Equality Public Duties – Fylde Council

The Council has a statutory responsibility under Equality Law, known as the “General Public Sector Duty” to have “due regard” to the need to:

Eliminate discrimination, harassment, victimisation and other prohibited conduct
Advance equality of opportunity
Foster good relations between different (defined) groups*

In order to fulfil this general duty, the Government has powers to require public bodies to undertake defined actions – which are known as the “Specific duties” and are implemented by Ministerial Orders. Previously, the specific duties included the requirements to produce an Equality Scheme for a number of key Equality strands including Race, Disability and Gender.

In support of this general duty the council has agreed through the corporate planning process dedicated corporate equality objectives:

“We aim to achieve a workforce composition that better reflects the community of Fylde, in terms of gender, race, disability and sexual orientation”
“We aim to include in every policy and service delivery appropriate measures to ensure that all protected characteristics receive fair and equal opportunity”

The Government has now changed these requirements in order to promote greater transparency and more flexibility in how public bodies fulfil these obligations.

The new requirements are to agree Equality Objectives (by April 2012 and every four years thereafter) and annually publish information that relates to workforce equality and service delivery.

This page of our website contains information about our workforce and services. We will add to this as more information becomes available. In particular, from April 2012 we will be conducting a new equality monitoring exercise with all our staff to provide us with fresh data on the protected characteristics of our workforce relating to for example, disability, ethnicity, sexual orientation and religion/belief.

Attached to this page are facts and figures relating to our work force and service provision.

Full reports