Torbay Inclusion Plan - Draft Strategy

Introduction  

Inclusion means that everyone is included and feels welcome. It is about seeing and valuing people’s differences. Inclusion also means supporting people and providing help when people need it.  

The Torbay Inclusion Plan has been written to make sure that Torbay Council is a place where everyone is treated fairly. This plan is for everyone who works at Torbay Council and councillors. It includes both services and how we work and support our staff.  

The Torbay Inclusion Plan follows the Racism Review which looked at how the Council can make Torbay a welcoming place for people of colour. The Inclusion plan links across the Council and supports work such as Child Friendly Torbay, the Carers Strategy, Age friendly and others.  

To do this we will:  

• Treat people fairly and with respect 
• Challenge unfair treatment  
• Help people to feel safe and welcome in Torbay 
• Help people to have easy access to our services.  
• Help people from different backgrounds to have similar life chances    
• Create good relationships between communities in Torbay   
• Change the way we do things to meet different people’s needs  

Our legal duties  

As a local authority we must follow the Equality Act to make sure that we treat people fairly and with respect. You can read more about our legal duties on our website.  

We must make sure that we do not treat people unfairly because of their background, identity or experience. These are known as the protected characteristics which include:    

• age 
• care experience  
• disability 
• gender reassignment 
• marriage and civil partnership 
• pregnancy and maternity 
• race 
• religion or belief 
• sex 
• sexual orientation 

We know that some people experience unfairness and inequality in their lives. We make sure that we do not treat people unfairly. We do this even though they are not a group of people with a protected characteristic under the Equality Act. For example, we make sure that we do not treat veterans or members of the armed forces community unfairly.

How we will be inclusive  

The Equality Framework For Local Government  

We have used the Equality Framework for Local Government and its different areas to help us write this Plan.  

The Equality Framework for Local Government was created by the Local Government Association to help local councils be more inclusive.  

Understanding and working with your communities 

To help us meet the needs of different communities in Torbay and to support us to work well together we will: 

• Collect and share information about our communities  
• Use inclusion data to help us to decide what to do  
• Identify how we will listen to different communities  
• Support good relationships between communities  
• Support people to volunteer and get involved in their communities 

Leadership, partnership and organisational commitment 

To show that the Council’s leadership and our partners are inclusive we will: 

• Support councillors and senior leaders to support and raise awareness of inclusion  
• Work with our partners and support them to be inclusive  
• Look at the effects of Council decisions on different groups of people and complete an equality impact assessment 
• Support councillors to feel confident to understand the possible inclusion impacts of a decision  
• Publish an annual report to show where progress has been made  
• Celebrate the different communities living in Torbay  

Responsive services and customer care 

To show that the Council’s leadership and our partners are inclusive we will: 

• Buy our services and products in an inclusive way  
• Look at our equality objectives when planning services  
• Change the way we deliver services to meet the needs of different people  
• Provide information, advice and guidance in a way that is easy for everyone to understand  

Diverse and engaged workforce 

The Council’s has a People Plan which is the plan for how the Council will be a great place to work. To help make the Council an inclusive place and to support the People Plan we will:  

• Support people from different backgrounds to work at the Council   
• Put in place policies that meet the needs of our workforce 
• Look at our workforce data  
• Provide different training and learning opportunities to help staff understand equality and diversity  
• Put in place reasonable adjustments  
• Make the Council a welcoming place to work  

Making it happen  

To make our services welcoming and inclusive in Torbay we will focus on four key areas. These areas are known as our equality objectives and are:  

• Listen to different people and communities when the Council makes a decision.  
• Be clear with the organisations and people that the Council buys services and products from that inclusion is important to the Council.   
• Continue to complete the actions from the Racism Review.  
• Support our staff to understand what they need to do and how they need to behave to be inclusive. 
• Continue to raise awareness of the importance of reasonable adjustments.  

More information about our equality objectives can be found on our website.   

Reasonable Adjustments Small changes - Big differences 

Reasonable adjustments are small changes which the law says must be made so that disabled people can use services as easily as everyone else. 

They may be small changes but they make a big difference to the lives of people with learning disabilities. 

The Learning Disability Ambassadors have told us that having reasonable adjustments can help people to take part in their community, give them more independence, get better health care and live longer. 

The work on The Inclusion Plan will support The Big Plan and will include reasonable adjustments in everything that happens. 

The Torbay Inclusion Partnership  

The Torbay Inclusion Partnership is being set up to help the Council listen to the needs and views of different groups of people when it makes decision. It will also help us to deliver this Inclusion Plan.  

The group will be made up of organisations working with different communities and people who make decisions in the Council.  

The Partnership Board aims to: 

• Promote fairness and respect  
• Promote partnership working  
• Listen to their views and needs of different groups  
• Act as a 'critical friend' to the Council on inclusion issues  
• Help the Council to understand the impacts from its decisions.  

Making the Inclusion Plan happen in Torbay 

Making everything inclusive will take time. The Torbay Inclusion Partnership Board will agree the actions to be completed each year. These will then be approved by senior management at Torbay Council who will get an update every three months.  

The Partnerships and Inclusion Manager will write the actions and report on behalf of the Partnership Board. They will also write an annual report about the work that has been done and the progress that has been made.  

There will be actions which other groups need to take to make sure The Inclusion Plan happens. It is important for everyone to work together to make change happen. 

The annual report will need to include information from other plans too. 

Policy and legislation (Laws) 

The Inclusion Plan includes work which the Government has written about and made laws about. 

These include: 

• The Human Rights Act (1998) 
• The Equality Act (2010) 
• The Armed Forces Covenant (2021) 
• The Accessible Information Standard (2017)