Equality and diversity

Background

The Equality Act 2010 is a major piece of legislation introduced to replace the thicket of legislation which previously existed on equality issues. The Act brings together all 116 of the current discrimination laws into one document, with the aim of harmonising, streamlining and strengthening previous legislation to support progress on equality.

 
To see a copy of the Equalities Act please visit the Government Equality Office website by clicking here.

What is happening now?

The main provisions of the Equality Act came into force on the 1 October 2010, which has seen a number of changes.

The Act protects the following groups, giving them protection from discrimination under the Act. These groups are known as 'protected characteristics'.

• age;
• disability;
• gender reassignment;
• marriage and civil partnership;
• pregnancy and maternity;
• race;
• religion or belief;
• sex; and
• sexual orientation.

The main provisions introduced as of the 1 October 2010 are:

• The basic framework of protection against direct and indirect discrimination, harassment and victimisation in services and public functions; premises; work; education; associations, and transport.
• Changing the definition of gender reassignment, by removing the requirement for medical supervision.
• Levelling up protection for people discriminated against because they are perceived to have, or are associated with someone who has, a protected characteristic, so providing new protection for people like carers.
• Clearer protection for breastfeeding mothers;
• Applying the European definition of indirect discrimination to all protected characteristics.
• Extending protection from indirect discrimination to disability.
• Introducing a new concept of "discrimination arising from disability", to replace protection under previous legislation lost as a result of a legal judgment.
• Applying the detriment model to victimisation protection (aligning with the approach in employment law).
• Harmonising the thresholds for the duty to make reasonable adjustments for disabled people.
• Extending protection from 3rd party harassment to all protected characteristics.
• Making it more difficult for disabled people to be unfairly screened out when applying for jobs, by restricting the circumstances in which employers can ask job applicants questions about disability or health.
• Allowing claims for direct gender pay discrimination where there is no actual comparator.
• Making pay secrecy clauses unenforceable.
• Extending protection in private clubs to sex, religion or belief, pregnancy and maternity, and gender reassignment.
• Introducing new powers for employment tribunals to make recommendations which benefit the wider workforce.
• Harmonising provisions allowing voluntary positive action.

 
The future

There are still parts of the legislation which will need to be introduced as per the following timetable:

April 2011 - Public Sector Equality Duty

This is the part of the Act which applies specifically to public bodies and those who provide public functions (e.g. contracted out services). It is anticipated to include the following specific duties, which will not be listed in the Equality Act but would be put in force through secondary legislation.It is not yet known if the specific duties will come into force, exactly what form they will take and how they will impact on local authorities.

• Equality reporting duty - This will require public bodies to publish an annual report in April of each year demonstrating progress made on equality issues.
• Socio-economic duty - This will place a duty on public bodies to consider socio- economic disadvantage when making strategic decisions about how to exercise their functions.
• Single Equality Duty - Build on existing equality duties for race, disability and gender by creating a single equality duty for all of the protected characteristic groups, except for marriage and civil partnership.  

April 2011 - Combined Dual discrimination provisions are due to come into force

2012 (date to be confirmed) - Banning of age discrimination outside the workplace

Craven District Council's approach to Equalities

In response to the changes in legislation, Craven District Council is committed to equalities and the council has a number of mechanisms in place to ensure that equality issues are considered in everything we. You can find out more information about this by clicking here. The Council has in place a planned approached to equalities, which can be found in our single equality scheme, Craven Pride.