Policy paper

Equality objectives 2020 (accessible version)

Published 30 July 2020

Applies to England

Introduction

1.1 - The Equality Act 2010 requires all public bodies to publish equality objectives it thinks it should achieve to meet the general equality duty (sometimes called the Public Service Equality Duty).

1.2 - The general equality duty says that public bodies must, in the exercise of their functions, have due regard to the need to:

• eliminate discrimination, harassment, and victimisation
• advance equality of opportunity between persons who share a relevant protected characteristic and persons who do not share it
• foster good relations between persons who share a relevant protected characteristic and persons who do not share it.

1.3 - These are the Regulator of Social Housing’s first set of equality objectives following a successful transition period to being a standalone entity in October 2018. They were finalised following a statutory consultation between January and March 2020.

1.4 - The objectives have been mindful of:

• our statutory obligation to be proportionate and not to inappropriately increase the regulatory burden, and our co-regulatory approach to regulation
• the applicability of our general equality duty in our day to day work.

1.5 - We considered it most appropriate for our first equalities objectives to focus on areas where we can have the most immediate impact, namely:

• points where we interact with tenants (objectives 1 and 2)
• the organisational culture we create (objective 3).

1.6 - We will review these objectives within the mandatory four-year period and we will also keep these under review if our role changes or if we identify further areas which would benefit from setting equality objectives.

Equality objectives

Equality objective	Delivered by
1. Ensure that where equality and diversity concerns are raised through our enquiries process, they are considered in line with our statutory objectives	i. Appropriate training for our enquiries team and staff who regularly handle complaints ii. Ensuring that complaint referrals identified as having an equality, diversity or inclusion dimension are recorded as such and dealt with in accordance with our consumer regulation guidance. iii. We intend to highlight key lessons learned and good practice from discrimination cases and enquiries in our annual report on consumer regulation. iv. Investigating technological solutions to improve collation and analysis of EDI data arising from enquiries
2. The Regulator will review its methods of communicating to ensure that it does so in an inclusive way	i. Training for staff on accessible communication skills (particularly around mental health and learning disabilities) ii. Ensuring that the regulator’s publications are as accessible as is reasonable, in line with our duty to make reasonable adjustments iii. Ensuring that our communications, such as responses to enquiries, meet the individual’s communication needs where reasonable in line with our duty to make reasonable adjustments iv. Proactively engaging with GDS about what changes can be made to our website to make it as accessible as possible.
3. We will provide a supportive and inclusive working environment for all	i. Collating data on gender pay to establish our gender pay gap. Data to be collected and published in accordance with the regulator’s People Strategy ii. Improving the collation of equality and diversity data in order to identify barriers to under-represented groups to recruitment and progression, advance equality of opportunity, and foster good relations amongst all groups within the regulator’s workforce iii. Establishing a robust baseline and using data to inform how the regulator embeds equality and diversity into its approach to developing policies and/or strategies for staff to support continuous improvement iv. Using data to review how effective the policies we have in place are at delivering the desired outcomes v. Carrying out L&D activity to further foster an inclusive working environment including mandatory training on unconscious bias, discrimination, harassment and equality legislation for all staff vi. Actively promoting equality, diversity and inclusion in the workplace.