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1.1 Chair welcomed Members and Officers to the meeting. Apologies were received from Councillors Nick Byrne, Liam Cowles, Karl Gauden, Alan Slade, Lucy Williams and Nathan Yeowell.
2.1 No interests were declared.
3.1 The minutes of the meeting held on 14 November 2023 were confirmed as an accurate record.
4.1 The action sheet was noted. The TLS declared that all actions have been completed and Members agreed that they can be removed.
5 Strategic Equality Plan 2024-2028 5.1 The EM introduced the report and the PO-EMAE gave a detailed overview of the Strategic Equality Plan report to Members. 5.2 Members questioned and officers responded as follows: · POEMAE – It is the intention to develop a Strategic Equality action plan and this would contain measurable specifications that would be in line with the County Plan. DCS – Actions would be developed, and success factors could be attached to each of these to allow for monitoring and measuring of success. · DCS – Staff’s work/life balance was monitored through what is delivered not necessarily by hours. There was a reliance on managers at a local level to monitor their staff performance. Evidence did not indicate staff working unreasonable hours, staff valued the flexibility of hybrid working and the belief was that we had a more content workforce although this was only anecdotal. · SDA&C – Need to look at the policy from a strategic level and ensure we have captured all issues that are identified at service levels, and these can then be picked up by Leadership and filtered through to the strategy. GMPSSU – There would be a consultation process, and this would influence the plan going forward and ensure it sits alongside all other Council Strategies. · GMPSSU – Impact Assessments would be integrated within reports. It was important to ensure they integrated wellbeing and looked at how we were meeting our requirements as a Council. These would be looked at and revised to ensure they complied with the Strategy. Work had been done to ensure that all Council policies and strategies link into the County Plan and ensure from there it filters down to our Service Planning. SDA&C – Its important that we assess the Plan from a strategic level and ensure all policies we have are compliant with the Plan and then day-to-day delivery would allow us to identify when its non-compliant. · POEMAE – There would be a 12-week consultation period for the new Strategic Equality Plan, hard copies of the consultation had also been prepared to ensure as many groups as possible could contribute to the consultation. There was a need to ensure a mixture of local and regional engagement to enable us to tailor the plan to the needs of residents. It was important that we also reached out to disabled organisations and societies to build networks between ourselves and these groups. · DCS – Senior Management roles were appointed on competence and not via any gender bias and the pattern at each of the grade levels not being untypical of a large organisation. TCBC had a responsibility to provide opportunities regardless of gender and the evidence supported this. CE – If you looked at the data for Grades 11-18, not including the Chief Executive role, you could see that there was a 62% split for female employees and for Grades 14-18 there was a 52% female split. When you looked at the Council as a whole, it was clear that there was a positive picture across all areas and there was a balanced workforce across all areas of the Council. · GMPSSU – The County Plan aligned with a number of the Marmot Principles and there was a lot that the Council supported around employability and skills. There had also been a lot of work done around reaching out to all groups in the Borough to consult on this Plan as well as through Education and Community Safety means too. · SDA&C – Work was being done with Community Councils to help establish the key needs of residents regarding the Plan and to give a more local approach to the Plan itself within the different areas of the Borough. This aided us when we needed to crosscheck the data behind some of the key aspects of the Plan against what residents in their communities were telling us. This will help enable us to prioritise residents with the Plan when it comes to addressing community needs. · SDA&C – All strategies that feed into the County Plan had been reviewed, including the Mental Health Strategy, to ensure they were all compliant with the Strategic Equality Plan. GMPSSU – A Child & Participation Officer had been appointed and work had been done to explore how we can engage with younger residents and gather their needs as well and apply this into the Plan to enable a more well-rounded approach. · POEMAE – The Action Plans that had been devised contained specific areas where accountability could be measured and would ensure that staff received training around Equality on polices such as LGBTQ+ policy or Anti-Racism. Staff needed to have an understanding of residents needs particularly in our Homelessness, Care Homes and Refugee services. WLGA have been providing training on equality so TCBC have taken up this opportunity with all Senior Managers encouraged to attend the next training module on this topic scheduled for February 2024. · SDA&C – Schools have been doing pilot work where they have taken a different approach to ALN children who were entering School age without a diagnosis or awaiting one. The approach they were taking was to work closely with health visitors and the Health board, encouraging a more linked-up approach and would cover children from pre-school age all the way up to secondary school. · CE – The key message of the Strategic Equality plan was to address the issue of bias and look at how to tackle this and educate our staff. The plan was that all senior managers would be attending the training in February. After this we would be in a position to reflect back to Members in more detail how we plan to roll this information out to the wider workforce. · GMPSSU – To ensure our residents felt safe in their communities we have re-established our Community Safety Partnership, but we were still looking at what more could be done to keep our residents safe. Member Surgeries helped with this process as this ensured any issues that weren’t brought to our direct attention could be via Elected Members. It’s important we ensure we encourage positive relations with our communities. Engagement Officers would regularly review how we engage going forward. · SDA&C – We could explore the possibility of creating roles for Community Champions, similar to our Member Champions, but this was an idea which would need to be explored in greater detail. We want to encourage residents to have a neighbourly attitude with one another and it was about finding a balance between the need for formalised community roles and encouraging wider residents into a day-to-day change, but this would vary depending on the community. GMPSSU – It was suggested that a Members Seminar would be useful to share the information with all Members. · EM – Being a Cabinet Member and attending public meetings as well as other cross-department meetings could see that Equality was an issue that permeates across the entire Council and it was clear we worked hard to ensure that equality is was offered across all areas. 5.3 The Chair thanked the Officers and the EM for their participation, and they then left the meeting. The TLS, SO, and TD&MSO remained for the recommendations. 5.4 Recommendations On completion of their scrutiny activity, the Committee concluded by offering the following recommendations and comments for consideration:- Recommendation 1:- The Cross Cutting Resources & Business Committee stressed the importance of the new Strategic Equality Plan feeding into our County Plan, other strategies and Well-Being of Future of Generations objectives. It was recommended that all Council strategies be considerate of our equality objectives with particular reference given to reviewing and updating, where relevant, the Council’s Constitution. Recommendation 2:- In support of our local business community, it was recommended that when developing the new Equality Strategy that consideration be given to how our objectives relate to and give equitable support to business growth within Torfaen, for example through our Procurement Strategy. Recommendation 3:- In relation to objective 3, it was recommended that within the strategy, sitting under this objective, is reference to and acknowledgement of social media hate crimes and abuse. Recommendation 4:- To ensure maximum and comprehensive responses, it was recommended that the consultation be as wide reaching as possible, utilising a range of multi-media accessible mechanisms. Members would welcome the opportunity to support the consultation process through sharing the link and offering suggestions for consultees. Additional Comments & Observations from the Committee: The Cross Cutting Resources & Business O&S Committee commended the very detailed report and would welcome the opportunity to review the full strategy before it is finalised for approval at Council. Members would also appreciate the opportunity to review the training opportunities that will sit alongside implementation of the Equality Strategy 2024-28 as well as further detail on the monitoring programme.
6. Date of Next Meeting 6.1 The date of the next meeting is Wednesday, 31 January 2024 at 2.00pm 6.2 The meeting ended at 3.40pm.
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