The Regulator for Charities in England and Wales

Race Equality Scheme

(Version July 2006)

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Contents

Statement of Commitment

The Charity Commission is committed to making sure that equality of opportunity is an integral part of all that it does.

As a public body we have a duty to promote equality of opportunity and good relations between people of different racial groups. This Race Equality Scheme sets out how we undertake all our functions with regard to those responsibilities. It has been drawn up in consultation with charities and has involved all teams looking at how a greater understanding of diversity could enrich their work, and how they might promote equality more effectively.

We want everyone in the Commission whose work affects our customers to understand and meet their responsibilities under the Race Equality Scheme. We take seriously our duties as an employer, and the additional benefits that good diversity management brings for all our employees.

We are aware that neither the Commission nor the charity sector are currently as diverse as they need to be to meet the challenges of the 21st century and that as a regulator we have a responsibility to support change and improvement.  We hope this Race Equality Scheme will contribute to putting charity at the heart of society in a more meaningful way for all in our society.

Andrew Hind Tess Woodcraft
Chief Executive Officer Board Diversity Champion

July 2006

Introduction

The Commission published its first Race Equality Scheme (RES) in May 2002 and revised it in March 2003. The Race Equality Scheme Report published in September 2005 reflects the action taken, how well we have met our targets and how we have learnt from our experiences.

In developing this revised Scheme we sought views both internally from our staff and externally from our customer network (which represents around 70 charities and umbrella bodies of which around 20 are from Black & Minority ethnic (BME) groups). Quotes from the feedback are included to illustrate particular points of interest.

Each year we will report on progress made and the Scheme will be formally reviewed and a revised edition published every 3 years.

The charts below show how the Commission is organised.

 

Function: Governance

Governance responsibilities for strategy and future direction of the Charity Commission rest with its Board. The Board comprises the Chief Commissioner and four non-executive Commissioners.

Corporate decision-making that affects the day-to-day operation of the Commission is delegated to the Executive Group which is chaired by the Chief Executive and whose membership comprises the Executive Directors and other senior managers. The Chief Executive and Directors' duties include operational management of the Commission's business, implementing the programmes and policies arising from Board decisions and ensuring effective service delivery. The Chief Executive is also Accounting Officer and responsible for ensuring financial probity and the achievement of value for money.

The constitution and proceedings of the Charity Commissioners are governed by section 1 of, and the first Schedule to, the Charities Act 1993. Under the Act, the Commissioners have the general function of promoting the effective use of charitable resources by:

  • encouraging the development of better methods of administration; 
  • giving charity trustees information or advice on any matter affecting the charity; and
  • investigating and checking abuses.

Action Plan

Board and Executive Group

The Board and our diversity champion (also a Board member) will ensure that robust plans exist to meet diversity targets (including those in the Civil Service 10 point plan) and that diversity delivery plans are fully integrated into business plans. Progress will be monitored through Board approval of Corporate Plans and Board assessment of annual progress reports. We will also report our progress centrally to the Diversity Champions' Network.

The Executive Group will oversee all actions aimed at increasing understanding among managers of their role in challenging discrimination and unacceptable behaviour, and will continue to work with partners and staff networks to influence organisational culture change. The Chief Executive will chair the Commission-wide Diversity Steering Group.

The Board and Executive Group will monitor the overall diversity impact of efficiency and relocation plans through such methods as impact assessments, to ensure that no particular group of staff is unfairly discriminated against.

The Board and Executive Group will ensure that there is an effective communication strategy at corporate and departmental level, for clear internal and external messages, to ensure success of the 10 point plan.

Secretariat / Governance Administration

The Chair and Governance team will ensure that the recruitment of Board members complies with the 10 point plan for delivering a diverse civil service. Positive action statements will be included in advertisements. Advertisements will be placed to attract under-represented groups, and external BME panel members will be used where possible.

The Board and Governance team will continue to ensure that diversity issues are taken into account in all Board and Executive Group papers submitted for meetings.

Governance will look at ways to increase the diversity of attendees at its open events, such as open Board meetings, Annual General Meeting and so on, by wider advertising of these events e.g. in the ethnic press.

The venue of open events will vary to ensure under-represented groups are able to attend from various parts of the country.

The Governance team will also ensure wherever possible that key open event papers are available in different languages, where requested.

Function: Policy & Effectiveness

The Policy and Effectiveness Function consists of four business areas responsible for:

  • Bringing together and developing the Commission' s policy agenda, with the aim of delivering policies which reflect charities' experience and regulatory requirements, enabling charities to work more effectively;
  • Leading the delivery of the Commission' s communications and public affairs activities;
  • Improving the performance of charities by helping to define best practice and capture such knowledge from our casework, by partnership working and by encourage innovation and collaborative working across the sector; and
  • Fulfilling a strategic planning role across the Commission, monitoring performance and financial spend against our targets.

Action Plan

Charity Effectiveness

The Effectiveness team will capture information about charities from visits and engagement programmes and research reports. We want to learn from charities about what works well and share this information with the sector. We also want to influence charities to have high standards of governance and to operate with innovation and strength.

BME organisations will be included in our charity engagement programme. We will engage in a more structured way with the most influential charities (up to 100 charities each year) and will ensure that BME charities have a voice and are given the opportunity to work directly with us.

The views of BME charities will be given proper weight in the development of policy research reports:

  • For each research report at least two BME groups (which can be both charities and representative bodies) will be involved in the supporting field work. We will ensure that we consult these organisations in a relevant and time efficient way to encourage participation.
  • Where fieldwork is carried out by a third party such as a consultant or contractor, we will ensure that they are aware of and can demonstrate they have fulfilled our commitment to seek the views of BME charities or umbrella groups.
  • Charities selected for review visits will include a diversity of organisations including BME charities. All review visits will be conducted in a culturally sensitive way.
  • Review Visits will be based on key themes - we intend to explore BME charity needs as one of these themes.

Policy

The Policy team will continue to seek to influence the development of legal and good practice frameworks. We want to ensure that charities' interests are promoted in the development of these frameworks so that they can continue to thrive and operate effectively.

We will develop policies which have regard to the ethnic diversity of contemporary society, seeking to involve BME charities in the development of these, and will:

  • Undertake impact assessments to examine whether there is a potential effect on race equality when reviewing or developing policies;
  • Make use of the Customer Network to encourage participation of BME organisations in consultations and workshops and to further develop methods of consultation that encourage greater participation from BME organisations
  • Keep up to date with developments in race equality legislation and the potential impact for charities, ensuring that the interests of BME charities are taken into account in the modernising of equality legislation.
  • Ensure, on publication of the Discrimination Law Review Green Paper, that government is informed about the impact of section 34 of the Race Relations Act 1976.

When communicating our policies to our customers we will:

  • Seek to secure and allocate sufficient resources to translate our key publications into community languages in order that the majority of ethnic minority communities whose first language is not English have greater accessibility to our services and gain a greater awareness of charity law and good practice.

We aim to improve levels of public trust and confidence within BME communities by:

  • Researching the reasons for the lower levels of trust in charities amongst BME communities and engage with them to establish how we might contribute to improving their trust.

Corporate Affairs

We will encourage charities to understand the value of a diverse range of trustees, in particular the benefits of attracting more BME individuals, and we will embed this principle in all our publications.

Performance and Planning

  • We will ensure that race equality commitments are reflected in the business plans submitted by all business functions
  • Plans will be challenged and have to be reconsidered if this commitment is not demonstrated.

Function: Legal Services Division

Legal Services Division provides specialist legal services to the Commission, particularly but not exclusively in the areas of charity law and practice. Its expertise supports the Commission in enabling charities to maximise their impact and in ensuring compliance with legal obligations. It provides a rational basis for the development and modernisation of charity law.

Action plan

We will:

  • Appoint a lawyer with special responsibility for identifying and cascading information regarding diversity issues.
  • Ensure that legal advice is consistent with race equality law and practice through quality review of legal advice.
  • Ensure that legal advice given in correspondence with BME charities is written in plain language, is readily comprehensible, and takes account of the needs and sensitivities of BME users.
  • Advertise jobs in Legal Services Division in a range of relevant media (including, where appropriate, the ethnic press) to ensure maximum exposure to BME candidates.
  • Bring a sympathetic, enabling and creative approach to advice on issues affecting BME organisations (especially in connection with the scope of the charitable purpose of promoting diversity and the definition of BME beneficiary classes).

Function: Charity Services

Charity Services is a new amalgamated division that for the first time brings, under one umbrella, our one to one services to individual charities. It delivers a variety of functions which provide consistent and co-ordinated services to charities to enable them to improve their effectiveness in carrying out their work in the community. The Division is concerned with those aspects of service delivery which require a discrete, specific and identifiable engagement with charities and consists of 6 separate units:

Charity Commission Direct
Registration
Advice & Orders
Quick Response
Large Charities
Compliance & Support

Overarching Divisional Objectives

The Division will ensure that BME users will have equal access to our one-to-one operational services by:

  • Ensuring that our letters are written in plain language and that any correspondence does not create additional barriers.
  • Offering correspondence in different languages and/or mediums.
  • Ensuring that we communicate the availability of our language line and translation services, internally and externally, and that staff use these when appropriate.
  • Observing the needs of ethnic groups at all face to face meetings.

The Division will ensure that its one-to-one operational regulatory approach is delivered fairly and consistently by:

  • Monitoring our handling of a proportionate sample of cases where our correspondence has been predominantly with a BME charity.
  • Reviewing and revising our procedures in light of any issues which arise from the monitoring process.
  • Adapting our Quality Reviews to ensure that they include criteria about our engagement with BME customers.

The Division will provide services which are informed to a greater degree by charity specific and wider sector context. We will:

  • Ensure any outreach or proactive work is targeted to a representative sample of BME charities.
  • Use our information systems to identify trends and use these to inform our work.

Charity Commission Direct

Based in Liverpool, Charity Commission Direct has been established to provide a single point of entry for all enquiries and requests for services (except for registration and large charities work) coming into the Commission whether by e-mail; fax; telephone or letter. It includes the established Contact Centre which handles about a quarter of a million inbound calls from customers each year.

The role of Charity Commission Direct is to:

  • assess all incoming correspondence coming into the Commission;
  • manage the allocation of that correspondence by:
    • transferring enquiries to the correct organisation on day of receipt if they are not relevant to the Commission;
    • checking for urgency, importance and steering the enquiries to the relevant section of the Commission;
    • giving advice, information and support to customers who contact the Commission with routine enquiries;
  • manage and develop the Contact Centre; and
  • lead in the evolution of e-business in enhancing our public e-mail management systems.

Action plan

We will:

  • Ensure that our general written advice services are available and offered in the main BME languages. The Commission operates a translation service for both written work and for telephone callers to the reception centre.
  • Continue to monitor what is available in new technology to make it easier to access and use our services.
  • Profile Charity Services staff to identify those who can speak another language. Establish and maintain a list. If difficulties are experienced communicating by telephone, put the call through to one of these nominated speakers to take the query.

Registration

The Registration team determines whether organisations are charitable and registers those organisations that fully meet the criteria for registration.

Feedback from our customer network has shown that at least one of the organisations consulted had personal experience of our handling of registering charities from the BME sector.

"We are concerned that in terms of the registration of charities, whilst overall averages were 45 days for the quarter Oct. to Dec. 2004, these rise to around 80 days for BME cases (the target is 87 days). That is almost double for BME cases, which should be real cause for concern."

The Race Relations Act 1976 makes racial discrimination unlawful. There is an exception for charities in section 34 of the Act which allows them to discriminate in favour of an ethnic group where there is a social or economic need. However, a charity cannot define the people who will benefit by skin colour. For instance a charity cannot be established with purposes that are to benefit only black men (although the term black can be used in the name of a charity). There is some evidence that the current exemption causes some disquiet and contribute to registrations of BME groups taking longer because of the need to adapt the objects of these charities to comply with the Race Relations legislation. The view has been expressed to us that in a modern society 'black' is seen as a term of empowerment and that saying that people cannot be defined by the term can be seen as offensive. The Commission have forwarded this concern to the Discrimination Law Review who are looking at modernising the equality legislation framework. In the meantime Registration staff will need to work within the provisions of the legislation. We will find ways of clearly communicating the reasons for our approach and support charities to amend their objectives in a timely and supportive way remaining sensitive to the concerns that charities may have about this issue.

Action Plan

We will:

  • Consult with a representative sample of BME organisations when rewriting our application form for registration;
  • Revise our application pack to include new guidance on promoting diversity within trustee bodies;
  • Track a sample of cases involving BME charities to assess how these compare with a sample of other cases - this will inform whether there are different needs or issues which should be addressed at a policy level;
  • Track a sample of cases rejected for registration to identify any trends or issues we should be aware of in relation to black and ethnic minority applications; and
  • Monitor case lengths as a possible indicator of unwarranted bias.

Advice

Charity Services Division provides guidance on a wide range of charity issues relating to their operation, governance and administration. These services are delivered through several Charity Service units: Advice and Orders, Large Charities and Quick Response.

Advice & Orders Unit

We aim to help charities fulfil their charitable objectives, operate efficiently, and avoid exposing themselves to undue risk. The need for advice may be identified by charities themselves or by the Commission as a result of monitoring, visits, local surgeries or whilst we are dealing with other matters.

Action Plan

We will:

  • Establish what proportion of the customer group is made up of charities set up for the benefit of the BME community;
  • Analyse the information to establish if there are any common themes/needs among this group;
  • Use this information to inform our approach, at a policy level; and
  • Ask for feedback via Customer Services on our services to BME groups - review the feedback and act on reasonable suggestions for improvement.

Quick Response Unit

The Quick Response unit provides regulatory advice and consents which are capable of swift resolution for charities with an income up to £5m per year. As the work is generally routine and dealt with swiftly, we have not set specific objectives for this team. However, they will work to Charity Services' overarching objectives and success in their Quality Reviews of casework will require meeting particular criteria about our engagement with BME customers, where relevant.

Large Charities Unit

The Large Charities Unit (LCU) manages and delivers the Commission' s advice and support services to all charities whose annual income exceeds £5million. These 1000 charities account for around 60% of the sector' s annual income.

The LCU aims to increase the effectiveness, and maximise the impact, of the country' s largest charities by:

  • delivering a consistent, high quality, proportionate service;
  • giving appropriate attention to high profile, complex and sensitive cases;
  • working to establish and maintain direct relationships with large charities; and,
  • working closely with the Charity Engagement Unit, providing innovative and enabling service delivery to higher value charities.

Action Plan

We will:

  • Establish what proportion of our customer group is made up of charities set up for the benefit of the BME community.
  • We will explore whether the ratio of BME to non-BME charities in this income group presents any particular issues.
  • Ensure that when writing the new CC booklet about the work of the Large Charities Unit, it is inclusive and have it reviewed by a BME expert.
  • Ensure that any outreach work or consultations we do are open to a representative sample and proactively encourage involvement from the BME sector.

Compliance and Support

Compliance and Support is comprised of 3 units: Assessment, Mainstream and Inquiries and Intensive Casework.

All complaints and apparent causes for concern, whether from internal or external sources, are examined by the Assessment Unit. If the Assessment Unit is satisfied that the problems exist it will decide, on the basis of risk, what is the most suitable and proportionate form of intervention. In most cases trustees are willing to co-operate and work with the Commission to restore their charities to proper standards of management, without the use of legal powers. These cases are handled by the Mainstream Case team.

However, where it appears that the trustees either cannot or will not co-operate, and that our powers in sections 8 or 18 of the Charities Act may need to be used, a formal inquiry may be opened so that access to the powers is available if necessary. These cases are handled by the Inquiries team.

In exceptional cases, where there are serious grounds for concern and perhaps significant media interest, the case may be referred to the Intensive Casework team. This category of work automatically includes all cases in which a Receiver and Manager has been appointed.

Action Plan

We will:

  • Monitor feedback by ethnicity on the conduct of intervention cases;
  • Revise our leaflet CC47 'Complaints about Charities' to include arrangements to help BME groups to communicate with us; and
  • Revise our guidance for officers dealing with BME charities and their trustees.

Function: Customer service

Customer Service takes a lead on customer service and quality issues across the Commission. This includes the handling of complaints and decision reviews, the promotion of a culture of continuous improvement in service delivery, seeking and using internal and external feedback and making and maintaining effective links with key customers and other stakeholders.

Action plan

Decision Reviews & Complaints

We will:

  • Revise staff operational guidance on our complaints process (OG93) and Decision Review Procedure (OG94) to ensure consistency with duties under RRA Act 2000;
  • Ensure race equality issues are taken into consideration in the development of a single stage review process and Tribunal to ensure the accessibility of all procedures; and
  • Monitor complaints cases involving accusations of racial discrimination and make recommendations where necessary to the rest of the business.

Customer feedback

We will:

  • Issue standard diversity monitoring forms with feedback forms for all postal customer feedback surveys. The information contained in these diversity monitoring feedback forms will be analysed and attached as an appendix, where required, to the individual feedback reports. At the end of each financial year a report covering the Diversity Feedback received for the year will be produced by the Customer Feedback Manager;
  • Consult with divisions undertaking feedback surveys dealing specifically with race equality issues on the design, layout and content of the feedback forms; and
  • Continue to m onitor Commission services on a rolling programme, analyse the results and ensure appropriate action is taken in relation to BME survey data collected.

Project work

Capacity building in Registration:

This is a project of joint work with the Big Lottery Fund, Lloyds TSB Foundation & VOICE East Midlands working on capacity building in the BME sector through the registration and post-registration process. We will:

  • Provide a speaker for one or more BME capacity building events before the end of 2006 and consider whether to extend it into 2007.
  • Consider undertaking similar capacity building events with other charitable BME umbrella groups throughout England and Wales.

Work with independent churches

Collaborative work is being undertaken with independent churches, many of which have black-majority congregations. Following the launch of a standard Trust Deed which can now be accessed via a link on our website we will:

  • Consider, in partnership with independent church representatives, what further governing documentation would be useful

Faith Groups Project

This is a long term project to build relationships with and improve service delivery to different minority faith groups, from diverse racial backgrounds. We will:

  • Hold consultation events for Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, Sikh and Buddhist charities in the relevant centres of population. We will consider the ideas put forward regarding how the Commission can improve its service to minority faith groups and draw up a report with recommendations by the end of 2006.

It is likely that this will include recommending the improvement of services for speakers of languages other than English and Welsh.

Customer Network

We will:

  • Ensure continued good representation on the Network of BME organisations, ensuring that at least 15% of Network members self-define as for the benefit of 'people of a particular racial or ethnic origin' .
  • Evaluate participation levels of these members to determine what level of involvement they have had.

Last year we asked the Customer Network to comment on our review of our RES, this is a sample of some of that feedback which we have used to help us write this new scheme.

"My only comment is that as part of the Racial Equality Scheme is that information should be at the front of thinking rather than an afterthought. What I mean is that whenever you get information you can request the information in your preferred language."

"Training - how is the specific requirements of the RES being met, what is the time scale?."

"More background information would be useful e.g. structure of how the RES is managed and the structures for implementation, including the RES and action plan being reviewed."

Function: Charity Information

The Charity Information Division is concerned with the transparency and accessibility of information relating to charities.

As we develop ways to share and present information, our Information Quality team will focus on improving the quality and integrity of accounts and report information produced by charities by organising educational events, mapping trends and providing more targeted information to better inform the Commission about charities' income and activities. We will explore reasons behind good practice and poor levels of submission. The Division will conduct annual assessments of accounts information for all charities with income over £5m with significant sampling across all income groups. We will continue to develop systems that support our service to customers which includes internal electronic access to key charity information.

Action Plan

We will:

  • Ensure that charity accounts and report sampling includes a representative sample from BME charities and can be used to inform developing policy
  • Observe the needs of ethnic groups in our education event work; promote BME representation and disseminate feedback from these events.
  • Use Division meetings to feedback customer service information on the RES action plan

The Information Compliance team ensures that charities meet, and where possible improve upon, their statutory obligations to file timely trustee reports, accounts and annual returns. The information in these documents is used to maintain our public register of charities and we make key data available both internally and to the wider public.

We are developing ways to improve charity transparency and accountability to the public by more timely submission of reports, accounts and annual returns. We will improve our advice and guidance to help charities comply with their legal obligations and encourage early filing.

T he Annual Return will be reviewed to ensure that we are collecting key, appropriate information whilst minimising the regulatory burden. We will redesign the web presentation of the Register of Charities, populating it with more key data about the work and finances of charities, ensuring that it is accurate and entered promptly.

We will reorganise the way we interact with charities making individual staff or small groups of staff accountable for defined groups of charities which they will advise, support and encourage submitting promptly. For the biggest charities the aim will be to "guide" accounts and returns in on time with telephone contact being made with those approaching the deadline or earlier for those with a history of late submission.

Action Plan

We will:

  • Ensure that we consider the customer service needs of BME groups as part of our development of AR07. The Annual Return form and Glossary are currently available in English and Welsh. We will review potential for providing forms and guidance in other languages.
  • Ensure the Annual Return is subject to accreditation by the Plain Language Commission.
  • Consider the needs of BME groups in our approach to dealing with defaulting charities. Our analysis of submission times will be used to identify trends and groups of charities that may have difficulty completing the Annual Return and meeting their legal requirements. This information can be used by case officers to improve our proactive contact with charities to understand reasons behind late submission. This information can also be shared with Information Quality Division for potential inclusion in their outreach programme.

Function: Corporate Services

Corporate Services comprises four business areas - Organisational Development, Human Resources, Business Enablement, and Finance & Audit all of which support workforce and workplace transformation to enable the Commission to deliver its key objectives and meet efficiency targets.

Organisational Development

The Organisational Development team ensures the Commission has the right organisational structure to meet its objectives by: developing and implementing initiatives targeted at effective change management and improving organisational performance; driving quality and continuous improvement initiatives; and delivering effective training, development and communications programmes to support cultural change;

Action Plan

 We will:

  • Ensure that BME staff have equal access to training and receive the same amount of training as non BME staff - annual RES monitoring has indicated that BME staff do not access as many training days as non BME staff. We will monitor the take up on courses and target specific groups of staff through the Ethnic Minority Forum.
  • Provide better training on the Race Relations Act (RRA) for all staff. This will involve incorporating coverage of RRA and diversity issues into training and learning and development activities as appropriate e.g. covering discrimination and diversity issues in recruitment and selection training, covering specific work-based diversity issues in technical training for caseworkers.
  • Consider using e learning/ blended learning methods to train staff on the race "duty".
  • Continue to run a mentoring scheme for Commission staff and work with divisional managers to encourage existing BME staff to make use of the scheme both as providers and users of this service.
  • Seek to pair BME mentoring scheme participants with senior BME external mentors who may be inspirational and good role models
  • Explore using the mentoring scheme to guide internal BME applicants prior to sift and interview stages in recruitment campaigns to improve their opportunities for development and promotion.
  • Use the data obtained from previous and future employee surveys to monitor the relationship between ethnicity and stress issues.
  • Encourage managers to use team meetings to inform staff of our RES goals and remind them of their role and responsibilities in working towards this corporate objective.
  • Regularly remind managers and staff of the relevance and importance of equality and diversity when drafting job descriptions and work objectives

Human Resources

The Human Resources (HR) team provides strategic and operational services which enable the achievement of corporate goals by: delivering relevant, pragmatic and innovative 'people' solutions which facilitate the effective recruitment, retention and reward of a diverse workforce; equipping managers with high quality tools and advice to maximise performance and productive time; and ensuring effective employee relations.

HR is also currently responsible for monitoring and reporting on the Commission' s progress in meeting its RRA obligations.

Action Plan

We will:

  • Publish our employment statistics as required by the RRA. These will be made available on the commission website annually.
  • Continue to use positive action statements in our recruitment advertising to encourage applicants from under represented groups to apply for jobs with us.
  • Place recruitment advertisements in media most likely to reach those under represented groups and use language which is appealing to a diverse mix of potential applicants.
  • Monitor response rates from different media and adapt our advertising strategies accordingly.
  • Increase the diversity mix of recruitment panels, including using external BME panel members.
  • Target prospective candidates from the BME sector when recruiting to senior positions so that our top cadre better reflects the diverse community we serve.
  • Provide ongoing support for the Ethnic Minority Forum (EMF) and the Diversity Steering Group by attending meetings and providing appropriate budgets to maintain the groups' effective organisation.
  • Develop proposals for adopting additional Equality and Diversity initiatives for consideration by the Commission' s Diversity Steering Group (September 2006 meeting).

Business Enablement

Business Enablement provides a stable information technology infrastructure and realisation of benefits from investment in e-services; delivers a flexible and safe office environment; and innovative and compliant procurement processes that ensure value for money.

Action plan

We will:

  • Ensure that the systems and services provided by Business Enablement reflect best practice in meeting the accessibility and usability needs of our customers. We do this by incorporating the accessibility and usability requirements into the original specification and design of services and systems and by "testing" systems prior to release with a cross section of diverse staff and customers .
  • Ensure that delivery of our website services adhere wherever possible to best practice and as a minimum we will ensure that our provision of web-related services will adhere to the double-A conformance level as defined in the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). We will assess this by using independent testing of systems on a regular basis.
  • Ensure our procurement strategy encourages a diverse and competitive supply market, including small firms, social enterprises, ethnic minority businesses and voluntary and community sector suppliers.
  • Work with prime contractors - both at tender stage and during the life of a contract - to establish the contribution that BME businesses can play in the supply chain.

Finance & Audit

The Finance & Audit team provides robust financial management and management accounting systems to support effective planning and budget monitoring; delivers appropriate advice and financial guidance; actively supports the Commission's Audit Committee; and delivers timely and accurate management information to enable effective decision making.

Action Plan

We will:

  • Ensure our published finance and audit information is written in plain language
  • Ensure our internal audit plans include consideration of diversity issues where appropriate