What is Equalities Monitoring?

Equalities monitoring refers to information provided by individuals that outlines certain characteristics, such as: age, ethnicity, gender, religion/belief and sexual orientation.  Monitoring such information allows the Council to ensure it is delivering its services fairly, equally and appropriately to all groups and to help mainstream equalities within our practices.

As part of our commitment to providing fair and accessible services and to providing equality for all our customers the Council is making some changes. To help us understand what different customers think about our services so we have started to ask them to tell us a bit more about themselves.

It is important to explain why we have made these changes and to stress that involvement is voluntary. This article explains why we are asking for personal information, how we will keep it confidential and how the information will be used.  

May I ask your age and other personal questions?

As part of our commitment to providing fair and accessible services and to providing equality for all our customers the Council is making some changes.  To help us understand what different customers think about our services so we have started to ask them to tell us a bit more about themselves.

It is important to explain why we have made these changes and to stress that involvement is voluntary.  This article explains why we are asking for personal information, how we will keep it confidential and how the information will be used.  

Why the Council wants to know more about you

If you use Council services or have taken part in a Council survey you may already have been asked for information about yourself, for example your age, gender, ethnicity or if you have a disability.

This feedback is important as it tells us who uses Council services and which groups of people or individuals could benefit from using them if they knew about it.

Providing this sort of personal information is voluntary, if you prefer not to say that is fine. Any information you give us will help find gaps in the take-up of services and in satisfaction levels of different groups of customers. With this information we can take steps to improve the services we deliver to you and to make sure we are meet your needs.

What does equality monitoring mean?

There are six themes where individuals will be asked to voluntarily ‘self classify’ themselves. These include their gender, age, race, whether they have a disability, their faith and their sexual orientation*. This information is then analysed to form a picture of service use.

Confidentiality

We understand we are asking for private and personal information and that you may have questions about how the Council is keeping this confidential. All the information you provide will be kept confidential under data protection rules and used exclusively by the service area that has asked for it. It will be used to plan where the service needs to focus its resources in future.

Sometimes people are concerned that the information might be used negatively to unfairly discriminate against them. We are asking you for this information to help improve our services and for no other reason. If you think the information has not been used in this way you can tell us and we will investigate your complaint.  

No personal information such as your name or address will be released when reporting statistical data.

When you will be asked

We will ask you if you are applying for or using a service, participating in a consultation or satisfaction survey, making a complaint, or applying for a job with the Council and its partners.

Making a difference

By providing this monitoring information you will be helping us identify how we can improve the way current and future services are delivered and ensure that we are meeting the needs of our diverse community.

Thank you for your support.

*This is restricted to people over 16 years old.

Please find two examples below of the monitoring forms that the Council use

More information?

For more information please contact the Equalities Team on 020 8496 3000