Equality Duty
Equality Duty
Introduction
Staffordshire County Council is proud of the diversity of the county, and recognises that promoting equality and inclusion will improve public services for everyone. The Council has a legal duty under the Equality Act 2010 to advance equality of opportunity, eliminate unlawful discrimination and promote good relations between people. As part of this Act, the public sector equality duty requires the Council to show how it is meeting its responsibilities as an employer, including a requirement to publish information on its workforce, broken down by protected characteristics, which are:
- age
- disability
- gender reassignment
- marriage and civil partnership
- pregnancy and maternity
- race
- religion or belief
- sex
- sexual orientation
This report forms part of the Council’s response to that duty, and provides workforce data which will help us to understand the effectiveness of our own employment policies and processes in promoting equality.
All figures for the 2024-2025 financial year are taken as at 01/01/2025.
Overview
- As at the 1st January 2025, SCC employed people in 4,773 contracts across 5 directorates, which represents and increase of 4.6% from last year.
- Finance is the smallest directorate, accounting for 7% of the workforce, whilst Children and Families is the largest at 35%.
- Further progress has been made over the last year in improving the completeness of our equalities' data, particularly for Religion, Sexual Orientation and Disability.
- Please note that although the Council works with a number of partner organisations to deliver its services, particularly in the adult social care sector, the figures in this report only cover those people directly employed by SCC
Protected characteristics – Age and Sex
- Staffordshire County Council has always had a predominantly female workforce; as at January 2025, 77% of the workforce was female.
- The County Council’s age profile has remained stable since 2009, and currently 29% of staff are aged 39 or under, 26% are aged 40-49, 31% are aged 50-59, and the remaining 14% are aged 60 or over.
- The average age of the workforce has remained consistent over the last year at 46.7, although the male workforce continues to average 2-3 years older than the female workforce.
- The distribution of workers by age group has been consistent year-on-year, but does vary between genders; there are higher proportions of females in the 30-59 age groups, whereas the male workforce has higher proportions of staff in the 60+ age range.
Protected characteristics – Disability and Religion
- Disability information is now held for 72% of staff – 3,443 people, which represents an increase of 6% from last year.
- Information on religion or belief is now held for 72% of staff – 3,427 people - which represents an increase of 5% from last year.
- 384 people indicated that they have a disability, equivalent to 11% of the ‘known’ workforce and 8% of the workforce as a whole.
- Christianity is the commonly cited religion, accounting for 51% of the ‘known’ workforce and 37% of the workforce as a whole.
- Staff citing ‘no religion’ account for a further 41% of the ‘known’ workforce and 29% of the workforce as a whole.
- Although recorded individually, the remaining responses have been grouped as ‘Other’ for ease of presentation; this group includes Islam, Sikhism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Judaism, but Agnostic is the most populous response.
Protected characteristics – Race
- Information about race is now held for 84% of staff – 4,089 people. Although this is an increase of 2% from last year, the larger workforce means that in real terms we now hold date for more than 250 additional people.
- 10.0% of the known workforce are from ethnic backgrounds other than White – British, increasing from 9.6% last year.
- Within this, Other White Background is the most populous group (2.4%), followed by Asian or Asian British - Indian (1.4%) and Black or Black British - African (1.3%).
- The figures for the known workforce compare well against date from the 2021 Census, which recorded 90.2% of residents as White - British, and 9.8% from other ethnic groups.
Protected characteristics – Marital Status and Sexual Orientation
- Information on marriage and civil partnerships is now held for 81% of staff – 3,858 people. This represents an increase of 3% from last year
- The current figures remain consistent with those from previous years, although the proportion of staff recorded as Married has again fallen slightly
- Information on sexual orientation is now held for 71% of staff – 3,395 people - which represents an increase of 5% from last year
- Both the number and proportion of staff recorded as gay, lesbian, bisexual or other have increased from last year (previously 4.3%), but overall remain slightly less diverse than we would expect to see based on estimates for the UK population as a whole (ONS Annual Populations Survey 2023).
Protected characteristics – Pregnancy and Gender Reassignment
- The proportion of staff returning from maternity leave for 12 months or more has been consistently high, averaging 88% across the last six years.
- A person has the protected characteristic of gender reassignment if they are proposing to undergo, are undergoing or have undergone a process (or part of a process) for the purpose of reassigning their sex by changing physiological or other attributes of sex.
- The Council does not have employees with this characteristic recorded, but because of the low numbers we are unable to publish figures whilst maintaining their confidentiality.