The Equality Act 2010 provides the basic framework of protection from discrimination, victimisation and harassment.
The Act replaced all existing anti-discrimination laws (such as the Disability Discrimination Act 1995), and extends protection across a number of ‘protected characteristics’. These are:
- Sex
- Disability
- Race
- Religion or belief
- Gender reassignment
- Sexual orientation
- Age
- Marriage and civil partnership
- Pregnancy and maternity
As well as eliminating discrimination, public bodies like the Council are also required to consider how they may advance equality of opportunity and foster good relations between different groups and sectors of the community as they carry out their functions.
In order to enable us to meet our duties and to integrate these into normal working practices we have introduced a practice of assessing the impacts that our services, functions and policies may have on the various protected characteristic groups.
The Council's Equality Policy and Equality Objectives provide an overview of the current equality legislation as well as a summary of the Council's vision in this respect. These were formally adopted by the Council on 25 October 2012.
Should you wish to view statistics relating to age, disability etc., please use the search tool incorporated within the Surrey - i website, where this and other Borough-wide data can be found.
There are other organisations which may also be useful if you are looking for different services or other kinds of support:
- AbilityNet
- DisabledGo
- Runnymede Access Liaison Group (RALG)
- Sight for Surrey
- Shifa - Asian Women's Support Group
- Surrey Adult Physical Disability Register
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