Race equality schemes: the three-yearly review
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The duty to review your assessment of functions and policies for relevance
If you are subject to the specific duty to prepare and publish a race equality scheme, you are required to review your list of functions, policies and proposed policies that are relevant to the general statutory duty. This review must be done at least every three years.
For most public authorities in England and Wales, this is the second review of race equality schemes. The first review for 2002 race equality schemes took place in 2005. The deadline for carrying out this second review is 31st May 2008. Authorities in Scotland have until 30th November 2008 to complete their reviews.
This date to review the schemes by 31st May 2008 (or 30th May 2008) applies to those original bodies who were required to produce schemes ion 2002. Since that date, a number of authorities have been obliged to produce race equality schemes. These bodies are also required to review their race equality schemes within three years but they are running at different timetables. The information on this page is still applicable to them. In addition, certain authorities have chosen to review their schemes more frequently than the three year deadline. These bodies may also be running to a different timeline but must ensure that they continue to review their schemes at least every three years.
The purpose of this is to ensure your scheme is kept up to date and relevant to your business.
To help you conduct the three-yearly review, we have produced a guidance note which provides more detailed advice about what the review involves, and the steps you need to take to comply with the law. The Commission for Racial Equality also provided an assessment template to help public authorities achieve a compliant race equality scheme.
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What does the list of relevant functions and policies include?
Functions refer to the full range of your duties and powers. Policies refer to the formal and informal decisions about how you carry out these duties and powers. You should include proposed policies, as well as those you have already adopted, in your reviewed list.
When you first prepared your first race equality scheme (RES), you were required to produce a list of functions and policies and proposed policies and assess which of those were relevant to race equality and the general statutory duty.
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What does the three-yearly review involve?
To meet the duty's requirements, you will need to review your existing list of functions, policies and proposed policies to ensure it reflects your business and give attention to any areas which have changed. To help you do this you should review the progress you have made in implementing your current RES.
You will also need to identify any new functions and policies and include them in your review. You should produce a collated list of functions and policies and prioritise these according to the degree of relevance to the three strands of the general statutory duty. This collated list should include:
- A list of current functions and policies
- Any new functions and policies
- Any proposed policies
Once you have reviewed all these functions and policies and assessed them against the general statutory duty you will need to make this revised list publicly available. You will then need to revisit your RES to ensure it reflects the revised assessment.
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What about race equality policies?
There is no equivalent statutory requirement to review race equality policies every three years for schools, colleges and universities. However, educational institutions do have a duty to maintain their race equality policy and fulfill their arrangements and duties. This means that they should ensure that their action plan is up to date and that they are able to demonstrate that they are measuring and meeting the commitments that they have set out in their policy to fulfill their general and specific duties.
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What the EHRC expects of public authorities during years 1-3 of their revised scheme
By 31st May 2008 most public authorities in England and Wales, (30 November 2008 for most public authorities in Scotland) will have had three years to put their 2005 - 2008 RES into practice. As part of the review process you will need to look at the progress made in implementing your scheme for those three years. After three years we would expect that you will have:
- published annual reports in line with their employment duty detailing ethnic monitoring data of staff and employment practice;
- published reports on their monitoring, impact assessment and consultation activity, in line with the arrangements set out in the RES/REP;
- reviewed action plans to assess what progress has been made in implementing the duty; and
- clearly identified the race equality outcomes that you need to achieve and are steadily working towards meeting these outcomes and targets.
Having established the systems and processes there should be an increased focus on outcomes what you expect to achieve by implementing the race equality duty and how this will impact on the lives of ethnic minority communities (including your staff).
There needs to be continual monitoring and review of how you are implementing the duty, to determine what works best.
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Do we have to review and re-publish our race equality scheme?
Although there is no statutory duty on you to revise and republish your RES every three years, you should be regularly reviewing the progress made in implementing. Reviewing it should be integral to the statutory review of functions and policies. We recommend that you review your scheme as part of the three-year review, and revise, update and republish it every three years.
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What about Single Equality Schemes?
Some public authorities have decided to produce single equality schemes in order to combine the statutory duties on race, disability and gender into one single scheme.
Any change to a single equality scheme will also be accepted by the Commission so long as the requirements from the three duties are properly incorporated to reflect the requirements of the three separate duties. Whilst the three duties are broadly similar in spirit and intention, the detailed requirements of each one are different. The existing Codes of Practice on each of the duties set out clearly what the requirements are for each of the duties. If a public authority chooses to adopt a single equality scheme, it must review and republish it at least every three years of its publication to comply with the different requirements of the three duties.
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What about Disability Equality Schemes and Gender Equality Schemes?
The Commission will continue to accept separate equality schemes for race, gender and disability. Public authorities need to be aware that disability and gender equality Schemes will need to be reviewed and republished every three years.
The next dates to publish revised disability equality schemes are: 4 December 2009 for England and Wales; 1st April 2010 for schools in Wales; and 3rd December 2010 for primary schools in Wales.
The next dates to publish revised gender equality schemes are: 30th April 2010 for England; and 20th June 2010 for Scotland. The implementation date for gender equality schemes for Wales is yet to be determined.
Just like the Race Equality Duty, additional public authorities will be gradually added to the list of those which are required to produce disability and gender equality schemes. As such, some authorities will be running at different timescales to review and republish their schemes. However, all authorities which are required to produce disability and / or gender equality schemes will need to revise and republish them within three years of their last publication date.
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