Equality and Diversity
Staffordshire Fire and Rescue Service embrace the Equality Act and the Public Sector Duty it places upon us. To ensure we know what we need to know we look at all our functions and partnerships through a Strategic equality and diversity lens. Our Equality and Diversity function sits within our Human Resource department and is a guiding principle in our Safety Plan. The Safety Plan supports our ability to prioritise risk so we can evidence that we put our communities first. Our People Strategy details how our staff can expect to be treated with dignity and respect, in open recognition of who they are at every level of their career. This means that all the decisions the Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner make, the way we deliver our services, review our data collection, work with our developed and developing partnerships, with our internal and external relationships has an Equality and Diversity focus at a strategic level.
The scope of our impact assessment process
We believe that when we consider the services we offer, and the staff who deliver them, we are better able to understand the impact, and needs of service users and our staff, when we look at the characteristics, circumstances and profiles of our staff and our community. This informs how we identify risk and respond appropriately. It means we are able to include our people in these decisions and place them at the heart of our Polices and operating models. This is why we put our People Impact Assessment (PIA) process at the beginning of our decision making and policy development. Our PIA format ensures that we show due regard to inform our strategies and policies are fit to deliver a positive outcome. This empowers our staff, who undertake Safe and Well visits and deliver our Community Engagement, our Human Recourses Team, Learning and Development Team and our Staff Networks to be fully included in the decisions we make. This means that all our staff across the Response, Prevention and Protection are working with a sense of belonging. It enables us to collect only the information which helps to accurately build profiles on who is most at risk and target our resources appropriately. It also means our staff are included in our planning. The relevant data monitoring ensures we fully understand vulnerability and risks to the community. Our Communications Team are a pivotal point for our staff and ensure we are engaging with, and involving, the widest possible group of residents and partners in Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire’s.
Our developed partnerships with Local Government, NHS Providers, the Voluntary Sector and our shared services with Staffordshire Police enables us to understand the needs of our community groups and residents to deliver a joined up, effective and efficient Fire and Rescue Service.
Equality objectives
The Equality Act 2010 (Specific Duties) require us to publish relevant, proportionate information showing compliance with the Equality Duty, and to set equality objectives.
To ensure the Service meets our obligations under equality legislation, transparency obligations and employment provisions, we endeavour to monitor, analyse and publish the profile of our staff annually. Effective monitoring is an important tool for measuring performance and progress towards equality and diversity objectives. Monitoring is not an end in itself and the data we collect needs to be analysed and used to inform appropriate action. An understanding of its potential to help underpin our equality and inclusion objectives, to build a Representative Workforce and support our Staff Networks is a good place to be for us.
In support of our Equality Diversity and Inclusion guiding principles we have made a commitment to the National Core Code of Ethics. This supports us in meeting our Specific Duty. The Service is working to evidence our commitment by adopting the National Equality, Diversity, Inclusion Maturity Model developed by the National Fire Chiefs Council.
The Service is committed to eradicating unlawful discrimination, advancing equality of opportunity and fostering good relations between people who share a protected characteristic and those who do not. This General Duty under the Equality Act enables us focus in detail on these principles. The progress against the EDI Maturity Model and Workforce Profile will be published annually on the website.
The Service will publish its demonstration of Due Regard, our ‘People Impacts Assessment’, on its website.
Workforce profile (September 2022 to March 2023)
We monitor staff by protected characteristics in employment and training, sickness and grievance. All data is collected by self-classification and is therefore a matter of individual judgement. The Service is continually striving for our positive culture to support diversity and have developed a self-service monitoring tool where staff can amend and update the data we hold on them. Staff can update the information we hold on them themselves whether that be their next of kin, contact details or if they have a disability or not. As we are an emergency service, the role titles of our staff is not broken down as is the case with many other employees.
