Plans for departments to conduct diversity audits of staff have been scrapped, following the publication of a policy review paper last week which revised public sector equality duties.

Starting at the end of April, public bodies with more than 150 staff would have had to monitor staff diversity and publish accurate breakdowns in order to comply with the Equality Act.

‘Specific duties’ in the Equality Act meant that departments were required to routinely gather data on “the race, disability, gender and age distribution of your workforce; an indication of likely representation on sexual orientation and religion and belief, provided that no-one can be identified as a result; an indication of any issues for transsexual staff, based on your engagement with transsexual staff or voluntary groups; gender pay gap information; grievance and dismissal”.

A policy paper published last Friday removed this duty. In a written ministerial statement accompanying the paper, home secretary Theresa May said: “We want public bodies to focus on ensuring that they treat people equally and that their policies deliver equal opportunities for all, not whether they have ticked a box on a form. That’s why we’ve identified further changes we can make to the public sector equality duty to cut down on bureaucracy.”
The government is consulting on the new draft regulations until 21 April, and new regulations are expected to be in place by July.

The General Equality Duty will still come into force on 5 April. This duty brings together existing duties on race, gender and disability, and extends discrimination laws to cover gender reassignment in full, age, religion or belief, and sexual orientation.

The Government Equalities Office says the law requires bodies exercising “public functions to have due regard to the need to eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation; to advance equality of opportunity; and to foster good relations between people who share a protected characteristic and those who do not share it.”

Written by Joshua Chambers