Equality and Diversity

The Borough of Oadby & Wigston is a diverse community made up of residents and businesses from different social, economic, ethnic, cultural and religious backgrounds. As a council we value and celebrate diversity, and believe it is essential to try to understand the different contributions, perspectives, and experience that people in our community have.

We also recognise that not everyone who lives in the borough necessarily experiences the same level of wealth, health, security, educational, leisure, and work opportunities. Some individuals or groups may not experience equality of opportunity and access to equal rights.

We are committed to equality of opportunity: ensuring that everyone has access to the same opportunities in life, regardless of their background, culture or personal circumstances, and across all protected characteristics covered by the Equality Act 2010. This applies to our service users and to our employees as part of the general and specific duties public authorities have under the Act.

We are working to reduce inequality through the services we provide, contributing to improving the life chances for people.

For this reason we believe that everyone in our Borough deserves excellent, fair, and equitable public services that reflect their individual needs and circumstances.

Oadby & Wigston Borough Council aim to ensure:

• Diversity is welcomed, and is promoted, as a positive force in our community.
• People's differences are understood, valued, and respected.
• We take action to foster and promote good relations between all local communities.
• All our services are fully accessible and any barriers are addressed.
• The workforce reflects the profile of our community, and
• There is zero tolerance of unlawful discrimination and harassment of any kind.

Equality Objectives 2024-2028

Setting equality objectives is an important way for us to show our commitment to our aims. They outline what the council will do to support Oadby & Wigston in being a progressive and equitable borough, and enable all of our residents to share in our communities’ successes.

Our equality objectives for the next four years are;

To ensure that our services and facilities are accessible and inclusive. We will achieve this by:

• Improving our Equality Impact Assessment process
• Ensuring documents are in accessible formats
• Collect & analyse consultation data

To create and promote an inclusive workplace culture. We will achieve this by:

• Working towards a workplace profile which reflects our local community
• Ensuring that all employees receive Equality, Diversity & Inclusion training, including Equality Impact Assessment training where appropriate
• Ensuring that employees understand our expectations of behaviours at work and treat everyone with Dignity and Respect

About our Borough

A profile of the population characteristics of the borough helps us to understand key issues facing our community. We use various data sources to create this profile, including Census data, equality monitoring information, and employee data. The Census includes questions about sex, age, work, health, education, household size, ethnicity, and service in the armed forces. For those aged 16 and older there are questions on sexual orientation and gender identity.

Equality monitoring information is generally collected on forms you fill in; informing us who is and is not accessing the services we provide, who our customers are, and whether we are meeting their needs. This information helps us to improve and develop our services, identify barriers, and highlight gaps to enable services to have fair and equitable access.

We use employee data to create an equality profile of staff to help us understand key issues about the workforce. We also use this data to inform decisions and policies affecting our employees

As part of our compliance with the ‘general duty’ within the Equality Act 2010 these profiles must be published by the Council and can be found linked below.