Councillor Penberthy (Cabinet Member for Housing. Cooperative Development and Communities) introduced the item and highlighted the following points:

a)    On 22 March 2024, Cabinet approved a four-year approach to the public sector equalities duties;

b)    Plymouth City Council (PCC) were required by legislation to demonstrate due regard to the public sector equality duty to: eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation, advance equality of opportunity between people who shared a protected characteristic and those who did not, and foster good relations between people who shared a protected characteristic and those who did not;

c)    There had been unexpected incidents since 22 March 2024, including the riots of 05 August 2024 and as a result of this, the report had been adapted to reflect the feedback from local communities;

d)    The plan had been preliminarily in place for a year, and now a more concentrated three-year action plan would start;

e)    Cabinet Members were working collaboratively on the action plan due to the cross over in portfolios;

f)     PCC staff networks were becoming more proactive notably a neuro-divergency conference and LGBTQ+ network.

Councillor Penrose (Welcoming City Champion) added:

g)    The Welcoming City Champion role now included linking and networking with various Cabinet Members to better understand their roles;

h)    The International Dinner was held monthly to welcome students from overseas. These included learning about other cultures, including celebration of Chinese New Year and the Persian New Year, and experiencing food from around the world; 

i)     Work had been done with Safer Communities since August 2024 including visiting the hubs to discuss Hate Crime Week;

j)     PCC would continue to listen to local communities and encourage partners in Plymouth to make decisions around equality and diversity;

k)    There would be a campaign on gender equality, in particular the gender pay gap.

Councillor Laing (Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Children’s Social Care, Culture and Communications) added:

l)     A motion had been passed at City Council in 2023 to treat care experiences as a protected characteristic. PCC were the 12^th council in the country and the first in the Southwest to pass this motion and 111 councils had now followed suit;

m)  The report outlined 12 bullet points with the way PCC had responded to the motion including:

i) Application forms and related recruitments and selection policy had been updated in May 2024 to reflect care experience under the guaranteed interview scheme;

ii) The recent budget engagement survey respondents were invites to select if they had care experience as part of demographic monitoring;

iii) Care experience had also been included in the city survey due to take place in 2025 with demographic monitoring allowing PCC to better understand specific communities to guide decision making and service delivery;

iv) There were also free passes to the Life Centre for both care experienced young people and a friend.

Councillor Haydon (Cabinet Member for Community Safety, Libraries, Events, Cemeteries and Crematoria) added:

n)    There had been an increase in hate crime in Plymouth and PCC took hate crime seriously, including the addition of it to the agenda for Safer Plymouth.

Councillor Penberthy (Cabinet Member for Housing. Cooperative Development and Communities) added:

o)    PCC took the equalities duty seriously as it was part of the DNA of Plymouth to be a welcoming city;

p)    Thanks were given to everybody who had worked on the public sector equalities duty to ensure Plymouth was a better place for everybody.

Cabinet agreed to note the progress set out in the Our Commitment to Equality and Diversity Document.