London Borough of Tower Hamlets: Facilitation Support & SMT Away Days

Since 2006 Equality Works has been providing a range of on-going facilitation support to a range of audiences with the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. This work has involved supporting the Senior Management Team (SMT) and the Equality Action Team (EAT) within the Communities, Localities and Culture (previously, Environment and Culture) directorate, the Corporate Equalities Steering Group (CESG) and the Disability Access Forum, to identify key priorities for embedding equality and inclusion into a range of work streams and activities.

Tower Hamlets is one of few Local Authorities to have reached Level 5 of the Equality Standard for Local Government. Tower Hamlets wanted to maintain equality standards as set out in the Equality Standard for Local Government and to move beyond a compliance model of promoting equality and inclusion as set out in the public duties on Race, Disability and Gender.  They wanted to review the functions and roles of the disability staff forum and to develop a corporate approach to equality management.

In order to promote anti-discriminatory practice and promote equality of outcome across the six equality strands we held a series of equality workshops with the CESG, attended by the Duty Chief Executive, who is the also Head of Equalities, Departmental Equality Lead Officers and Directorate leads. Our consultants used our equality analysis as a process for developing a consensus on equality management processes and a corporate approach across the key themes as set out in the revised ESLG: Leadership and Corporate Commitment, Community Enagagement & Accountability, Service Delivery and Customer Care and Employment and Training. Using the same equality analysis we held a series of workshops with the SMT and the EAT from Communities, Localities and Culture to assist them to reflect on the key principles of equality management in relation to both service delivery and HR functions and to establish a set of equality priorities and actions.

The key outcomes following these facilitation sessions was a re-focus from the Corporate Management Team and the SMT within Communities, Localities and Culture. The results were reflected in corporate and directorate level action plans, were priorities were changed or amended, in turn these were reflected in the Directorate’s Service Plans. This work is helping Tower Hamlets to maintain its position at Level 5 with the revised ESLG. It also helped Service Heads to widen their scope on equality to cover the six strands.