Our equality, diversity and inclusion objectives

Derbyshire Constabulary has a strategy to measurably improve our performance in relation to equality principles.

These are in place to ensure that we increase the trust and confidence with the force, improving how representative our organisation is to our communities and through this increase our legitimacy.

We do this by achieving specific equality objectives, derived from national legislation, duties and strategies (all link to the sections below).

Equality Act 2010

The Equality Act 2010 is the UK's discrimination law which protects individuals from unfair treatment and promotes a fairer and more equal society. The Act protects people from discrimination, harassment, and victimisation in work, education, and when accessing services.

Protected Characteristics

The Equality Act protects people against discrimination because of the protected characteristics that we all have. Under the Equality Act, there are nine protected characteristics:

• Age
• Disability
• Gender re-assignment
• Marriage and civil partnership
• Race
• Religion
• Pregnancy and maternity
• Sex
• Sexual orientation.

Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED)

There is a statutory duty for police forces to meet the general and specific duties under the Equality Act 2010. It is our intention to not only continue to meet statutory obligations but to improve the way we serve our communities and build an inclusive workforce culture which reflects the diverse communities we serve via clear objectives and measurement of progress.

The Equality Act 2010 protects from discrimination, harassment and victimisation. It places a duty on us as a public authority in carrying out our functions to:

• eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment or victimisation
• advance equality of opportunity between people who share protected characteristics and people who do not share them
• foster good relations between people who share protected characteristics and people who do not share them.

These are often referred to as the three aims or arms of the general equality duty.

Specific Duties

The Equality Act 2010 (Specific Duties) Regulations 2011 require public sector organisations to:

• Prepare and publish one or more objectives they think they should achieve to do any of the things mentioned in the aims of the general equality duty, by 6 April 2012, and at least every four years thereafter.
• Ensure that those objectives are specific and measurable.
• Publish those objectives in such a manner that they are accessible to the public.

NPCC Equality Strategy

The National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC) Diversity, Equality and Inclusion Strategy 2018-2025 gave police forces across the country clarity of leadership and action that is required by the police service across three categories: our organisation, our communities and our partners.

The strategy can be found here.

Derbyshire Equality Objectives

The purpose of setting specific, measurable equality objectives is to help us to achieve the three aims of the general equality duty listed above, focusing on the outcomes to be achieved.

Equality objectives will help focus our attention on the priority equality issues within our organisation in order to deliver improvements in policy making, service delivery and employment, including resource allocation.

Guidance for public sector bodies states that proportionality is a key principle in setting the number of objectives and their level of ambition.

We have reviewed and refreshed our Equality Objectives to reflect those within the National Police Chiefs' Council Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion Strategy, following consultation with our internal staff support networks and our external independent advisory groups. We have also established a governance structure to deliver against these objectives, which will help us to monitor our progress more effectively and ensure we are delivering positive outcomes.

Our objectives focus on:

Our organisation

• Transparency and scrutiny: we will maximise the transparency of our organisations to ensure our activities can be scrutinised to enable explanation or give evidence to enable reform.
• Developing our workforce: we will develop our staff to better understand diversity, equality, and inclusion and the positive outcomes that will be delivered if we truly embed our response within our organisations. We will create an inclusive culture where people, no matter their background, feel confident to disclose their characteristics.
• Understanding our workforce: we will better understand the composition of our workforce by ensuring we put in place systems that enable the collection, collation, and analysis of workforce data across the nine protected characteristics. We will put in place effective strategies that enable formal and informal engagement with our staff and support networks to ensure we better understand how we can continue to develop an inclusive organisational culture that promotes and embeds diversity and equality.

Our communities

• Understanding our communities: we will better understand the composition of our communities by ensuring that we put in place systems that enable the collection, collation, and analysis of community data and information across the nine protected characteristics.
• Increasing confidence: we will deal effectively with all reported hate crimes and incidents, recognising that failure to do so has a detrimental impact on the confidence those communities have in the police. We will ensure that the code of ethics is embedded in all we do and is pivotal in our interactions with those we come into contact with.
• Engagement: we will develop effective engagement strategies that enable interaction with all communities, fostering strong relationships that build trust and confidence.

Our partners

• Understanding the partnership landscape: we will work with partners to put in place systems that enable the collection, collation, and analysis of data and information which identifies disparity in service delivery across the nine protected characteristics.
• Tackling disparity: we will work with partners to implement whole system strategies to explain, where necessary reduce, and where possible eliminate disparity and enhance public service.
• Joint service delivery: we will work with our partners to develop strategies that enable more effective public service provision across our communities.