A while ago, many of you very kindly returned the Equality Monitoring form which was sent with a mailout. If you haven’t already, you can now fill in this form online.
In April 2010 The Equality Act came into being, this was new legislation introduced by the government which aims to prevent discrimination. Part of this new legislation requires all public bodies to collect certain information about the people that use their services. This new standardised approach to equality monitoring applies to all public bodies throughout the UK, this includes local authorities, the NHS, Universities and us.
Complying with the requirements of the Equality Act is a condition of many kinds of funding, for example the funding we received form Bradford Council last year which we used for development and also to help us to see if there are any groups out there that might need more support to join and benefit from BDCU services.
From October 1st 2011 we have been routinely asking for this information from new members as they join. Under the legislation everyone has the right to refuse to answer which is perfectly fine, as long as the question has been asked.


