Diversity and Equality

We are committed to creating an environment where people feel valued, can live in harmony and have access to what they need in order to play a full and active part in society, free from fear, discrimination or prejudice.

We do not want to see anyone disadvantaged or with needs less well met than others. We especially do not want our services to contribute to unfairness, even accidentally.

In this site you will be able to access our corporate policies and plans and other information about equality issues.

You will also be able to feedback your views on what we are doing or planning to do.

As part of our plans we intend to review all our functions and policies to ensure that we are clear how they impact on different community groups.

You will be able to chart progress on this work and, again, give your views to us.

Our main equality policies are...

Corporate Equality Policy

This policy makes very firm commitments to consider equality in a very broad context based on a range of factors that cover peoples cultural, social or geographic affiliations or lifestyle preferences.  It not only commits us to consider equality in our service provision and as a good employer, but also in the way we provide leadership to the communities of Chester and the way we work with and influence our partners.

This is our first Corporate Equality Policy. It builds on our Equal Opportunities Policy and our commitment to identify and meet different needs fairly, as expressed in our Corporate Plan.

It complements our race equality, disability discrimination schemes and our (internal) "people "policy.

We have prepared this in line with the requirements of the Equality Standards for Local Government*. It will be supported by a corporate equality plan, which will explain how we will implement and monitor our commitments.

  The Race Equality Scheme

The Race Equality Scheme is our proposal to meet the general and specific duties of the Race Relations Amendment Act 2000.  Because race equality also nests within the corporate equality plan, we have included information at the start of the scheme that sets our responses into that context.

Included with the scheme you will find the assessment of relevance to race relations of all our functions and policies and our three year timetable to review these to assess their impacts.

If you have any comments or questions regarding equality please contact policy@chester.gov.uk

* The Equality Standard provides a framework for levels of achievement in delivering equality for employment and service delivery