Corporate Equality Plan and Service Equality Action Plans
'Excellence Through Equity' - The Council's Corporate Equality Plan 2007 -10
Our achievements in 2006/07
Our work over the past year has enabled us to reach level 4 of the government's Equality Standard. This has placed us amongst the top performing authorities on equalities in England. To achieve level 4 (there are 5 levels within the standard) we have evidenced how we use customer monitoring information to inform service improvements. For example, the minor adaptations service, which provides equipment to enable disabled people to remain independent, identified that low numbers of Black and minority ethnic (BME) customers were accessing their service. They organised outreach sessions in the BME community to raise awareness of the service and, as a result, increased service take up by this group.
The one stop shops also worked hard this year to reach out to the disabled and ethnic minority communities to raise awareness of the range of services they offer. This resulted in a significant increase in the number of visits by disabled and ethnic minority customers from 3,097 in 2005/06 to 23,800 in 2006/07.
We consulted and involved disabled people in developing our first disability equality scheme and action plan. We also issued our first gender equality scheme to address inequalities between men and women. Other equality initiatives include:
. a corporate access officer is now in post to ensure that the city council is promoting inclusive design and access for all its citizens
. consulting with BME council staff to identify barriers to career progression. Following this, several recommendations will now be implemented to support development of staff by offering mentoring/secondments and job shadowing opportunities.
. completing a scrutiny exercise into the educational attainment of pupils from particular racial groups that are under achieving. A number of recommendations have been approved to address the issues raised and we will continue to monitor their impact and progress
. a main city centre car park designating a floor for accessible parking bays, increasing the number of parking spaces for disabled people who wish to visit the city centre
. increasing the number of BME disabled people accessing the direct payments service, which enables people to purchase care packages to suit their individual needs
. the play service has being awarded the British Dyslexia Association quality mark. This will ensure the service meets the needs of dyslexic young people by becoming a 'dyslexia-friendly' service.
During 2007/08 we will maintain the momentum of service improvements through our suite of performance measures and targets and by integrating these within service, team and individual work programmes. As our schedule of performance indicators shows we:
. met 63% of our equality targets
. achieved a national top 25% performance rating for 13 of our equality indicators, these were:
scoring 89% for our race equality scheme by meeting 17 of the 19 requirements
the number of black and minority ethnic staff we employ
the number of disabled staff we employ
the percentage of economically active disabled people in the authority area
the number of BME staff in the top 5% wage band
the number of female staff in the top 5% wage band
the number of disabled staff in the top 5% wage band
the percentage of statements of special educational needs issued within the statutory timescale
the changes in the number of conceptions to females aged under 18
the percentage of support equipment (less than £1000) being delivered to customers within seven working days
supported admissions of older people to permanent residential and nursing care
adults aged under 65 with learning disabilities helped to live at home
the percentage of racial incidents that resulted in further action
View Corporate Performance Plan 2007-2010
View the Corporate Equality Plan 2007-2010![(MS Word [425Kb] opens in new window)](/images/Word.gif)
Service Equality Action Plans
We propose to achieve our equalities targets through an action planning approach applied across the council to:
. improve services
. monitor customers' background, requirements and service use
. publicise services to all sections of the community
. improve accessibility
. consult customers
. ensure suppliers and partners observe our equality standards
. monitor and train our workforce
As part of the Corporate Equality Plan all our services have a service equality action plan. These set out how they will improve services under these headings and the progress they are making. The managers of each service are responsible for updating their actions plans. The plans are available to all council officers and progress is monitored regularly to make sure improvements are being made.
Our equality action plans are published every 3 months. So you can check what has been achieved and tell us what you think. Service managers can be contacted using Liverpool Direct Limited 0151 233 3000.
View Service Equality Action Plan for Chief Executive Office![(PDF [149.3Kb] opens in new window)](/images/PDF.gif)
View Service Equality Action Plan for Children's Services
View Service Equality Action Plan for Regeneration
View Service Equality Action Plan for Community Services
View Service Equality Action Plan for Culture, Media and Sport
View Service Equality Action Plan for Finance and Legal Services