Our commitment to race equality and diversity

Race equality and diversity is about fair and equal treatment for all people regardless of their race, colour or creed. It also means recognising cultural and ethnic differences so that people from all ethnic groups are not subjected to racial prejudice or discrimination.

Earlier this year we pledged to tackle race equality and diversity issues in all parts of our business.

We endorse the Race Equality & Code of Practice for housing associations which says how associations can make sure that the race equality is put forward and how race discrimination should be tackled in the workplace and the community.

We now have a strategy with an action plan, which sets out a number of tasks, including training our staff, to make sure that we work towards the aims we have set.

Implementation

We will implement this policy through specific measures. These include achievement of the tasks and targets set out in our Equality and Diversity Action Plan. In addition to the items set out in the plan we will do the following:

Housing Management

• We will allocate and let homes to applicants fairly and develop and maintain high quality services for all residents.
• We will respect every resident’s right to live in peace and safety, and we will deal vigorously with anti-social behaviour and harassment in accordance with the harassment and racist incident procedure.
• We will take into account good practice in equality and diversity when we update our housing policies and procedures including our allocation policy.

Development and maintenance

• Our homes are designed to provide a good quality living environment. Where residents’ needs change over time we will take all reasonable steps to enable their homes to be adapted to meet their changing needs, such as the installation of stair lifts. Our new homes will meet life-time home standard.
• All contractors and consultants on the approved list will be required to provide us with information about their equal opportunities policies and procedures.

Communication

• We will develop good communication with our residents to ensure that we provide high quality services that meet residents' needs. To achieve this we will, when necessary, access translation services, or use media such as Braille, audio tape or typetalk. We will also, when necessary ensure the provision of appropriate services and adapt our procedures to meet residents’ cultural or other individual needs.

Recruitment, employment and training

• We provide training and refresher training for board members and staff in equal opportunities and diversity matters.
• We advertise all posts for new employees and board members and will take steps to encourage and support people from all sections of the community to apply for advertised posts.
• We will make sure everyone we work with and everyone who works for us knows about our equality and diversity policy and works to it.