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.

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 2021/22 annual WRES & 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.

2021/22 Workforce Race Equality Standard (WRES) and Workforce Disability Equality Standard (WDES) Annual Report