Race Equality

South Hams Council operates the following race equality policy:

Policy Statement:

South Hams District Council as an employer supports the principle of race equality in all areas of its personnel practices and aims to deal honestly and fairly with all its employees and people who may apply to it for employment.

The Council recognises its legal duty to ensure that in policy making, service delivery and employment it will use the best of its endeavours to:

Eliminate unlawful racial discrimination
Promote equality of opportunity
Promote wherever possible good race relations between employees of differing racial groups

As an Employer South Hams District Council will:

Comply with Statutory and Regulatory requirements that are designed to protect people from Racial discrimination (principally The Race Relations Act 1976 and the Race Relations (Amendment Act) 2000.
Take into account the present and future demographic profile of the District in relation to the racial background of the population and monitor its own employee profile against this.
Set action plans to contain annual monitoring of staff in post, applicants for employment, training and promotion.
Review and examine its race equality monitoring to ensure it makes a positive contribution to the removal of all forms of unlawful discrimination.
Encourage and promote improvements and awareness in individual attitudes and behaviour within its operations to achieve the objectives of the Race Equality Policy.
Take action to address injustice should it occur.

Responsibilities of Each Service Group:

Each Service Group (through the responsibility of its Chief Officer) will ensure that:

It complies with the Council’s Equality Policy based on the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000, the CRE’s Codes of Practice and other relevant legislation;
All employee development activities within the group eg appraisal, recruitment/promotion, training, are conducted in such a way that promotes Racial equality;
Through appropriate training all employees understand the importance of good race equality practice in service delivery.

Responsibilities of each Service Centre Manager:

Service Centre Managers are required under this policy to:

Ensure that all their employees understand the implications of race equality in their dealings with customers, clients and work colleagues and support in practice the principles of this policy;
Take immediate steps, including the application of the Council’s disciplinary procedure, to correct the behaviour and conduct of any member of staff whose actions do not conform to the requirements of this Policy;
Develop their services in such a way that contributes to the overall aims of the Council to meet the objectives of Racial Equality in the workplace and service provision.

Individual Employee Responsibility

All employees have a responsibility to:

Ensure at that all times their behaviour and actions comply with and support the aims of this policy;
Extend the principles of Racial equality and Equality issues generally, in dealings with customers, clients and work colleagues;
Understand that failure to comply with the requirements of this policy may render them liable to disciplinary action being taken against them including the charge of Gross Misconduct.

Monitoring and Control

The responsibility for the overall monitoring of this policy will rest with the Council’s Personnel Panel. In this respect the Panel be provided with an annual Monitoring report from the Personnel Officer detailing appropriate information and statistical analysis of the Council’s Personnel activities covered by this policy.