Progress on the GLA group best value review of equalities

Report: 13
Date: 17 July 2003
By: Clerk

Summary

In 2001/2 the MPA took part in the GLA Group Equalities for All Best Value Review of Equalities. The report made a number of recommendations, which officers have been progressing. The report brings to members attention the recently published report by the Audit Commission and outlines the outstanding work which the Authority will need to progress in order to achieve the timescales outlined in the report recommendation.

A. Recommendations

Members are asked to:

1. note the summary and recommendations arising from the Audit Commission inspection of this review;
2. note that the timescale for achieving level 5 of the Equality Standard by 2005 is highly ambitious and that to do so has recourses implications;
3. agree, subject to the decision on recommendation 2, that the Authority work towards achieving Level 3 of the Equality Standard by Summer 2004; and
4. agree that as required by the GLA, the MPA undertake to develop a comprehensive Service Improvement Plan to meet one of the key recommendations of the Review

B. Supporting information

1. The MPA took part in the GLA Group ‘Equalities for All’ Best value review in 2001/02. The report made 36 recommendations across six key areas of the review.

• Vision and leadership (6 recommendations)
• Exemplary Employer (6 recommendations)
• Service improvement (6 recommendations)
• Consultation (4 recommendations)
• Cultural Changes (5 recommendations)
• Performance Management (7 recommendations)

Audit Commission Inspection and recommendations

2. Since completing the review the Audit Commission has inspected the progress, and have identified a number of areas which may inform the decision reached by this committee in relation to the recommendations highlighted below. The review was carried out in March 2003 and the report of the findings in June 2003. A copy of the report is in the Members library. The key recommendations and findings are attached as Appendix 1.

3. Overall the Commission assessed the GLA as providing a ‘good’ two-star service that has promising prospects for improvements. The recommendations are primarily directed towards the GLA but the Authority will need to review its progress and developments against the observations and comments contained in the report.

MPA Progress

4. The MPA has made progress against the majority of these recommendations. There are a small number that are likely to present challenges in progressing them and these are brought to members attention, at this stage, so that guidance and direction can be given.

5. The three key recommendations highlighted in this report are:

• Recommendation 5 – the GLA Group commit to achieving Level 5 of the Equalities Standard by 31 March 2005.
• Recommendation 26 – the GLA group agree to a programme of management and cultural change and investigate the existing policies and legislation governing their services to duty and remedy issues that impact the mainstreaming of Equalities.
• Recommendation 31 – the GLA Group adopt the service improvement plan.

Recommendation 4 – level 5 Equality Standard by 31 March 2005

6. The GLA Group Officers Group has regular meetings and plans are now underway to concentrate on the internal structures, processes and organisational culture that will be required by each of the Group in order to achieve recommendation 5 of the Exemplar Employer section, to achieve level 5 Equalities Standard by 31 March 2005.

7. Engagement on this activity will take up a good proportion of officers’ time, to make sure that the authority is well placed to be externally assessed as a high Quality Equality Organisation.

8. The Equalities Standard for local Government in England (corporate) was just published in 1995, adopted as an Audit Commission performance indicator in 1997/98 and as a BVPI in 2000/01. A copy of the standard setting out the levels is in the Members’ library.

9. Building on the race standard the CRE, the Equal opportunities Commission (EDC) the Disability Rights Commission (DRC) and the Employers organisation for local government jointly developed a new standard the Equality Standard for local government in England. This new standard was published in October 2001. It will enable local authorities to assess their performance on the three Equality Divisions at five levels across four areas of equalities activity, assist authorities to comply with their general duty to promote racial equality as well as be in a good position to comply with the other equalities dimensions to which the MPA has already publicly committed.

10. The four areas covered by the standard are

• Level 1: The Authority has adopted a comprehensive equality policy including commitments to develop equality objectives and targets, to consultation and impact assessment monitoring, audit and scrutiny.
• Level 2: The Authority has engaged in impact and needs assessment, a consultation process and an equality action planning process for employment and service delivery.
• Level 3: The Authority has completed the equality action planning process, set objectives and targets and established information and monitoring systems to assess process.
• Level 4: The Authority has achieved targets reviewed them and set new targets. The Authority is seen as exemplary for its equalities programmes.

11. The standard is a means to combat the institutional processes that have led to discrimination. These have formed part of the culture, administration and governance in Britain which have resulted in barriers to access which discriminate against people through race, gender and disability.

12. Working to achieve the standard will allow the MPA to achieve the mainstreaming of equalities, which it has as a core function and governance principle, thereby ensuring that discriminatory barriers, which could prevent equal access to service and employment, are identified and removed. The common approach for dealing with equality for race, gender and disability means that the MPA will be able to develop a framework that can be used for addressing the requirements of the three groups disadvantaged by endemic discrimination.

13. The recent Internal Audit review of the MPA (and MPS) internal diversity processes indicate that the Authority will need to make significant progress in a number of areas and develop a planned strategic approach to its equalities performance if it wishes to attain level 5 of the standard within the next two years.

14. Achieving level 5 of the standard will give the employer credibility of the MPA a considerable boost and will set it on the same level as the other organisations that are assessed as having exemplary equality processes and performance. It is likely to take a great deal of work over the next 18 months to achieve the desired level.

15. Members may therefore need to review whether the Authority should aim to achieve the same deadline or whether it wishes to signify at this stage whether a delay in achieving that target may be best, given the amount of work that will need to be done and the current staffing resources available to progress this area of work. Further advice on the effect of the extra resourcing necessary to meet the target will be produced for the next Board meeting

Ways forward

16. The GLA Equalities network will be working jointly to ensure that common frameworks and processes, against specified time scales are in place by each member of the GLA group to achieve the standard by 2005.

17. The MPA now needs a high level-monitoring group to be responsible for developing and implementing the scheme. This group can be steered by the Internal Equalities Sub Group, with the day to day work being coordinated by the CDO unit with support from the HR unit. Additional staffing will be required.

18 This Board may be inclined to set an initial target of achieving level 3 by Summer 2004. Such a target will focus the mind and enable the Board to monitor the progress for achieving its ultimate goal.

Recommendation 24 - Management and Cultural change.

19. This recommendation is being progressed through the proposed Internal Culture Survey which the committee has previously considered and is being further developed by the MPS Development and Organisational Implementation Team (DOIT). A further element of this recommendation and a key outstanding action in the MPA Race Equality Scheme, is that of Race and Equality training for MPA members.

Service improvement plan - Recommendation 31

20 Although the MPA has previously taken the option to integrate this recommendation, to have in place a service improvement plan into the various work programmes of the CDO and HR Unit, the GLA has recommended that the Authority develop a separate SIP against which it will be able to monitor its equality progress. The Audit Commission has commented on the need for this in order to monitor progress more accurately against each of the recommendations, and it is therefore proposed that the MPA should comply with this requirement.

21. To undertake this work in a comprehensive manner will involve mapping and integration of a range of other Equalities recommendations, which need to be progressed. This work has begun but the demand for officers to progress other priority areas of work means that the MPA may be unlikely to meet this requirement placed on it by the Mayor, within current staffing resources.

C. Equality and diversity implications

1. Achieving the recommendations highlighted will enable the Authority to have a more strategic approach towards embedding equalities practices in all aspects of its work.

2. The Equalities Standards provide a frame work for benchmarking the MPA’s performance on Equalities against other local and police authorities in England and Wales.

D. Financial implications

There are no immediate financial considerations to this report.

E. Background papers

• Equalities for All Review – final report March 2002
• A generic Equality Standard For Local Government CRE, EOC, DRA, AC.
• Greater London Authority ‘Equalities for all’ June 2003

F. Contact details

Report authors: Julia Smith

For more information contact:

MPA general: 020 7202 0202
Media enquiries: 020 7202 0217/18

Appendix 1: Equalities for All Review – final report March 2002

A generic Equality Standard For Local Government CRE, EOC, DRA, AC.
Greater London Authority ‘Equalities for all’ June 2003

Summary and Recommendations

Summary

1. The Greater London Authority (GLA) is a new and unique form of strategic city-wide government for London, serving a diverse multi-cultural city with a population of 7.2 million people, speaking in excess of 300 different languages.

2. Created by the GLA Act (1999), the GLA became operational in July 2000. It comprises a directly elected mayor (the Mayor of London) and an elected assembly (the London assembly) composed of 25 members grouped in 14 constituencies, with 11 London-wide seats. The Labour and Conservative parties each hold nine seats, with the Liberal Democrats occupying four and the Green Party occupying the remaining three seats.

3. The current Mayor is politically independent. He plays an executive role, making decisions on behalf of the GLA and preparing strategies that address London-wide issues. The assembly has a scrutiny role and is able to investigate issues of importance to Londoners. The GLA’s overall budget for 2002/03 was £49.9 million, an increase of £13.8 million on 2001/02. The increase was partly due to the costs of moving to city hall. The budget requirement for 2003/04 is £55.9 million.

4. The Mayor’s vision for London is:

‘To develop London as an exemplary sustainable world city.’

5. This is based on three balanced and interlocking elements:

• strong and diverse economic growth;
• social inclusivity to allow all Londoners to share in London’s future success; and
• fundamental improvements in environmental management and the use of resources.

6. In addition to the ‘core GLA’, the authority has four functional bodies (FBs):

• London Development Agency (LDA);
• Transport for London (TfL);
• Metropolitan Police Authority (MPA) which in turn has responsibility for the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS); and
• London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority (LFEPA), which in turn has responsibility for the London Fire Brigade.

7. These organisations are collectively referred to as the ‘GLA group’. The overall budget for the GLA group was £4.7 billion in 2002/03. In 2003/04 this will rise to £7.5 billion. The rise is mainly due to the transfer of London Underground Limited to TfL.

8. This inspection followed the best value review (BVR) in examining:

• the strategic role of the GLA in respect of the GLA group and external bodies – the FBs were interviewed as stakeholders in this; and
• implementation of equalities within the core GLA.

9. The core GLA has a number of processes and structures that play a role in delivering the equalities agenda both internally, and externally with the FBs. Operational groups and structures with equalities roles include the following:

• the equalities team;
• the stakeholders team;
• four Mayor’s advisors, and four members of the Mayor’s advisory cabinet, with specific responsibility for equalities issues;
• the equalities policy team; and
• the budget and equalities group.

10. The core GLA is projecting a budget for 2003/04 of some £3,228,000 identified against equalities activities and associated staff costs. The GLA group is projecting a budget of some £82,132,000 covering staffing and service delivery costs. In addition, the MPS expects to spend £118,676,000.

11 The equalities budget (or budget and equalities) process operates across the GLA group and requires each FB to submit a return to the core GLA outlining its expected expenditure on equalities related activities, including staff and programmes. Submissions are scrutinised by a budget and equalities group comprising core officers and mayoral advisors. The process is seen as key to driving the equalities agenda across the group.

12 As required by the GLA Act, the GLA produces an annual equalities report outlining on-going progress made on equalities.

Scoring the service

13 We have assessed the authority as providing a ‘good’, two-star service that has promising prospects for improvement. Our judgements are based on the evidence obtained during the inspection and are outlined below.

14. We assessed the service to be ‘good’. We found that a clear commitment to driving up and sustaining high standards on equalities is shared throughout the GLA group, and recognised by external stakeholders. This is demonstrated by the shared ‘equalities commitment’, aspiration towards leadership of a ‘fair city’, and aims for employment and service delivery. These aims are inclusive, going beyond legislative requirements. The over-arching aim for the group to become exemplary organisations has become less clear, however, and this will not now be achieved by the March 2005 deadline.

15. Equalities have a very high profile across the GLA group, and there is extensive evidence of good and improving practice within each of the organisations. The GLA is demonstrating its strategic impact on the FBs within the group. Through its strategies, which place a strong emphasis on equalities, it is also developing a platform to influence progress on equalities more widely across the city. There is a strong, visible impact on Londoners through a wide range of cultural events. The GLA is also moving towards its target of becoming an exemplary employer. However, some areas still need attention. These include unevenness in the priority given to some equalities areas – noticeably around disability; access and access to information at city hall; disquiet with aspects of organisational culture, such as working long hours; and the need to optimise the resources available, including the equalities team and the various networks, to work effectively for the core GLA and across the group.

16. The GLA is a new and unique organisation, and does not fit readily with existing methods of comparison across local authorities. Where comparison is possible, the GLA group compares well on corporate health best value performance indicators relevant to equalities, although there is some variability across the group. The strongest areas are race and gender within the core GLA. There has been some year-on-year improvement. There is scope for wider comparison across different functions, and different UK and world cities.

17. We assessed the prospects for improvement as ‘promising’. The GLA used the BVR process to give credibility and status to the equalities review. It succeeded in working across the GLA group for the first time, raising awareness and promoting understanding and collaboration across the FBs. The BVR used the ‘4Cs’ process broadly to good effect, although little work was done to map resources and it cannot yet be demonstrated that equalities functions are cost effective. The opportunity to take an innovative approach by focussing on agreed equalities and social inclusion ‘target groups’ was missed.

18. It is a significant achievement to have adopted a service improvement plan (SIP) across the whole GLA group which each organisation is signed up to implementing. However, monitoring of the group SIP is not systematic or formalised, so an accurate view of progress is not available. Monitoring of the core GLA SIP is not as effective as it might be, given the number of reporting mechanisms that it is subject to, and there have been slippages in a number of key areas.

19. There is considerable commitment at high levels in the core GLA and across the group to deliver improvement to a high standard. Impetus and momentum are evident and a number of structures and processes have been put in place. More work is needed to harmonise these and ensure pro-active project management of the various SIPs. Some risks need to be re-assessed, in particular, the lack of clear status of teams and networks, and the lack of evaluation of outcomes and improvements.

Recommendations

20. To rise to the challenge of continuous improvement authorities need inspection reports that offer practical pointers for improvement.

21. We recommend that the authority should:

• Impact on Londoners
  • identify and use the agreed ‘target groups’ to target resources to match current and future needs;
  • prioritise SIP actions which impact directly on the public, including:
  • access to information; and
  • physical access, signage and the welcoming environment;
  • fast track action to address practice on disability, faith and age;
  • develop a mechanism to evaluate outcomes for Londoners, linked to investment in planning, consultation and delivery; and
  • compare effectively with other cities and best practice organisations, and set up ways to share good practice.
• Management
  • re-assess and re-prioritise key SIP targets, including:
  • reaching level 5 of the equalities standard by 2005 (2004 for LDA);
  • undertaking a cultural audit; and
  • achieving exemplary employer status;
  • put in place pro-active and evaluative monitoring of the SIPs;
  • further integrate improvement, financial and business planning across the group;
  • clarify the role and status of resources, inter-relationships and links to FBs, including the equalities, stakeholders, and equalities policy teams; the proposed networks, and the equalities commission;
  • consider a group-wide coordinating resource to drive and deliver the equalities agenda across the group and to coordinate and share best practice;
  • involve assembly members and others at board level, and give them information to facilitate constructive ownership, monitoring and scrutiny; and
  • develop effective and comprehensive equalities training to include board and assembly members, senior management, and advisors.

22. We would like to thank the staff of the GLA, particularly Sarah Thompson, and of the functional bodies, who made us welcome and who met our requests efficiently and courteously.

Huw Meredith (h-meredith@audit-commission.gov.uk)
Jacquie Campbell (js-campbell@audit-commission.gov.uk)
Jackie Joyce (j-joyce@audit-commission.gov.uk)
Asari St Hill (a-sthill@audit-commission.gov.uk)

Inspectors, London region
Dates of inspection: 10–21 March 2003

For more information please contact Audit Commission Operations Directorate 020 7872 4900

London Region
17th Floor Millbank Tower
Millbank
London SW1P 4QP

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