Agenda item

To note current performance, provide any comment, and agree to receive this report annually in order to comply with the Public Sector Equality Duty 2010.

Stephanie Holt-Castle (Head of Countryside, Leisure and Sport) was in attendance for this item.

1.    Mrs Holt-Castle introduced the report which set out a position statement for the Growth, Environment and Transport (GET) Directorate for 2017/18 regarding the embedding of equality and diversity within work programmes and organisational development. Under the Public Sector Equality Duty 2010, Kent County Council had a statutory obligation in ensuring publication of its equality and diversity information and that this be reported annually to the Equality and Human Rights Commission. The GET directorate positioned its equality and diversity approach within its customer service programme to reflect the fact that everybody had protected characteristics. Kent County Council was reviewing its corporate policies and mapping its performance against the six domains identified by the Equality and Human Rights Commission which reflected the areas of life that enabled people to flourish. Mrs Holt-Castle drew Members’ attention to paragraph 4 and 5 of the report which set out GET’s five lead objectives against the KCC Human Rights and Equality Policy and paragraphs 6 to 9 that highlight the directorate’s contribution to four out of the six domains identified by the Human Rights Commission. Mrs Holt-Castle announced that GET had successfully progressed year-on-year at embedding evidenced consideration of protected characteristics within its programmes, projects and ‘business as usual’ delivery schemes and that the analysis of diversity data of staff was an established key element of the directorate’s organisational development priorities.

2.    In response to Members queries regarding the Tonbridge Station Transport Interchange Improvement project, Mrs B Cooper (Corporate Director of Growth, Environment and Transport) acknowledged the points that had been raised and advised that these were within the remit of the Environment and Transport Cabinet Committee.

3.    Members asked whether Kent County Council was working with the Government to review LGBTQ arrangements, Mrs Holt-Castle said that Kent County Council had a corporate policy lead who would be leading the Council’s approach on this aspect,  and that within the last year, an officer group had been established to look specifically at transgender communities. A key concern for Kent County Council was that there were no particular opportunities or detriments identified for the transgender community and it was crucial that staff were supported to be aware of this particular community’s needs. There was also an E-learning available to staff around transgender to ensure further understanding. Mrs Holt-Castle agreed to liaise with the corporate policy lead to determine whether Kent County Council was in direct engagement with the Government.

4.    In response to Members’ request for further clarification regarding the improvement of promotional material, Mrs Holt-Castle said that this was related to Kent County Council’s efforts in ensuring that all communities were fairly and proportionally represented within its marketing materials. It was pointed out at the Rural Strategy meeting that a leaflet only contained Caucasian members of the public, therefore GET continued to seek to ensure that all marketing designs reflected all communities of Kent.

5.    With regard to the publication of marketing material in other languages, Mrs Holt-Castle said that GET as a directorate published all marketing material in English, however, should data identify the need to publish marketing material in another language in order to reach a specific community, then GET would respond to such a demand. As a supplement to this, Mrs Cooper highlighted the work that had been carried out as part of the Public Right of Way (PROW) Improvement Plan whereby Kent County Council had engaged with user and non-user communities to ensure that all aspects and concerns of the public were incorporated into the new access plan.

6.    In response to Members’ concerns regarding Thanet Parkway Station, Mrs Cooper assured the Committee that Kent County Council remained committed to the development of Parkway and that work had started with Network Rail to identify cost and eliminate possible risks. The project had received £10 million of Local Growth Fund; however, further work was being done to identify other sources of funding to ensure the project’s progression.

7.    Members were concerned with GET’s approach to the education domain identified by the Equality and Human Rights Commission and the perception of positive discrimination against male lecturers within Higher Education. Mrs Holt-Castle emphasised that GET promoted positive action, not positive discrimination. That particular project aimed to achieve a better representation of women teaching staff within CCCU’s engineering faculty through proactively encouraging and supporting women to apply for teaching positions, the project did not imply in any way that women were being appointed over better qualified men.

8.    RESOLVED that the current performance be noted, and that the committee receive the report annually in order to comply with the Public Sector Equality Duty 2010.