LBWF’s equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) programme: has it involved unlawful discrimination against men?

For the last five years, LBWF has been implementing a wide-ranging equality, diversity and inclusion programme which has comprised numerous separate initiatives; involved every Town Hall employee, from the most junior to the most senior; and cost a large amount of public money, not least because all of the activity has taken place in worktime.

One of the key objectives here, repeated again and again, has been to make sure that ‘our workforce reflects the diversity of our community’, on the basis of the assertion that ‘Greater levels of representation lead to stronger connections with our communities and the better design of services’.

In practical terms this has led to a concerted drive to root out ‘underrepresentation’, which LBWF handily defines as ‘insufficient or disproportionally low representation of a group in an organisation than would be predicted by their proportion in the population’.

And as to the ‘groups’ which LBWF has focused on, they are ‘Women’, ‘Men’, ‘Disabled’, ‘Black’, and ‘Asian’ (the latter two sometimes amalgamated into the catch all ‘Ethnically Diverse’).

That’s the ambition. What about the implementation?

For sure, LBWF has discovered several examples of ‘underrepresentation’.

But it’s perhaps surprising to find that the biggest and most striking example by far is the fact that men have continued to make up only about a third of all council staff, though they have always been nearly half of the local population, and a majority of those classed as ‘economically active’.

So, taking LBWF’s avowed intentions at face value, it is reasonable to assume that from the early 2020s it must have been addressing this disparity.

But far from it.

For when questioned under the Freedom of Information Act in 2024, LBWF stated that it had no policies relating to men’s underrepresentation at all, and subsequently it appears that nothing has changed.

Indeed, it appears that men as a group may have been actively and deliberately overlooked.

This is difficult to establish comprehensively because it means looking at many scattered sources, but there are certainly some significant indicators.

To begin with, LBWF’s 2023 People Strategy notes, with regard to the collection of workforce data, that there should be a ‘particular focus’ on those who are ‘female, Black or Asian, [and] those with health condition’.

Some policies show the same bias. For instance, LBWF has stated that it wants to ‘actively promote agile and flexible working’, but added ‘Our goal is to ensure that all women and ethnically diverse staff employed by the council are well supported in the workplace and have the best possible opportunity to progress and achieve their ambitions to their full potential’.

Similarly, LBWF’s Inclusion Action Plan shows that in 2022-24 LBWF’s applications policy, based upon targeted marketing and specialist agencies, produced many more female applicants than male applicants; while women were more often both shortlisted and appointed than men.

Finally, throughout this period, LBWF’s pay policy document included a Workforce Positive Action Policy document which made the following pledge:

‘To improve representation, we will publicise and encourage our development opportunities to our female staff to increase promotion opportunities and create a more evenly distributed representation at all levels’. 

There have been no statements, equivalent or otherwise, about men.

 What does all this add up to?

Clearly, LBWF’s avowed intention to make sure that ‘our workforce reflects the diversity of our community’ needs to be taken with a large pinch of salt. How could it be otherwise if one of the groups in the council’s classification of its workforce – men – is ignored?

However, leaving aside the misleading rhetoric, has LBWF nevertheless acted reasonably by adopting the biases that it has?

In answering a Freedom of Information request in 2024, LBWF defended its lack of interest in men by stating very firmly that they were ‘strongly over represented in the most senior, well paid roles in the council’.

That sounds plausible, but in fact is difficult to square with the evidence.

For in every year since 2019, LBWF has reported on the makeup of the Town Hall pay quartiles, and looking at the top quartile (i.e. those best paid), it’s unarguable that throughout there have been more women in this category than men, broadly in the ratio 60:40.

More recently, and perhaps in response to this lack of support from the data, LBWF has moved the goal posts away from ‘underrepresentation’ in terms of the local population, and adopted other concerns and comparators: for example, not women’s pay in all the ‘the most senior, well paid roles’,  but only in certain departments and specific jobs; or the gender pay gap across the organisation as a whole, even though this is an unconvincing metric because privatisation has removed from the calculation many low paid jobs traditionally done by men.

So, evidence is one problem, but there is also the linked question of legality.

As is fairly well known, the Equality Act allows organisations to lawfully use ‘positive action’, that is, provide ‘additional help…for groups of people who share a “protected characteristic” (for example, race, sex, or sexual orientation) in order to level the playing field’.

However, guidance issued in 2023 advises that employers wishing to take this option should be very clear about why it is needed, and so, at the least, collate evidence of disadvantage; adopt clear targets, and ensure their proportionality; put in place measurable indicators of progress, set against a timetable; and conduct regular monitoring.

It might be thought, given the history rehearsed here, that at some time in the past LBWF had decided upon ‘positive action’ for women, and so could produce the supporting material.

But in response to a Freedom of Information Act inquiry about this, it states it hasn’t applied ‘a “positive action” programme to influence outcomes’, and so has no relevant evidence.

In other words, the possibility exists that in its zeal to enact an EDI programme, its insistence that it is responding to clear cut ‘underrepresentation’, LBWF may have been acting unlawfully.

It will be interesting to see what the LBWF CEO, Linzi Roberts-Egan, says about this.

PS The foregoing should not be read as in any way commenting on other forms of possible discrimination in the Town Hall, the latter hopefully to be examined by this blog shortly.