Purpose
This College prides itself on being a caring and diverse community where every individual and their contribution is valued and respected. Harassment, discrimination and bullying have no place.

Our Equality and Diversity strategic objective is:
To create a caring and diverse community where every individual is valued and respected.

We believe that everyone is of equal value irrespective of marital status, sexuality, ethnic or national origin, gender, gender reassignment, race, age, disability, sexual orientation, religion and belief, caring responsibilities or any other real or perceived difference

To promote and develop equality of opportunity we will take action to prevent bullying, racial or sexual harassment, sexist or racist jokes, prejudice and insults and any other form of intimidation or discrimination.

The Board of Governors and Senior Management Team have responsibility for ensuring the College operates within the legislative framework for equality. Each individual member of the College community has a personal responsibility for implementing and promoting the principles of equality and diversity in their day to day work or student activity by challenging inappropriate behaviours or discriminatory practices.
Definition of Equality and Diversity:

Equality
Is the current term for ‘Equal Opportunities’. It is based on the legal obligation to comply with anti-discrimination legislation and protects people from being discriminated against on the grounds of membership of a certain group i.e. sex, race, disability, sexual orientation, gender reassignment, marital status/civil partnerships, religion/belief, pregnancy/maternity, age.

Diversity
Implies a wide range of conditions and characteristics across the workforce and student population Diversity is about valuing all individuals, enabling everyone to fulfil their own potential whatever their backgrounds. Diversity encompasses visible and non-visible individual differences. It can be seen in the makeup of groups of staff or students, in terms of gender, ethnic minorities, disabled people etc., about where those people are in terms of management positions, job opportunities, terms and conditions in the workplace, success and rates of achievement.
 
Embracing equality and diversity brings to the College a wide range of experience, ideas and creativity whilst giving the individual employee / student a feeling of being enabled to work or study to their full potential.

In combination,  equality and diversity drive the College to comply with anti-discrimination legislation as well as emphasising the positive benefits for the organisation of diversity such as drawing on a wider pool of talent, positively motivating all employees and students and appealing to a broad base of potential students and staff.
Legal Requirements as at July 2011:

1.    The General Equality Duty

Compliance with the general equality duty is a legal obligation and the College is subject to this duty and must have due regard to:

•    Eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation and other conduct    prohibited by the Act.
•    Advance equality of opportunity between people who share a protected characteristic and those who do not.
•    Foster good relations between people who share a protected characteristic and those who do not.

2.    Monitoring & Review

The College is committed to:

•    Eliminating unlawful race discrimination.
•    Promoting equality of opportunity and encouraging diversity.
•    Promoting good relations between people from different racial groups.

In order to monitor our progress we have a variety of measures in place to promote the equality of opportunity for all staff, students and visitors to our College. We work in partnership with our trade unions in developing effective policy and procedures. We analyse the profiles of staff and students and chart them against the most current data available for the local area.  We then use this data to inform future policy and practice development.
 
The College is keen to make every course accessible and to breakdown any stereotyping in the promotion and marketing of courses. We have recently undergone a rebranding exercise to further emphasise this commitment to promoting inclusivity.

We have both staff and student focus groups on E&D – both of which provide valuable input and insight into actions for continuous improvement. The College has an E&D Steering group, composed of middle and senior management and specialists, which oversees the creation and updating of relevant policies and processes to support our E&D action plans.

Conclusion

We believe that our diversity is one of the College’s greatest strengths. To make sure these principles are actively promoted and applied in practice we expect commitment, involvement and good practice from the entire community.