Reply to questionnaire by the Department
for Communities and Local Government
Question 1: What practical measures have
you taken to implement the duty in relation to the employees of
your Department? Have you undertaken an equal pay audit, or another
survey to detect any barriers to the full participation of women
in your workforce? What have you done to address under-representation
of women in specific grades or types of post?
The Gender Equality Scheme identified four areas
for this Department to action:
Flexible working and work-life balance
— We have supported greater work-life
balance by making all posts open to flexible work patterns unless
there is a business case to the contrary.
— We have set up and maintained a job
share register, enabling part-time staff and their managers to
identify suitable job share partners where needed and opening
up a wider field of opportunities for part timers.
— We are developing proposals to provide
support for staff working from home as part of their work pattern,
including better technical support.
— When staff are required to come in
on additional days we will reimburse them for any additional care
costs.
Representativeness of our workforce
— We are committed to delivering the
programme of change detailed in Delivering a Diverse Civil Service:
a ten point plan (10PP). This Department has set itself stretching
targets beyond those agreed for the 10PP, which it is on track
to achieve by 2008.
— This Department also proposes to
set and publish targets for the two pay bands immediately below
the SCS, and which act as "feeder grades" for the SCS.
This and allied actions, such as our "Pairing for Performance"
mentoring scheme, will ensure that that the Department encourages
and supports under-represented groups, including women, to move
into the SCS.
— We will improve the Department's
monitoring data to assess progress on gender equality and employment.
— New initiatives to develop talented
staff will be inclusive of women, eg the "Pairing for Performance"
mentoring scheme will include women.
— We are in the process of establishing
whether there is support for the creation of a Women's Staff Network.
Supporting our staff
— We are strengthening this Department's
work-life balance policies eg by introducing a new Flexible Working
policy and by reviewing our support for childcare and revising
the absence management policy.
— A review of current systems and procedures
will be undertaken to eliminate any discrimination towards transgender
staff and provide training to HR staff.
— Counselling support will be provided
for staff experiencing domestic violence.
Equal Pay
— In line with civil service principles,
this Department has committed to Equal Pay Audits on a three-year
cycle. These will follow the guidelines produced by both Cabinet
Office and the Equal Opportunities Commission
— The last Equal Pay Review was conducted
in 2006 and was primarily concerned with the operation of the
pay system which continues to apply to former ODPM staff. The
system has its roots in the Department of Environment, Transport
and the Regions 1998 Pay Agreement, negotiated with the Trade
Unions, which set out a number of contractual commitments.
— This Department is looking at ways
in which an Equal Pay Review might be extended across the wider
Communities and Local Government family so that it might inform
a more comprehensive pay and workforce strategy.
— Equal Pay Reviews had previously
been undertaken in 2001 and 2003. The 2001 review concluded that
pay differentials between men and women were largely caused by
the clustering of staff, especially women, towards the bottom
of the pay scales. This was due to the effects of range shortening
and a higher concentration of men towards the top of the ranges
stemming from former incremental pay systems. It was addressed
by bringing forward and extending the plans to introduce pay milestones
to ensure that staff at least progressed to certain points on
the pay scales having completed certain years in grade.
— The 2006 Equal Pay Review showed
that gender pay gaps are small in most pay ranges with none over
5%.
Question 2: Have you reviewed the policies
and administrative procedures of your Department for gender bias?
What action have you taken to correct any such bias?
This Department is committed to collecting and
analysing equalities data in order to provide a robust evidence
base for policy development and delivery. We will:
— Ensure that relevant policy and programme
research, including evaluations, collect and analyse data on gender
where appropriate.
— Include information and guidance
about collecting data on gender as part of the commissioning process
for programme research and surveys in our internal Research Management
Guidance as appropriate.
— Ensure that any reviews or updates
of on-going data collection consider increasing the level of data
collected and related analysis.
— Include gender as part of the criteria
for assessing proposals for new analysis or data collection where
appropriate.
— Annual reviews of progress will be
undertaken by this Department's Equalities Programme Executive,
comprising senior officials from across the Department and headed
by the Director General for Equalities.
— A combined methodology is being finalised
for our Equality Impact Assessments, to be built into the policy
processes of this Department—it will cover gender, sexual
orientation, disability, race, religion/belief, age and human
rights. We will also look at the impact of existing policies,
programmes and functions on the gender duty, for example, the
Supporting people Programme, and Thames Gateway.
Question 3: Have your procurement policies
and practices been changed to take account of the gender equality
duty? How do they reflect this duty?
Our procurement policies and practices enable
this Department to focus on specific environmental and/or socio-economic
themes such as Gender equality when they are of relevance to the
commodity or requirement being procured. In essence, the procurement
guidance for the Corporate Centre has been revised to take a greater
account of and apply a greater focus onto Sustainability. Although
a specific reference to the Gender Equality Duty does not feature
within the Procurement Guidance, the latter tasks Procurement
Clients within this Department to consider what socio-economic
and environmental issues can be addressed and taken forward under
the auspices of their Procurement. Once embedded within a procurement,
the Contract Management activity will focus on monitoring activities
around these issues.
Question 4: Generally, are there any differences
in your approach to implementing the gender equality duty from
your approach to implementing the race equality duty?
The Race Equality Duty has been in existence
for some time, and is now embedded into policy development and
implementation. In addition, we have built on the methodology
for carrying out race equality impact assessments, and produced
a draft single equality impact assessment applicable to all our
policies and projects that we will be taking forward within the
Department in the future.
Since the Race Equality Duty came into force,
we have also had the Disability and Gender Equality Duties. When
preparing the Gender Equality Scheme, we built on lessons learned
from the previous schemes. An excerpt from our Gender Equality
Scheme (below) sets out our approach, which may be useful.
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