Our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Strategy

The Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Making a Living Strategy has been developed with residents through a series of community conversations and from the recommendations created at the EDI Making a Living Summit. The Strategy builds on the evidence of structural inequality gathered in our State of the Borough report, published in 2021.

Download the EDI Making a Living Strategy (PDF)

Download the EDI Making a Living initial action plan (Word file)

Easy read version of the Strategy (PDF)

In our Public Service Strategy, we committed to face and tackle inequalities head-on.

The State of the Borough report brings together the evidence we have highlighting structural inequality. This, along with residents’ feedback, is the evidence base for our new Equality Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Strategy. We know that reports and data only go so far and we must work with all voices in the community to open dialogue and co-create actions to make the borough a fairer, equal place.

Download our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: State of the Borough Report in full (PDF)

• State of the Borough: easy read (PDF)
• State of the Borough in large print (PDF)
• State of the Borough: screen reader friendly (PDF)
• State of the Borough animation on YouTube 

Many of the inequalities insights presented in this report are stark and sobering. It may seem overwhelming to face these realities, but the purpose of this report is to face the evidence head on, with the intention of provoking deeper conversations and inspiring action. This is a national issue and will require big shifts in national policy, but communities in Waltham Forest have been trailblazers before and we must use this evidence to build on previous work and act with greater determination. This is just the first step in our goal of developing a new Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Strategy which will reflect the everyday experiences of Waltham Forest residents.

Making a living

The theme of making a living has been chosen from the State of the Borough as the first theme to focus on. Making a living is not just about work, from education to finding a job, from earning a reasonable wage to drawing a pension, there are some in Waltham Forest who face persistent and often insurmountable inequalities that affects the capacity to make a decent living.

Last autumn, a mass engagement process took place to build on the State of the Borough by understanding the lived experience of residents from groups who have the most structural inequalities. This engaged with 550 residents through a mixture of workshops with groups who are most impacted by inequalities, ethnographic research, face-to-face outreach and an online survey.

This engagement, alongside the State of the Borough report, was used to inform conversations at the Summit event, which took place from Saturday 5 March to Sunday 20 March. 32 participants came together to identify solutions to the scale of inequalities that many residents in the borough face around making a living. Based on the 4 themes identified from the engagement, they came up with a set of 15 recommendations. We will respond to these through the EDI Making a Living Strategy and action plan, which will be published in July 2022. You can see the views of Summit participants from Ewan and Aslam and Abdur-Raheem, Bushra and Farhana. 

Download the recommendations report (PDF).