Our commitment

We are committed to promoting equality and diversity among our customers and staff. Our Equality and Diversity Policy links directly into our Equality and Diversity Strategy and action plan, which sets out our current priorities to improve the living and working environment for all of our residents, staff and partner organisations. Our Single Equality Scheme is developed alongside Lambeth Council to deliver on its legal duties in these areas.

Board Members' Briefing on Equality Act 2010

We provide a service to a wide range of people. Our aim is to be responsive to the needs of all of these communities and the individuals that we serve. Equality and diversity are integral to all of our activities in every aspect of the work that we do. We have a duty to respond to the wide social diversity within our community and make sure that we reflect this in our policies and procedures and, in practice, through the day to day delivery of our services to customers.

What equality means to us is ensuring that all of our services meet the needs and aspirations of all of our customers and that we provide our services in a fair way that is accessible to all. To do this, we will ensure that our policies and practices are not discriminatory and actively encourage people to access our services, or take up and remain in employment with us.

What diversity means to us is recognition and appreciation of the different life experiences, skills and perspectives that all individuals bring to communities and workplaces. We believe that diversity benefits and adds real value to our organisation and the work that we do.

Our responsibilities as an employer

We take our responsibilities as an employer seriously. We want to ensure that our employment policies and practices are high quality and that members of staff are actively empowered to develop their potential and take pride in their abilities and resources, and confidently provide services for our residents irrespective of their background. We are signed up to the JobCentre Plus Disability Two Ticks Symbol.

You're Unique – Tell Us Why. Knowing our residents and their needs

One of our strategic aims is to provide a more accessible and inclusive service. This starts with gaining a better understanding of the diversity among our customer groups, as well as better information about individuals' needs. We know that if we don't understand the needs, aspirations and expectations of residents, we cannot deliver the great services that residents want and expect to see.

We use information about residents' diversity to help us plan our services properly, and to carry out equality mapping – this means checking that our services are available fairly to everyone living within the URH partnership. We want to find out who is and is not accessing our services and understand what we can do to tackle inequality. It also gives us the evidence to test out what we do match the needs of residents, and make changes to our policy and practice where we need to.

We use information about residents' needs to personalise the service we provide to individual residents. That means we can offer great customer services as well as be truly accessible. Examples include sending large print information, sending our rents statements and letters in your own language, at winter times checking if our older people have received their fuel allowance or visiting a resident in their own home instead of expecting them to come to our office. If you have needs that you would like us to know about, please get in touch with us. If we know what your needs are, we can provide a better service to you.

Resident Profile Information Form

In order for us to plan our services, it is vital that we collect information to understand residents and any individual needs. We have been using questions in our "You're Unique – Tell us Why" resident profile form.

You may be given the form to complete by one of our officers or receive a phone call to provide an opportunity to give us this information over the phone, if you wish to.

This information tells us where to direct our services and helps us to make sure that you get the right support and advice. If we can better understand what types of people are most likely to use our services, we can better provide our residents with the opportunity to access those services.

So, if you're asked please help us by answering as many questions as you feel comfortable with. Remember all of our questions are optional, but if we know more about you and your needs, we can help to improve the service we provide to you. If you have any questions about this, or need any help, just ask any member of staff. We'll be happy to help.

Equality impact assessments

An equality impact assessment (EIA) is a tool for identifying the potential impact of an organisation's policies, services and functions on its residents and staff. It can help staff provide and deliver better services to residents by making sure that they reflect the needs of the community and that any areas where we can improve are identified and understood.

We have carried out EIAs on a range of its key service areas and strategies. Four of these assessments were completed in late summer early autumn 2010 and staff are now delivering against the actions identified to ensure that services become more fair, inclusive and accessible. Each action plan has been developed using an EIA template that captures details of how the assessment was carried out, the data that was reviewed and the decision-making to arrive at the actions that have been prioritised.

• Customer care and access
• Provision of income management
• Provision of responsive repairs
• Resident involvement

Overall service policy was found to comply with equalities legislation, including the duties to promote equality in relation to race, disability and gender.

Each assessment did however identify a number of areas where our approach could be improved and strengthened with regarding to equality and diversity. These have been detailed in the summary and transferred into future planning.

Social Housing Equality Framework

We planned to use the Social Housing Equality Framework to embed a greater understanding and structure to our intentions and improvements. Our Equality and Diversity Strategy 2010 sets out what we will improve. We aligned these objectives to the Social Housing Equality Framework and our Single Equality Scheme outcome areas. We said we would use the framework to challenge ourselves, to improve and to measure our progress in mainstreaming diversity and equality within our business and we continue to do just that as we strive for excellence. We have developed a progress monitor to chart our action towards the 'Achieving' level. We are building a solid foundation to attain this by the end of the financial year 31 March 2012. Our confidence has been reaffirmed by the Audit Commission's judgement that our strengths outweigh our weaknesses in responding to diversity in our November 2010 inspection.

Reporting

Our Equality and Diversity Annual Report 2010 was designed to provide a depth of information and analysis of equality and diversity issues related to our services and organisation. We will repeat this in-depth analysis on a two yearly basis. The annual report details the profile of our residents and our way forward to gaining a better understanding of the diversity amongst our customer groups, as well as better information about individuals' needs. It gives details of our action planning and some valuable service information.

The Annual Equality and Diversity Report 2011 will set out the results of our efforts to deliver outcomes against our action plans as well as identifying improvements we wish to make to services in the coming year. We are continuing to maintain our overall strategic objective to go beyond legislative and statutory compliance and we feel we are well on our way to making innovative and positive progress in terms of equality and diversity. This report also sets our intended action planning for 2011 to 2014.

(updated 28/01/2012)