Our litigation and enforcement policy

If you are a legal representative or work for a legal organisation, this policy will help you decide whether to contact us about one of your cases or another legal issue.

• how we decide whether to use our legal powers 
• the types of cases and issues we are interested in hearing about
• our enforcement powers
• our litigation powers

Legal representatives and organisations can contact us directly with requests to use our legal powers by emailing [email protected] (for England and Wales) or [email protected] (for Scotland).

When you make your request, please tell us:

• your name, organisation and contact details
• what you want us to do (for example, intervene in a legal case or investigate an unlawful act)
• the main details and facts of your case or issue, including any important deadlines
• how your request relates to the six priority areas from our strategic plan for 2022 to 2025.
• why we should use our powers on this issue (taking into account how we decide whether to use our powers, as stated in this policy)

Our Regulatory Hub team will review your request and let you know the outcome.

Advice for individuals

We do not provide advice on discrimination or human rights issues. If you need help or guidance on a discrimination or human rights matter which has affected you please contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS).

We cannot respond to enquiries from individuals.

Whistleblowing

If you’re a worker who thinks your employer might be breaking equality and human rights law, you can report your concerns to us. This is called whistleblowing.

To find out how to make a whistleblowing report to us, read our whistleblowing policy. It also explains how we decide to take action on reports from whistleblowers.

In this policy we use the following terms:

•  ‘Organisation’ refers to organisations and individuals.
• ‘Enforcement action’ means legal action using any of our enforcement powers listed in this policy.
• ‘Strategic litigation’ means legal action using any of our litigation powers listed in this policy.
• ‘Legal powers’ means the enforcement and litigation powers listed in this policy.

We are Britain's equality and human rights regulator. Our human rights powers in Scotland extend to reserved matters and our human rights work is undertaken with the agreement of the Scottish Human Rights Commission.

The Equality Act 2006 gives us a range of powers to enforce the Equality Act 2010 and protect human rights.