Equality and Human Rights

As a public authority, East Cheshire NHS Trust must uphold and promote human rights in everything we do. The Equality Act 2010 replaced the former duties around race, disability, and gender with a new streamlined and strengthened equality duty, which has been extended to cover nine protected characteristics. These are as follows:

1. Disability
2. Age
3. Gender re-assignment
4. Marriage and Civil partnership
5. Race, including national identity and ethnicity
6. Religion or belief
7. Sex
8. Sexual orientation
9. Pregnancy and maternity

The overall aim of the act is to ensure that people get fairer opportunities and better public services. The act focusses on the following: 

• promoting equality of opportunity;
• promoting good relations;
• promoting positive attitudes;
• eliminating harassment; and
• eliminating unlawful discrimination.

The Equality Delivery System (EDS) is a system that helps NHS organisations improve the services they provide for their local communities and provide better working environments, free of discrimination, for those who work in the NHS, while meeting the requirements of the Equality Act 2010.  The EDS was developed by the NHS, for the NHS, taking inspiration from existing work and good practice.

Background to the EDS

The EDS was first launched for the NHS in November 2011. In November 2012, Shared Intelligence published their report ‘Evaluation of the equality delivery system for the NHS’ which looked at how the EDS had been adopted across NHS organisations. Based on this evaluation and subsequent engagement with the NHS and key stakeholders, a refreshed EDS – known as EDS2 – was made available in November 2013. A review of the EDS2 was undertaken to incorporate system changes and take account of the new system architecture. Through collaboration and co-production and taking into account the impact of COVID-19, the EDS has been updated and EDS 2022 has run as a pilot during 2022/23.

The main purpose of the EDS was, and remains, to help local NHS systems and organisations, in discussion with local partners and local populations, review and improve their performance for people with characteristics protected by the Equality Act 2010.

EDS 2022 is aligned to NHS England’s Long Term Plan and its commitment to an inclusive NHS that is fair and accessible to all.

Reports can be downloaded at the bottom of the page.

The Workforce Race Equality Standard (WRES) and Workforce Disability Equality Standard (WDES) is in place to demonstrate how NHS organisations are addressing race and disability equality issues and encourage continuous accountability so that ethical practices promoting race and disability equality becomes business as usual activity.

The 2023/24 annual WRES and WDES reports for East Cheshire NHS Trust contains the key highlights our key areas for focus, whilst our associated action plans will help ensure we continue to make progress in delivering on our ambition to be a fair workplace where the difference is recognised and valued and everyone has the opportunity to fulfil their potential.

2023/24 Workforce Race Equality Standard (WRES) and Workforce Disability Equality Standard (WDES) Annual Report

BAME Leadership Programme Class of 2022

East Cheshire NHS Trust has signed an anti-racism statement, pledging to uphold zero tolerance towards racism in any form.

This commitment reflects the Trust’s dedication to fostering a safe, respectful, and inclusive environment for everyone in its care and workforce.

The statement reinforces ongoing efforts to promote equality and diversity, ensuring that discrimination is not tolerated and that all individuals feel valued and protected within the Trust’s services.

Read the statement below.

Becoming an unapologetically anti-racist organisation, begins first and foremost with an acknowledgement that racism exists within society. 
As a health care provider, we have a responsibility to ensure racism cannot influence or impact on an individual’s healthcare journey, or indeed a colleague’s experience of work.

The demographics of East Cheshire as a community and indeed those of our own organisation are predominantly White and its likely many of our staff, patients and service users may have benefited from privilege.  That does not mean we assume colleagues and patients throughout our community haven’t experienced discrimination or hardship, but rather it is an acknowledgment that it is unlikely many of us will know what it is like to be racially profiled or unfairly stereotyped.  Sadly, that has not always been the case for colleagues and our patients from Black, Asian or Minority Ethnic communities.

Indeed, in our own organisation, we accept but will continue to strive to improve the findings of our Workforce Race Equality Standard report and associated NHS Staff Survey which highlight that Black Asian and Minority Ethnic colleagues don’t always have the same positive experience of work compared to their White peers, as reflected in the statistics to the right of this statement.

Racism can be systemic, institutional and in almost every case, personal.  We will overcome this by empowering our colleagues to report incidents of racism and to reject discrimination, leaving them safe in the knowledge that as an organisation we have their back, they will be believed, and the Trust will take action. 

We recognise that becoming an anti-racist organisation is an ongoing journey but remain steadfast in our commitment to develop an action plan and seek recognition with the North West BAME Assembly’s anti-racist framework.  We will review our progress regularly with the Equality Diversity and Inclusion steering group and strive for meaningful and lasting change, addressing health inequalities through an anti-racism lens, and fostering a culture which celebrates cultural diversity.