Equality Objectives Annual Report 2023

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. Formed to help the organisation better understand and manage our data, it faced an immediate test in responding to the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic, where the team provided invaluable information on the local situation as we responded to protect residents. Since then, the team has been working to develop the organisation’s data capacity and effectiveness.

Within the last year, several work streams have been progressing well. Reflective of the developing national and local context, the team developed a Fuel Poverty and Cost of Living predictive model which allowed the council to assess which households would be impacted most by economic challenges. This helped improve our understanding and has enabled us to better target our proactive welfare support to vulnerable members of our communities.

The Data and Insight team has also been expanding on the Council’s research and consultation tools. A new Research Officer role was created in September 2022, and is now supporting the organisation’s research efforts, particularly through engaging with local stakeholders. As part of these efforts, a new consultation toolkit was launched in early 2023; this self-service toolkit allows staff to build better quality surveys to increase our understanding of residents, and ultimately build that evidence into our services and decisions. Working together with services across the Council, including our Communications and Community Development teams, the toolkit and our ongoing consultation efforts help ensure that the needs of all those within the borough, including those with protected characteristics, are reflected in our work.

Our efforts to better use data aren’t limited to just one team – we have been working to improve skills and understanding across the organisation. Building on the findings of the previous year’s data maturity review, the Council now has an established Data Community, including officers from a wide range of teams and services. The community meets regularly to consider new data topics, including natural language processing, best practice for graphs, and data action stories. The community also helps to coordinate training opportunities open to all staff. Building data skills and knowledge throughout the Council gives us the capability we need to reflect equality, diversity and inclusion into service design, delivery and monitoring across all our activities.

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 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 now includes data from the 2021 Census, providing a much more up to date overview than was previously available. 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.

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. An example of this was utilising the early release of census data on eastern European residents to help us devise proportionate plans for Ukrainian refugee resettlement

In addition to Census data, the Data and Insight team have supported fresh primary research into specific local community needs through various projects, ranging from Community Centre use, Harlequin customers, residents’ opinions on environmental sustainability and our management of greenspaces.  All of these have helped build better and more representative information about local needs.  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 frontline support services all need to understand the needs of our residents and communities to enable us to provide appropriate support, particularly for the most vulnerable.

As identified above, tools such as predictive modelling and consultation can help with this and let us plan ahead of emerging need. More qualitative information is also essential, however, and officers across the organisation work personally with residents to build this human understanding. Our routes for engaging include our Community Development workers, Family Support and Money Support teams, our Community Centres and our Customer Contact team. Work this year has encompassed engagement with new local community groups, broadening the offers at our community centres, and continuing to build on our refugee support programme.

The Council isn’t alone in trying to help people, and we also work with a range of partners, including housing associations, the NHS, and local charitable and voluntary sector bodies. With these partners, we can coordinate in response to levels of local need and help direct resources in response to developing demand. This year, we’ve been particularly looking at how we can understand the health needs of local residents and make sure it’s easy for everyone, and particularly the most vulnerable, to find and access the right support. By having a cohesive understanding of health factors, we can help do our part in preventing health issues developing, rather than simply responding once they’ve happened. 

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 expected to continue, which will require us to be as effective and efficient as we can in providing support and directing resources where they’ll do the most good. We’ll therefore need to maintain and continue to develop our understanding of local priorities, and update our models to inform ongoing service planning.

We’ll also be undertaking consultations on a range of emerging areas, including local leisure needs, public spaces, and starting the process of reviewing our Corporate Plan. These efforts will make use of the Consultation Toolkit and be supported by the Data and Insight team and relevant services across the organisation.

The effective use of data will also help inform topics covered elsewhere in this report, including developing a new Customer Contact Strategy, building and maintaining our community relations, and steering our organisation development.