our equality and diversity strategy 2015-2018
Equality and Diversity Strategy 2015-2018
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town&country housing
Contents Foreword
Page 3
Introduction
4
Purpose
5
Our aim and vision
5
Equality, legislation and regulation
7
Our objectives and key priorities
8
About Town & Country Housing Group
10
Achievements from 2012 – 2015
14
Monitoring the strategy
15
Equality and Diversity Strategy Action Plan – See separate document
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Town & Country Housing Group
Foreward As the Board Champion for Equality and Diversity I am pleased to present this Equality and Diversity Strategy. My role is to ensure that the organisation continues to develop and deliver its services in a way that can be easily accessed by all residents regardless of barriers such as language or poor literacy. We recognise the importance of embedding equality and diversity within our organisation and throughout the services we provide. We are always conscious to consider equality and diversity in our work streams and what the impact on our customer could be. Our values on equality and diversity are promoted through our core mission to deliver quality homes, build communities and improve lives whilst focusing on providing excellent customer service. As a social landlord, we aim to support the diverse needs of our customers covering many aspects that may affect the quality of our customer’s lives or ability to sustain their tenancy such as offering money and debt advice, employment training and support to help vulnerable people. We also have a vibrant and committed Foundation team that has introduced a number of diverse initiatives across the South East for all our customers and provides them with the opportunity to get involved with the work we do and help shape how we deliver services. Our portfolio of housing is spread across South East and provides for customers from different backgrounds, ages and circumstances. We recognise the importance of fair treatment and equal access to our services and will aim to make sure that our services are effectively tailored to the needs of our existing and future customers. We must also ensure we are an exemplary employer and that we have a diverse workforce that is equipped with the skills necessary to achieve our ambitions. This strategy will help us meet our commitment to provide a working environment where employees are treated with dignity and respect and offered equal opportunities. Over the next three years this strategy will ensure that we continue to meet equality and diversity standards and legislation. It also includes an action plan which will require contribution from the Board, our staff and our customers, emphasising a collective responsibility to treat everyone fairly, with respect and to respect diversity and difference.
Equality and Diversity Strategy 2015-2018
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Marianne Hay
Board Member
Town & Country Housing Group
Introduction Our equality and diversity strategy 2015-2018 outlines how we will continue to demonstrate our commitment to placing equality and diversity at the heart of the business. Our approach to equality and diversity is about achieving real and practical outcomes for our customers, Board Members, employees, contractors and consultants, whilst ensuring our customers’ needs are at the heart of what we do. To achieve our desired outcomes, this involves promoting equality and diversity in everything we do, eliminating unlawful discrimination and harassment and creating fair opportunities for both customers and employees. The Group recognises that diversity is integral to our business and successful service delivery. It is our staff and boards that combine to provide homes and services to our customers across the region. Therefore we are committed to develop and train staff in order to deliver the objectives and priorities of the organisation, as well as to embrace the diversity of our people and ensure our services are accessible to all. Our commitment to equality and diversity is demonstrated in our values and mission to deliver quality homes, build communities and improve lives. To succeed in our mission, we encourage our customers to engage and share ideas with us in order to help us develop our services to meet their needs whilst understanding the importance of our services to remain both accessible and fair.
What is equality and diversity? Equality is about creating a fairer society, where everyone can participate and has the opportunity to fulfil their potential. Diversity is described as recognising, respecting and valuing differences between individuals’ life experiences, skills and perspectives.
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Town & Country Housing Group
Purpose This strategy sets out what we have achieved to date in relation to equality and diversity, what we are looking to achieve over the next three years and how we will get there. Our actions to be delivered throughout the period 2015-18 are documented within the action plan and will be reviewed annually to incorporate relevant changes.
Our aim and vision Our aim in delivering this strategy is to achieve equality in the provision of our services and contribute to our vision to build homes people choose.
The strategy will help us to: •
Embed equality and diversity within the organisation
•
Work with our staff, residents and partners to promote equality and diversity
•
Identify barriers that cause discrimination and address them
•
Introduce new and more effective ways of delivering services
•
Continue to shape services to meet the diverse needs of our residents by offering a flexible selection of service and support options
The strategy supports the achievement of our mission, vision and values: Our Vision is to provide “homes people choose”. In order to work towards this vision, we must have a good understanding of our customers needs. We therefore will ensure we collect customers’ information, use the data appropriately and make full use of it to tailor our services. We will also monitor our services to ensure they are being delivered in a fair and cost-effective way.
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Town & Country Housing Group
Equality, legislation and regulation As a Registered Provider, the key legislative and regulatory requirements that we must comply with are:
1. The Equality Act 2010 The Act seeks to eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation against a person or group of people because of one or more of the following nine protected characteristics:
3. The Regulatory Framework for Social Housing (2012) Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) As a registered provider, we must ensure we meet the regulatory standards, including understanding and responding to the diverse needs of tenants by:
•
age
•
race
•
treating all tenants with fairness and respect
•
disability
•
religion or belief
•
•
gender re-assignment
•
sex, and
•
marriage and civil partnerships
•
sexual orientation.
demonstrating that we understand the different needs of our tenants, including in relation to the equality strands and tenants with additional support needs.
•
pregnancy and maternity
2. Public Sector Equality Duty The Equality Act implements the duty to advance equality covering all protected characteristics and when carrying out a public function, we are required to: •
Eliminate unlawful discrimination
•
Advance equality of opportunity and
•
Foster good relations, tackle prejudice and promote understanding.
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Our objectives and key priorities Our equality and diversity objectives and priorities are: 1. Promote our commitment to equality and diversity to customers and within our company through strong leadership and effective communication •
Build upon the Group brand to position the Group as an employer of choice within Kent, seeking to extend its reach through innovative advertising and marketing to ensure the diversity of the staff group reflects broadly the communities that we work within.
•
Provide opportunities to both staff and customers to access a range of training and development activities.
•
Increase the percentage of equality and diversity data held by Town & Country Housing to 98% and ensure data is used to help deliver day to day services.
•
Complete Equality Impact Assessments for all new policies, strategies and practices.
2. Provide services and support that meet the diverse needs of customers •
Ensure our commitment to equality and diversity is reflected in our procurement processes and ensure contractors demonstrate a similar commitment.
•
Review the take up of support for vulnerable residents in order to tailor our future offering.
•
Improve the process of collecting equality and diversity data from customers and ensure the data is used to shape future services and support.
•
Ensure all new tenants receive a needs and financial assessment prior to receiving an offer of a home in order to identify and address any support needs.
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Town & Country Housing Group
3. Provide inclusive opportunities for customers to engage with us to influence and develop services •
Offer a wide range of opportunities for customers to engage with Town & Country Housing Group in order to shape and deliver services and support.
•
Engage with customers in all areas and encourage greater involvement from under-represented groups.
4. Ensure customers can easily access our services and are treated with fairness and respect •
Raise awareness of equality and diversity issues among staff through training and information in order to ensure that staff recognise the value of diversity and treat all customers and staff with fairness and respect.
•
Ensure we communicate how customers can access services in a variety of ways including via the website.
•
Capture and use customers’ preferred methods of communication on our systems.
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Promote My Home Online as a tool to engage with customers and for customers to access up to date information with more ease.
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My Home Online
About Town & Country Housing Group Our Residents The collection of resident equality and diversity data (gender, age, ethnicity, disability) has vastly improved over the last three years with 94% of tenant data now recorded compared to 86% in 2012. This profiling data helps us to shape our services to meet the needs of our customers.
Of the main tenancy data held, the following statistics are:
23%
are over the age of 65 and 24%
24% are under the age of 34.
The majority of our tenants are within the age range of 35 to 64.
61%
of tenants are female, which is a 5% increase from when the last strategy was published in 2012.
4%
Since 2012 residents with Black and Minority Ethnic backgrounds has increased to 4% (reported as 3.4% in the previous strategy).
15%
of tenants have indicated that they have a disability which is a relatively close statistic to the 17.5% of the Kent demographic who describe themselves as having a long term health problem or a disability (according to 2011 Census data).
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Town & Country Housing Group
Our Board The Town & Country Housing Group Board is currently comprised of 10 members. Within the last strategy, one of the recommendations was to ensure a broader representation of age groups; therefore the organisation has since recruited a trainee Board Member under the age of 30. The Board has a policy on recruitment of Board and committee members and a diversity policy specifically encouraging a 50:50 gender balance of which has been achieved. The Board’s diversity data is compared against census and resident data to ensure that the Board is representative of the community TCHG works in.
Key points in terms of the make up of the Board are:
50%
There are 50% male members and 50% female members.
10%
10% of our Board is from the Black and Minority Ethnic background, the remaining majority of members are White British.
100% 0% All members of the Board are over the age of 45 (with the exception of the Trainee Board member).
There are no current members of the Board who have recorded a disability..
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Our Staff The organisation has 166 members of staff (data at the end of April 2015). The staff equality and diversity data held has remained fairly consistent since the release of the last strategy in 2012, including a higher percentage of female workers than male. As detailed in our action plan for this strategy, we are dedicated to continue to use innovative recruitment methods to ensure the profile of our staff is generally representative of our customer base.
17%
10%
3%
60%
of staff are under 30 years old.
of staff have disclosed that they have a disability.
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of staff are over 60 years.
of the workforce is made up of female staff.
Town & Country Housing Group
Staff statistics Age range
YES
Disability
3%
10% 16-29 29%
17%
Not disclosed
30-39 40-49 50-59
21%
23%
1%
White/White Other
13%
Male Female
63%
60+
Ethnicity
Gender
NO
34%
White British/British
3%
63%
British European 8%
63%
Black African Black Carribean Persian
26%
Asian 46%
Mixed Other Not disclosed
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Achievements from 2012-2015 We are commitmed to promoting equality and diversity throughout all services. Some key achievements made within the previous strategy action plan for 2012-2015 include the following: •
100% of new staff joining the organisation since 2012 have been automatically enrolled onto Equality and Diversity training.
•
100% of new customers received a needs and financial assessment (594 customers during 2014-15).
•
During 2014-15, 285 customers received support and at 31st March 2015, 138 customers had lifelines installed.
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The level of customer profile data held has increased to 94% in 2015 from 86% in 2012.
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During 2014-15, 555 customers received money advice and support to help with financial difficulties.
•
467 customers are on the resident involvement database (64% female, 36% male. 96% White ethnicity and 4% BME reflecting our overall customer population, 23% disabled compared to 15% of our overall customer database).
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Town & Country Housing Group
Monitoring the strategy The overall leadership and governance of equality rests with our main Board and our Executive Management Team.
Monitoring arrangements: •
The objectives and actions contained in this strategy will be included within individual team plans and it will be the responsibility of directors and managers to ensure the actions are completed.
•
The Business Improvement Team will report progress towards the actions set out in this strategy annually to the Executive Management Team and Board.
The strategy will be published on the website for customers, staff and Board members to access. This strategy will enable Town and Country Housing Group to play its part in promoting diversity, challenging inequality and ensuring fair access. Any comments on this strategy are welcome and will be considered when reviewing the strategy, our services and the way we operate.
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Town & Country Housing Group Monson House, Monson Way, Tunbridge Wells, Kent TN1 1LQ
phone 01892 501400 customer services 0845 873 1 321 or 01892 501480 e-mail info@tchg.org.uk web www.tchg.org.uk