Strategic Equality Plan 2024-28

Why Does Pembrokeshire County Council Need a Strategic Equality Plan?

The Strategic Equality Plan (SEP) 2024-28 describes how we aim to continue our commitment to equality and how we will meet legal obligations contained with the Equality Act 2010. 

Within the Equality Act 2010, public bodies have an additional responsibility to meet the Public Sector Equality Duty. These are outlined below.

 

 Easy Read Strategic Equality Plan 2024 28

 

The Public Sector Equality Duty

 

The General Duty

When making decisions and delivering services we must have due regard to:

• Eliminating discrimination, harassment, victimisation and any other conduct that is prohibited under the Act.
• Advancing equality of opportunity between persons who share a relevant protected characteristic and persons who do not share it (protected characteristics are explained later in this report).
• Fostering good relations between persons who share a relevant protected characteristic and persons who do not share it. When thinking about how to advance equality of opportunity between persons who share a relevant protected characteristic and those who don’t, we also need to:
• Remove or minimise disadvantages suffered by persons who share a relevant protected characteristic and are connected to that characteristic.
• Meet the needs of persons who share a relevant protected characteristic that are different from the needs of persons who do not share it.
• Encourage persons who share a relevant protected characteristic to participate in public life or in any other activity in which participation by such persons is disproportionately low. We also have to particularly think about how it will tackle prejudice and promote understanding.

 

The Specific Duties

The Equality Act provides a power to make regulations imposing duties on public bodies to support better performance of the general duty; these are known as the Specific Public Sector Equality Duties and are different in England, Scotland and Wales. The Specific Duties underpin the General Duty and have been developed around four main principles:

1. Use of evidence
2. Consultation and Involvement
3. Transparency
4. Leadership

The Welsh Government published regulations that introduced the Specific Duties for Wales in March 2011, these set out the actions the Council must take in order to comply and include the following areas:

• Setting Equality Objectives and publishing a Strategic Equality Plan
• Ensuring it engages with people who have an interest in how the Council’s decisions affect them
• Collecting and publishing information relevant to compliance with the General Duty
• Carrying out Equality Impact Assessments and publishing the results if there is a substantial impact on the Council’s identified
• Publish employment monitoring information annually
• Promote knowledge and understanding of the General Duty amongst its employees and use its performance assessment procedures to identify and address the training needs of its employees in relation to the General Duties
• Set a gender pay equality objective where a gender pay difference is identified
• Think about including conditions relevant to the General Duty in its procurement processes

 

Who Is Protected Under the Equality Act 2010?

It is against the law to discriminate against someone because of their protected characteristic. This is the term used in the Equality Act 2010 to identify the types of things that affect how people are treated and can mean people may experience discrimination. The law is designed to protect them, they are: 

• age
• disability
• gender reassignment
• marriage and civil partnership
• pregnancy and maternity
• race
• religion, belief or non-belief
• sex
• sexual orientation

 

Welsh Language Strategy

We have not referenced the Welsh Language within this plan, or the previous plan. Pembrokeshire County Council was required to publish its first Welsh Language Strategy in 2016, which ran until 2021.  Our current 5 Year Strategy 2021 - 2026, sets out how we will promote and facilitate the use of the Welsh language more widely in Pembrokeshire. We are committed to increase both the number of Welsh speakers within the county, and opportunities for Welsh speakers to use the language. The strategy and annual reports are available on our website.

 

Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015

The Council is committed to embedding the Well-­being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 (opens in a new tab) into all its service delivery and activities.

The Act puts in place a sustainable development principle, which means that we must ‘act in a manner which seeks to ensure that the needs of the present are met without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’.

The Act puts in place a duty on the Council as a public body to maximise its contribution to seven national Well­being goals. As a Council, we need to incorporate the goals into all of our work and make sure that when we make decisions we consider the impact they could have on people living their lives in Wales in the future. 

Whilst it is clear that some Well­being goals specifically relate to equality, it is important to recognise that equality objectives, contained within this plan and their associated action plans, have a significant role to play across all Well­being goals, for example, actions to improve employment for disabled people will contribute not only to ‘a more equal Wales’, but to ‘a healthier Wales’, `a prosperous Wales’ and ‘a Wales of cohesive communities’.

The Well­being of Future Generations Act also asks individual public services to apply five ways of working, which we have adopted in the development of this plan.

1. Long Term: The importance of balancing short term needs with the need to safeguard the ability to also meet long term needs. 
2. Prevention: How acting to prevent problems occurring or getting worse may help public bodies meet their objectives. 
3. Integration: Considering how the public body’s well­being objectives may impact upon each of the well­being goals, on their other objectives, or on the objectives of other public bodies.
4. Collaboration: Acting in collaboration with any other person (or different parts of the body itself) that could help the body to meet its well­being objectives.
5. Involvement: The importance of involving people with an interest in achieving the well­being goals, and ensuring that those people reflect the diversity of the area which the body serves.