in enabling us to direct our resources effectively, such as through delivery of the next round of Household Support Funding.

We’re also currently working to develop our next corporate plan, for 2025-2030, alongside which we’re reviewing our current Equality Objectives. As part of the process of developing the plan so far, we’ve sought to understand views of residents across the borough, including those who can be at risk of underrepresentation. We’ll be conducting a formal consultation on the draft plan during the Autumn, and this will be supported by use of the consultation toolkit and efforts to ensure that the plan will be as informed as it reasonably can be of the views of all parts of the community and can make effective use of local equality data.

More widely, we’re looking at how we can better gather information on broad resident views in future, whether through surveys or more participatory approaches. This will accompany other research and consultation around specific future projects as they emerge.