Warwickshire Police

Welcome to the Warwickshire Police Equality Information pages. Within this section of our website you can find a wide range of data and information about equality and how we are using this data to inform our decision-making.

Why we are publishing this information

Warwickshire Police is a public authority with over 1,500 employees. This includes (at the time of publishing) 606 police staff posts, 116 PCSO posts and 870 police officer posts. We also have 243 Special Constables and 47 police support non-uniformed volunteers. Warwickshire Police provide essential public services to protect people from harm and bring offenders to justice. In delivering our services and as employers, we strive to ensure that we are eliminating discrimination, promoting equality of opportunity and fostering good relations – as part of everything we do.

We are committed to these principles – which are requirements set out in the Equality Act 2010 public sector equality general duty. The information that we have published under this section of our website is intended to show what we have done and are doing, to discharge the public sector equality duty in Warwickshire Police. In addition, the Equality Act 2010 requires public authorities, including Warwickshire Police, to publish certain information to demonstrate our compliance with the public sector equality general duty. The information we are publishing here is intended to show equality information relating to people who share a relevant protected characteristic who are:

• Our employees
• People affected by our policies and practices (this really includes all people who use our policing services)

We have legal duties to publish this data under Section 149 of the Equality Act 2010 (the Public Sector Equality Duty) and The Equality Act 2010 (Specific Duties) Regulations 2011. We are required to publish our data no later than 31 January 2012 and at least annually thereafter.

What information are we publishing?

There are five main categories for our equality information:

1. Employment – relevant information and data about the people we employ and our employment practices
2. Services – relevant information and data about services we provide to the public
3. Equality analysis of our policies and functions
4. The Strategies and plans and actions arising from the equality data monitoring process – what we have done with our information monitoring
5. Other key reports and consultation documents which have influenced our decisions and plans in relation to equality

For ease to the reader, we have arranged our information reports under these five headings. Each section contains an introduction, a summary of the key equality issues and information about the actions we have taken, or propose to take, to address the issues. We seek to be able to demonstrate what we have done with the equality information we have collected – to affect changes and promote equality, in line with the public sector equality duty.

What time periods does the data and information relate to?

The data and information we have published relates to the complete financial year March 2010 – April 2011. In the case of employment data – we have also published data for March 2009 – April 2010, as this data has also helped to inform the actions in our current Equality Plan. We have published our Equality Plan 2011-12 in which we have carried forward actions designed to promote equality, gathered from our data monitoring.

We do want to keep our data publication as up to date as possible. Therefore, we plan to publish further data in June 2012 – which will relate to the full financial year 2011-2012 and again will show what we consider to be the key equality issues and the actions we plan to take forward to promote the public sector equality duty.

How are we using this information?
We use equality data for a wide range of purposes – overall we aim to use the information as much as we can to help us give due regard to the equality Duty in all that we do. We use the data as part of our equality analysis process – which helps us to identify potential adverse impact, disproportionality, or opportunities to promote equality – in our policies and procedures relating to employment and service provision. We also use the data when planning operational matters and we have included the equality analyses of key policing operations and our Policing Plan 2008-11 to demonstrate to the reader how we have used our equality data to inform our decision - making.

Equality data has been used extensively to establish our Equality Plan and Equality Objectives, which can be viewed as part of this published information. Importantly, as Warwickshire Police have been undergoing a major cost-saving restructure (the 150plus programme) we have used equality information to help eliminate unnecessary adverse impact upon employees and service users. We have therefore included our equality analysis documents relating to the 150+ programme to demonstrate this to the reader.

Looking ahead, as we embark upon our ambitious plans to ally our services with West Mercia Police – we will continue to use equality information to equality analyse and plan the new alliance structure for service provision to the public. We intend to publish the equality analyses for the Strategic Alliance programme as part of this information at the earliest opportunity, as the restructure work gets under way. We anticipate publishing the first analysis documents for the Alliance Programme in May/June 2012.

Collecting, using and publishing information helps us to plan our policing services effectively, in a way that promotes equality of opportunity. As mentioned above, we plan to publish our equality information annually in a cycle that will fit in with our organisational business planning. We will commence this from May/June 2012 onwards. We will analyse our equality information for the year 2011/12 at the end of March 2012, which will then feed into our new Equality Plan 2012/13, Equality Objectives and Policing Plan. The data, together with our new plans, will then be published in May/June 2012 and annually thereafter. Equality information is constantly collected throughout the year and we are able to access this information at any part of the year to gain the latest picture if – for example, we need equality information for a policing operation or for the equality analysis of a new or revised force policy.

Identifying gaps in our information
We have endeavoured to include information that covers the range of policies and functions that we deliver as an organisation, but we have also tried to keep the information focused and relevant. We have identified some gaps in our equality information and we want to make our data as comprehensive as possible. In the data sections on 1) employment and 2) service provision – the reader will find that we have set out the gaps identified, together with the plans we have for addressing these – so that the identified information can be collected, used and published.

Accessibility of information

We aim to make the information we publish as accessible as we possibly can. Our main reports have been split up into separate documents in both PDF format and ‘Word’ documents. Information on our website can be translated into different languages using the ‘Google’ translate button. We also have speech enabling software on our website (Dixerit) for those individuals who may have difficulty reading and may prefer to listen – people with dyslexia, low literacy, impaired vision and those who do not have English as a first language.

We are able to provide information as hard copy and in other formats and languages as necessary. Please contact:

The Equality, Diversity & Human Rights Unit,
Warwickshire Police,
PO Box 4
Leek Wootton
CV35 7QB

Or ring 01926 415722 or 5721. Alternatively email: edhr@warwickshire.pnn.police.uk

If you wish to discuss any aspect of our equality information personally with a member of our EDHR team, then we will be pleased to arrange this.