Agenda item

The Board considered an update report on the forthcoming changes in legislation in relation to age, disability and gender.

 

The Employment Equality (Age) Regulations 2006 would come into force on 1^st October 2006. The Regulations implement the EU framework directive (adopted in November 2000) requiring Member States to introduce legislation to ban age discrimination. The Regulations applied to all workers including self employed workers and contract workers. The Regulations also applied to people taking part in or applying for employment related vocational training including all courses at further education and higher education institutions. The regulations did not apply to political officer holders.

 

It was reported that the Council was in the process of reviewing its personnel procedures to take account of the regulations. Areas which would need to be looked at included:

 

-            Retirement notification procedures;

-            Procedures to implement the new duty to consider requests to work             beyond retirement age;

-           salary bands with more than five incremental points.

 

The Board also considered the implications for the Council of the Disability Discrimination Act 2005. The Act built on and extended various disability discrimination legislation, principally the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. It was reported that the most significant change was the new Disability Equality Duty and the requirement to produce the Disability Equality Scheme. It was proposed to deal with the requirement to produce the Scheme by incorporating it into the Council’s Corporate Equality Plan rather than producing a separate document.

 

In addition, the Board considered the main purposes and implications of the Equality Act 2006. It was reported that the most significant implication to the Local Authority was likely to be the new gender equality duty. As well as being a general duty, there were powers in the Act for the Secretary of State to introduce further specific duties by regulations. To a large extent, the gender equality provisions mirrored those for race equality and disability equality. In terms of the practical aspects of employment implementation, at least so far as the Council as an employer and service provider was concerned, the legislation should not require the Council to alter drastically what it already had in place to ensure that it operates in a way that was compatible with equality legislation. However, the legislation does shift the emphasis away from compliance to requiring authorities to be more pro-active in their approach to gender equality.

 

It was noted that it would not be enough for an authority to not discriminate to comply with the duty. In future authorities would need to be satisfied that procedures in place for ensuring that they did not discriminate against women or men in their employment practices were actually achieving results in ensuring an appropriate gender a mix in the workforce, and in eliminating any pay gap between the genders.

 

Arising from the discussion, the Board requested that employee indicators be submitted to the next meeting. It was also suggested that the Executive Board as part of the Employment Equality (Age Regulations) 2006, should be invited to consider whether the Council should set a default retirement age for the purposes of the Regulations.

 

RESOLVED: That

 

(1)       the employee indicators be submitted to the next meeting of the Board; and

 

(2)       the Executive Board be asked to consider whether the Council should set a default retirement age in the light of the Employment Equality (Age) Regulations 2006.