Equalities and diversity

We are committed to equality of opportunity and a culture that respects individuality. The Equality Act 2010 and Scottish specific equality duties provide a clear planning and reporting framework to help us achieve this.

1. People with disabilities and people who speak languages other than English can access our services and funding of appropriate communication support with ease
2. SLAB gathers and uses equality data to inform our policies and improve our services
3. SLAB employees maintain good mental and physical health during the covid-19 pandemic and recovery phase.

Our Equality outcomes plan 2021-23 provides a high level overview of the activity that will help us to achieve these outcomes, what success will look like and how we will measure the impact on relevant equality groups. The latest update on our equality work is published in our annual report.  This includes:

• the progress we have made against our equality outcomes (pages 21 – 26)
• an update on our work to mainstream equality into the way we work (pages 32, 38-40 & 51)
• a summary of our employee equality information and how we use it (pages 68-74)
• details of our gender pay gap (pages 71-72), and
• our equal pay statement (published every three years – see our Equality Outcomes Progress and Mainstreaming Report (October 2020).

Transparency in our decision making is supported by our equality impact assessment (EqIA) process.

Our approach to this ensures we consider the impact of new and current policies or projects on protected equality groups.

It also helps us meet the general public sector equality duty to have due regard to the need to:

• Eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation.
• Advance equality of opportunity between people who share a relevant protected characteristic and those who do not.
• Foster good relations between people who share a relevant protected characteristic and those who do not.

We seek to collect equality monitoring data on applicants to help with our strategic development and for routine monitoring of our decision-making.

We publish the information we collect in line with our value of transparency.

A Criminal Justice Disability Project (CJDP) was set up by the Justice Board to promote and enable accessibility of service across the criminal justice sector in Scotland for people with disabilities.

The member organisations have published a final report of the CJDP.

A large print version is also available or you can view a BSL version of the Executive Summary.

We are keen to hear your views about:

• The priorities we have identified.
• How you think our policies or functions impact on equality.

Please provide feedback or let us know if you would like to get involved in our equality work by contacting our Corporate Policy Officer (Equalities) using the details below:

Direct dial: 0131 240 1981
Email: equalities@slab.org.uk