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Equality and diversity strategy 2009-2011

Foreword

We are pleased to publish the Solicitors Regulation Authority's first equality and diversity strategy. We believe that being fair is critical to the SRA's success as a regulator. As chair and chief executive of the SRA, we have a personal commitment to the promotion and progression of equality, diversity and human rights within the SRA and the legal profession. We recognise that for the regulated community and consumers to have confidence, we need to ensure and demonstrate that the SRA is an inclusive, fair and transparent organisation.

This strategy forms part of our overall strategic plan and is essential to the achievement of our strategic objectives. The equality and diversity strategy is also our response to the recommendations set out by Lord Ouseley in his report Independent review into disproportionate regulatory outcomes for black and minority ethnic solicitors, which was published in August 2008.

We have adopted a twin track approach. We want to demonstrate that we are a fair and proportionate regulator. We also want to value and respect the diversity of our staff, those we regulate, consumers and the wider public. We believe that this approach will enable us to become an organisation that is, and is seen to be, inclusive. As the largest regulator in the legal profession, we are committed to setting a standard for others to follow.

We recognise that the successful delivery of the strategy and action plan depends upon our leadership and staff, and upon our partnership with the diverse stakeholders we work with.

Our strategy includes an ambitious plan for the next two years to help us realise our objectives as an inclusive, transparent and fair organisation. We aim to promote equality and diversity for all individuals and groups. We recognise that there are groups that face barriers and disadvantage in society and, for that reason, we have focused our equality and diversity strategy to cover all the key six equality strands of race, disability, gender, sexual orientation, age and religion or belief. We will actively challenge discrimination and will ensure that equality and diversity is embedded into the business of the SRA and into the work of its staff.

Peter Williamson
Chair

Antony Townsend
Chief Executive

Introduction

The SRA is responsible for the regulation of solicitors in England and Wales. It was established in January 2007 by the Law Society, which has delegated regulatory powers to the SRA. The SRA exercises these powers independently.

The SRA protects the public and upholds high standards by regulating solicitors and solicitors' firms. It is fundamental to our work that we do so fairly and effectively.

All those with whom we work (members of the public who receive legal services, solicitors and others working in solicitors' firms and our own staff) are drawn from a diverse community. We have a duty and commitment to ensure that we promote equality of opportunity and respect diversity.

In our first two years of operation, we have started to address these issues, but we recognise that we have much more to do before we win the confidence of our stakeholders that we are inclusive and actively promote equality and diversity in the way we undertake all our activities.

Our vision for equality and diversity

Through this, our first equality and diversity strategy, we are striving towards becoming an organisation that is

  • a fair employer which recruits, develops and retains a diverse and talented workforce;
  • a fair regulator, which is open, proportionate, non-discriminatory and transparent in the way it regulates a diverse profession;
  • an inclusive and stakeholder focused organisation.

It is our intention to move beyond legal compliance towards establishing a culture that is inclusive and transparent by

  • encouraging mutual respect,
  • promoting equality of opportunity and access to employment and services,
  • recognising the strengths of having a diverse and talented workforce,
  • being open and transparent in the way we carry out our work ,
  • being fair and proportionate in the way we regulate the profession,
  • promoting a "can do" culture where staff are able to communicate with and respond effectively to the needs of diverse communities and stakeholders who come into contact with the organisation.

In delivering this strategy, we will be guided by our values and our vision which are built on key principles such as equality, diversity, respect, accountability, transparency and inclusion. We have explained what we mean by "equality" and what we mean by "diversity" in the glossary at the end of this strategy and our organisational values are explained in more detail elsewhere in the SRA's strategic plan.

The context for our strategy

The changing landscape of the profession

The SRA is the independent regulatory body of the Law Society, and we set standards for and regulate more than 110,000 solicitors in England and Wales.

The regulated community includes single-solicitor practices, small/medium firms and large firms with a global presence employing thousands of lawyers. Solicitors can work in the justice system, in government, within the public sector and within private companies. All solicitors are governed by the professional standards set out in the Solicitors' Code of Conduct and, in addition to our regulatory role, we also work with those we regulate to support compliance.

We are working in a fast changing landscape and, as the Legal Services Act takes effect, we will move towards regulating not just individuals, but firms and alternative business structures. As we respond to this, we will embed equality, diversity and human rights into our new policies and practices.

The demographic profile of the legal profession is also changing, which involves key challenges for us in delivering our vision for equality and diversity.

The implementation of the Legal Services Act will require the SRA to regulate individual solicitors and non solicitors who form part of an entity or alternative business structure. This presents more challenges for the SRA in relation to how it responds to the diversity within these structures as well as assessing its role in promoting equality and diversity within the regulated communities.

The legislative framework for equality and human rights

Anti-discrimination legislation

In our role as an employer, regulator and an organisation that engages with consumers and the wider public, we are covered by the anti-discrimination legislation which protects employees and service users against discrimination on the grounds of age, disability, gender, race, religion or belief and sexual orientation. These categories are often referred to as 'equality strands' and our Equality and Diversity Strategy covers all six strands.

The public equality duties

For race, gender and disability, there are additional laws which have created a positive duty on public authorities to promote equality. Each of these public duties has an overarching general duty which sets out the broad equality outcomes that organisations should take account of in their work. To supplement the general duty, there are specific duties which vary for each of the three equality strands and the duty to publish an equality scheme is one of the specific duties common to all three equality strands.

The Law Society, comprising of the SRA, LCS and TLS (rep), is subject to the public duties in relation to race, disability and gender. Accordingly, the Law Society has produced equality schemes for race, gender and disability which explain how the group is proposing to meet the equality duties. Our equality and diversity strategy and supporting action plan sets out the priorities we have identified for the SRA. This strategy needs to be read alongside the Law Society's published equality schemes.

Human rights

The Human Rights Act brings the rights contained in the European Convention on Human Rights into UK law. As a public authority, the SRA has an obligation to act in accordance with the Convention rights and the SRA is required to take these rights into account in its day-to-day work.

Our stakeholders

The equality and diversity strategy covers all of our stakeholders by which we mean

  • our staff, including employees, temporary staff and contractors, as well as our board and committee members;
  • the regulated community, either individually or through professional representative groups;
  • consumers of legal services and the wider public;
  • a number of other organisations which have an interest in our work including the Law Society group, the Legal Services Board, the Legal Services Ombudsman, the Ministry of Justice and theEquality and Human Rights Commission among others.

Our starting point

Although the final strategy is new for 2009, we have already started work across a number of areas in delivering our equality and diversity objectives. For example we have been

  • implementing a comprehensive equality impact assessment programme;
  • providing equality and diversity training for our Board, committee members and our staff;
  • engaging with the regulated community and other stakeholders on a number of policy areas;
  • improving our equality and diversity data collection, monitoring and reporting.

Our aim is to promote equality of opportunity for all individuals. We are mindful that some individuals and groups experience barriers and discrimination. Therefore, through this strategy we are focusing our work towards promoting equality and diversity across the six strands of age, disability, gender, race, religion or belief and sexual orientation. The strategy and action plan also addresses the recommendations set out in Lord Ouseley's report (August 2008).

Our equality and diversity objectives

The following 10 equality and diversity objectives represent our key priority areas. Each of the objectives are described below and, in our supporting equality and diversity action plan, we have described the steps that we will be taking to meet these objectives, in each case identifying the timescale and outcomes that will help us monitor and evaluate our progress. The two-year plan we have set out will enable us to identify and develop key performance indicators to underpin our strategy.

1. Organisational culture and leadership

We have strong leadership from our chair, chief executive and senior managers who support our vision for equality and diversity in the SRA and beyond.

We believe that all staff have a responsibility for delivering our strategy and we will ensure that our staff understand the objectives and values that underpin their work. We aim to measure progress by ensuring that equality and diversity is embedded in our performance management framework.

We will continue to improve our working culture based on mutual respect and a "can-do" attitude to enable us to be more effective and cohesive in the way we work with each other and with our customers.

2. Being an employer of choice

We will work in partnership with the Law Society human resources function to ensure that human resources policies and practice have equality and diversity embedded and that the policies enable the SRA to recruit, develop and retain a diverse and talented workforce.

We will review the way that we engage with our staff to ensure their full participation in furthering our goals.

3. Learning and development

We will provide our board, committee members and staff with the knowledge, skills and confidence they need to implement and progress equality, diversity and human rights in their work.

We will regularly review the effectiveness of our learning and development programmes on equality and diversity to ensure that they meet the needs of our staff. We will ensure that equality and diversity is embedded as appropriate into all learning and development.

4. Strategic planning and policy development

We will continue to assess the impact of our strategies, policies, procedures and functions to ensure that they do not have an unjustifiable adverse impact on equality and are compliant with the Human Rights Act.

We will publish a schedule of our impact assessment work and publish all completed impact assessment reports as they are completed.

5. Transparency and decision making

We will continue to monitor and review our decision making processes to ensure consistency and transparency in the way we regulate. We will implement a system of regular quantitative and qualitative audit to ensure that the decisions we make are fair and transparent.

We will develop and implement a fair, objective and transparent complaint handling policy for those affected by our work.

6. Research and data collection

We will improve our collection and use of equality data and undertake and commission sound and ethical research where appropriate and necessary to underpin our impact assessment programme and policy development generally. Equality data includes both quantitative data from monitoring statistics and qualitative data from engagement, questionnaires or surveys.

In this strategic plan we will be focusing our research on the experiences of diverse consumers of legal services and trying to better understand the issues of disproportionality for black and minority ethnic solicitors in the exercise of our regulatory functions.

7. Accessibility and communication

We will embed equality and diversity into our communications strategy and improve the accessibility of all our published policies, documents and information and our website for our diverse stakeholders.

We will promote our support services to solicitors from groups which have traditionally been harder to reach. We will work in partnership with the key professional representative groups to provide support and guidance on our rules and regulations.

8. Consultation and involvement

We will actively seek feedback from our stakeholders on regulatory policy development. We will do more to reach out and engage in an inclusive way with individuals and groups from diverse communities.

We will monitor the take up of our consultation and engagement opportunities and use this learning to improve the way we work with diverse communities.

9. Promoting equality in the profession

We will improve the way we promote equality and diversity in the profession and the way we monitor compliance with rule 6. We will publish annual reports on the complaints received in relation to rule 6 breaches and work with the Law Society and the Legal Complaint Services (LCS) and from 2010, the Office for Legal Complaints (OLC) to improve standards in the profession.

10. Contracting and procurement

We will integrate equality and diversity requirements into our tendering and contractual documents and expect potential suppliers to demonstrate their commitment to equality and diversity and how they intend to meet the equality and diversity requirements set out.

Accountability

We recognise that strong leadership will be critical in delivering our outcomes for equality and diversity and, as such, strategic accountability for equality and diversity rests with the SRA's Board, the chief executive and the senior management team, who are firmly committed to this area of work.

To re-enforce this commitment, a number of groups have been set up whose role includes discussing equality and diversity concerns, providing feedback to inform progress, reporting on progress and having oversight of the action plan.

The groups include

  • SRA Board Equality and Diversity Group,
  • Diversity Working Group,
  • External Implementation Group.

Review and evaluation

We will be evaluating and reporting on our progress against the strategy and action plan as follows:

  • quarterly reports to the SRA Board,
  • external review of our performance on equality and diversity twice a year,
  • bi-monthly reporting to External Implementation Group (chaired by Lord Herman Ouseley).

Glossary

Consumers

By consumers or consumers of legal services, we are referring to members of the public who use the services of solicitors.

Diversity

The term diversity refers to a culture and way of working that recognises, respects, and values our differences for the benefit of the organisation and for the individual.

Equality

Ensuring people are treated fairly and given fair chances. Treating people equally does not always mean treating them the same.

Equality impact assessment (EIA)

A systematic analysis of an organisation's policies, procedures or strategies to identify and determine whether they have the potential to affect people differently.

The SRA has developed its own equality impact assessment tool involving two stages: an initial impact assessment leading to a full impact assessment where necessary.

Equality group

A group protected under the equality legislation covering the six equality strands including men or women, ethnic minority groups, groups of disabled people, etc.

Equality scheme

A document which explains how an organisation proposes to meet its general duty to promote equality. Most public authorities are legally required to draw up a race equality scheme, a gender equality scheme and a disability equality scheme. There are differing rules about what each scheme should contain and how it should be drawn up.

Equality strands

The six areas where there are laws to protect people against discrimination, namely: race, gender, age, disability, sexual orientation and religion or belief.

European Convention on Human Rights

The European Convention on Human Rights is a human rights treaty that was made by the member states of the Council of Europe after the Second World War.

General duties

There is a general duty set out for each of the public equality duties (covering race, gender and disability).

Human Rights Act

The Human Rights Act became effective in the UK in October 2000. The Act places a duty on all public authorities in the UK to act in accordance with the rights protected by the Convention.

Law Society group

The Law Society, the Solicitors Regulation Authority and the Legal Complaints Service (collectively know as the Law Society group).

Procurement

Procurement is the process of buying goods or services from outside suppliers.

Professional representative groups

A collective term we have used to describe organisations representing particular groups of solicitors.

Specific duties

There are specific duties for each of the public equality duties (covering race, gender and disability).

Stakeholders

See the explanation provided in the strategy under the section entitled Our stakeholders