Chris Harvey reminded the Committee of the background to the Equality and Diversity Review which had resulted in an action plan and that the report before the Committee was to update members with progress in relation to it.

Paul Adams said that recruiting to posts in the City was difficult and steps were being taken to enhance the employment offer. The appointment process had been simplified. Unsuccessful interviewees were now given feedback on their performance as a matter of course.

He was pleased to note that the percentage of BME colleagues employed by the Council had risen from 5-6% to 9-10% which compared favourably with comparable authorities. The Council continues to recruit apprentices  40% (of a total of about 50) of whom were from the BME community. The Council had a rolling programme of unconscious bias training which was targeted to the extent possible at those who would shortly be responsible for recruiting. An anonymous application process had been trialled for a few months but it had made no discernible impact. He recognised that there was more to be done to improve these figures still further.

There were evident advantages in having employees who were fluent in more than one language, particularly for front line services but making that an essential criterion for employment would limit the number of applicants to an unsustainable degree.

The Committee were pleased to hear about the increase in the proportion of BME staff but noted that there were few of them in more senior and managerial positions, something which other authorities seemed to be more successful in achieving.

There was a concern that an insufficient number of BME were getting through to the interview stage and it was alleged that some candidates were not shortlisted because of their name.  The Committee commented that, notwithstanding the comments about it having made little difference, there was no disadvantage to the organisation in continuing with anonymised shortlisting.

Officers confirmed that a significant amount of data were available in relation to recruitment. Data about BME applications were however partial because candidates and employees were not obliged to declare their ethnicity (about one third of the workforce had not declared).

In relation to recommendation 13 (identification of Diversity Champions) in which “The OD team have been trying to make diversity part of business as usual” it was suggested that  “business as usual” was  insufficient and a more robust approach was desirable.  The more regular inclusion of BME representatives on appointment panels would be desirable but difficult to achieve. 

Chris Harvey said that the HR team no longer had a colleague with specific responsibility for diversity. The absence of a dedicated lead was of concern to the Committee. For there to be any meaningful improvement in relation to the BME issues more leadership needed to be shown at a strategic level within the organisation to really effect change, supported by measurable corporate objectives. This was, also, a political issue which warranted a portfolio responsibility. 

Agreed that the Committee should return to this subject in 2018 with more of the background data and at a higher (leadership) level within the organisation.