Agenda item

Cabinet Member – Councillor Menna Trenholme

 

To submit a report on the above.

 

 

A lunch break is planned for 12.00pm – 1.00pm

 

 

To accept the report and note the observations.

 

The Cabinet Member for Corporate Support and officers from the Corporate Support Department were welcomed to the meeting.

 

Submitted - the report of the Cabinet Member for Corporate Support explaining that the Council had a specific duty, as part of the Equality Act 2010, to review its Equality Objectives by the end of March 2024, and she invited the input of the scrutineers to the draft objectives.

 

The Cabinet Member set out the context and thanked the officers for all their work in this field.

 

Members were then given an opportunity to ask questions and submit observations. 

 

It was noted that the most important thing to remember in terms of equality was that the starting point was not the same for everyone and that sometimes the starting point needed to be moved so that people with barriers which prevented them from being equal in society could move forward.   With that, it was asked which steps the Council were taking, for example, to give jobs to people with those inequalities and to give them an opportunity to step forward.  In response, it was noted:-

·         That the intention of the objectives of the Strategic Equality Plan was to try to move things forward for those people who experienced inequality and that four objectives were working towards action points on this.

·         That the first objective was involved with employment and that this was in accordance with the guidance.

·         Consideration had also been given to what else that needed to be done.  The staff had been asked to complete a questionnaire noting their characteristics, but many did not do so for various reasons, but without this information, it was not possible to know what the situation was within the Council and who needed the most encouragement.  As a result, it was decided that actions points were required which would move this forward.

·         That the Council had a legal duty to be a welcoming employer to all, and the right attitudes were needed within the organisation operating in a manner that was welcoming to all and encouraged everyone to come and work for us, e.g. it was possible to undertake reasonable adaptations to the workplace for people who felt that they needed support to come and work for the Council.

·         That there was room to improve this again and that part of the Plan on employment set an ambition to undertake specific steps towards ensuring that Gwynedd was the chosen employer for all.

 

It was enquired how more women could be attracted to senior managers' posts.  In response, it was noted:-

·         That the Women in Leadership field was a priority field within the Council and that a project working on changing the culture had been in place for many years and making great progress.

·         That a pilot scheme was underway examining how job application forms were being screened to ensure that there was no type of unnecessary bias.

·         In terms of other characteristics, that an equality core group met on a quarterly basis and included representatives from groups representing people with different characteristics, to obtain specialist opinion from them on different matters.

·         As part of the engagement, that officers had visited several groups, including young carers and Pride, to obtain their opinion before drawing up the draft, and it was intended to undertake further engagement work mainly with different groups for this part of the consultation.

 

General concern was expressed that identity politics focusing on relatively small groups in society evaded the basic inequality, namely the socio-economic inequality, and the fact that the report provided more detail on reducing this to close the pay gap was welcomed, as that was where our focus should be.

 

Concern was expressed that women were being over-represented in low salary jobs, e.g. in the care field.

 

It was noted that the cohort that had responded to the questionnaire was not representational of the county's population linguistically (33% compared to approximately 64%) and it was suggested that this could explain the anti-Welsh undertones felt here and there in the observations.  It was noted that officers had responded quite firmly to this in the observations, but some discriminatory observations in other fields had been omitted, and it was asked whether the hostile and disparaging observations towards the Welsh language should also be omitted and not addressed either.  In response, it was noted:-

·         As so much of this was being said, not only in this questionnaire, but in other questionnaires as well, it was felt that this needed to be addressed as it was important to teach people about our way of looking at things, and our way of operating in Gwynedd.

·         Therefore, there was an intention to have an action point stating that we would sell our vision of the Welsh language and our logic for asking people for the skill of being able to speak Welsh.

 

Reference was made to the following sentence in the report "Equality officers also met with various groups of people with protected characteristics, including young carers, disabled people, LGBTQ+ people, etc." and it was noted that it was astounding that there was no report relating to equality and equal opportunity recognising all of those groups.

 

It was noticed that the response to the questionnaire from the Bala / Penllyn area was low compared to other areas and it was asked why so few young people had responded to the questionnaire. In response, it was noted that young carers and young people in Gisda were visited in an attempt to ensure that we got a representation of young voices.⁠ It was also intended to question the Young Farmers and Coleg Meirion-Dwyfor.

 

It was enquired how it was intended to stimulate the interest of young people who had left school in the Gwynedd Youth Forum. In response, it was noted that the most important thing, as with every characteristic, was to ask the young people themselves what was the best way of doing so, and to act accordingly.

 

It was asked how Gwynedd compared with other councils in terms of equality in the workplace and what steps were being taken to ensure that the entire workforce placed an emphasis on this.  In response, it was noted:-

·         That other councils experienced the same obstacles as Gwynedd in reality and that there was work to be done on why we were emphasising this field.

·         As there were gaps in our systems in terms of including people with characteristics in our employment arrangements, it was intended to establish a staff forum that would be a way of having a two-way dialogue and gather ideas to set-up schemes based on clear evidence.

 

The fact that the education field had been included in the objectives was welcomed, but it was noted that the action points were matters that related to the world of education, and that the equality link was not clear in all of them.  The reason why the action points related to equality was explained.  It was stated that every school was required to have its own equality plan and these action points would establish a framework as a starting point for the schools to develop their own plans.

The Equality Advisor was thanked for her work and commitment to the field and everyone was urged to attend one of the equality training sessions that she organised.

 

RESOLVED to accept the report and to note the observations.