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Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Strategy 2023-2026

Derbyshire Fire & Rescue Service’s (DFRS) vision is to ‘Make Derbyshire Safer Together.’ The Services’ ‘Our Plan 2023-26’ (Community Risk Management Plan (CRMP)) details how we will do this, with the Service recognising the importance of an effective Equality, Diversity & Inclusion (EDI) strategy combined with our Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED) objectives to support its delivery and ongoing work against our Service Priorities.

Derbyshire Fire Rescue Service is committed to improving our culture of equality and diversity for the communities of Derbyshire and our employees. Our commitment and responsibility is governed by legislation including:

  • The Human Rights Act 1998 – to ensure the fundamental rights and freedoms that everyone in the UK is entitled to
  • The Equality Act 2010 - to ensure equality, diversity and inclusion is central to all we do
  • This is further enhanced under section 149, Equality Act 2010 Public Sector Equality Duty to:
    • Eliminate discrimination, harassment, victimisation and other unlawful conduct prohibited under the Equality Act 2010
    • Advance equality of opportunity between persons who share a relevant protected characteristic and persons who do not share it
    • Foster good relations between persons who share a relevant protected characteristic and persons who do not share it
  • Gender Pay Gap Information Regulations 2017
  • The British Sign Language (BSL) Act 2022 – to promote and facilitate the use of BSL within public sector organisations

Delivery, Monitoring and Review

We recognise that inclusion involves everyone. All employees have a responsibility for EDI as outlined in the Core Code of Ethics for Fire and Rescue Services.

We have incorporated national learning, guidance and good practice from organisations including the National Fire Chiefs Council, Local Government Association, His Majesty Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue, Asian Fire Service Association, and Women in the Fire Service.

The work of the strategy and associated action plans will be monitored via internal performance boards, strategy scrutiny meetings, review of equality impact assessments, relevant community forums, and the Inclusion and Equality Forum – a subgroup of the Fire and Rescue Authority.

Our statutory responsibilities require us to publish and report on the Gender Pay Gap and progress against our equality objectives*. These objectives underpin our commitment to embed EDI throughout DFRS. This strategy contains our high-level commitments to EDI and enables all Service areas to adopt PSED objectives within their own strategies.

*Our annual Gender Pay Gap and PSED data report can be located here.

PSED Objective 1 - We will improve our understanding of all our communities to keep them safe from fire and other emergencies

PSED Objective 2 - We will improve our understanding of our workforce and create an environment where all can achieve

PSED Objective 3 - We will improve the representation of the workforce to reflect the community we serve; to provide the diversity of thought, skills, and experiences required to make everyone in Derbyshire safer

PSED Objective 4 - We will identify opportunities to utilise digital technology to create a more inclusive and accessible environment

PSED Objective 5 - We will identify opportunities to improve the quality and relevance of data used to inform our decisions

Our Vision - Making Derbyshire Safer Together

The Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Strategy will reflect our vision, values, Service priorities and the Core Code of Ethics.

Service Priorities

  • Keeping our communities safe from fire and other emergencies

  • Having a well-equipped, trained, competent and safe workforce available for operational emergencies

  • Putting people first to maintain an outstanding culture of equality and inclusivity

  • Managing the Service and the challenges within the current and future financial constraints to deliver value for money

  • Continuous improvement through challenge and inspection

  • Meeting the data and digital challenge as it evolves

Our Core Values

  • Leadership: We listen, develop and champion our people
  • Respect: We value the opinions of our people
  • Integrity: Our actions will always be well intended
  • Openness: We won’t hide anything and will share our experiences and knowledge
  • Teamwork: We will achieve more together
  • Ambition: We will always do the best we can

Areas of Work

Theme/activity

PSED Objective 1

What are the objectives/ commitments (‘we will’ statements in Our Plan) in our strategy? How are we going to achieve this? What does success look like and how will it be measured?

We will improve our understanding of all our communities to keep them safe from fire and other emergencies

  • Keeping our communities safe from fire and other emergencies
  • Having a well-equipped, trained, competent and safe workforce
  • Putting people first to maintain an outstanding culture of equality and inclusivity
  • Delivering an efficient and effective service, that adds value to our communities
  • Promoting continuous improvement through effective challenge and embracing learning
  • We will continue to monitor changes in our communities to better understand their needs and barriers to access services we provide
  • We will engage with all our communities, not only those that have been involved in emergencies, through positive interaction and engagement
  • We will ensure the decisions we make are consulted on to allow everyone in our community to be heard

By developing and implementing an EDI communication and engagement plan to celebrate diversity within the Service and our communities

By implementing station plans and delivering engagement activities with communities across the county

By ensuring attendance at relevant community forums and events and identifying gaps where we need to improve community links

By collecting, monitoring and analysing equalities data

By ensuring incident and equality data drives our Prevention, Protection, Response and Operational Preparedness strategies

By building on known and emerging risks to create a tailored plan that meets the needs of all our communities

The Service has an improved understanding of the communities we serve

The Service is better informed about the diverse nature of our communities and how we adapt our services to meet their needs

There is an increased engagement with the Service

This will be measured through our performance reporting mechanisms

Theme/activity

PSED Objective 2

 

What are the objectives/ commitments (‘we will’ statements in Our Plan) in our strategy? How are we going to achieve this? What does success look like and how will it be measured?

We will improve our understanding of our workforce and create an environment where all can achieve

  • Keeping our communities safe from fire and other emergencies
  • Having a well-equipped, trained, competent and safe workforce
  • Delivering an efficient and effective service, that adds value to our communities
  • Promoting continuous improvement through effective challenge and embracing learning
  • We will review policies and processes to embed the Core Code of Ethics in recruitment, induction, learning and development and performance management
  • We will analyse equality data to increase our understanding of the workforce
  • We will formalise our Employee Support Networks to ensure they foster inclusivity, advocate for minority groups, improve organisational performance and deliver real and sustained change
  • We will ensure that all projects that affect employees consider and address the diverse needs through a robust equality impact assessment, stakeholder engagement, including employee support networks

Through our People, Workforce, Learning and Development, and Communication and Engagement strategies

By ensuring that equality impact assessments are completed for strategies, policies, processes and projects

By implementing actions from relevant employee related schemes and assessments e.g. Disability Confident scheme

By introducing a service level agreement for employee support networks utilising NFCC best practice

By measuring progress through relevant key performance indicators linked to people metrics and producing an annual Public Sector Equality Duty and Gender Pay report

The Service has robust policies and procedures that promote inclusivity

The Service uses the equality monitoring data to support decision making

There is an increased engagement with employees

We have proactive employee support networks that promote positive change

Effective equality impact assessments identify impacts and enable us to act on them

There is an increased confidence in employees sharing their equality data

This will be measured through participation levels and outcomes of employee networks, quality and completion rates of equality impact assessments and via our performance reporting mechanisms

Theme/activity

PSED Objective 3

What are the objectives/commitments (‘we will’ statements in Our Plan) in our strategy? How are we going to achieve this? What does success look like and how will it be measured?

We will improve the representation of the workforce to reflect the community we serve; to provide the diversity of thought, skills, and experiences required to make everyone in Derbyshire safer

  • Keeping our communities safe from fire and other emergencies
  • Having a well-equipped, trained, competent and safe workforce
  • Delivering an efficient and effective service, that adds value to our communities
  • Promoting continuous improvement through effective challenge and embracing learning
  • Enabling the organisation through data and digital transformation
  • We will use data to inform our workforce representation action plan for positive action across attraction, recruitment,retention and progression, including actions contained within the Gender Pay Gap Report 2023
  • We will ensure employees are trained in equality, diversity and inclusion, cultural awareness and positive action
  • We will review the attrition rates at each stage of the recruitment process and act to reduce disproportionality where it is evidenced
  • We will monitor employee groups who are eligible and actively seeking progression within the Service. We will provide support, identify process improvements and provide relevant development and training where needed.
  • We will analyse the data about employees exiting the Service and act on any factors that may negatively affect underrepresented groups.
  • We will provide support, identifying process improvements and providing relevant development or training where needed
  • We will be transparent in our activities, ensuring that no group are discriminated against in order to provide opportunity to another

Through our People, Workforce, Learning and Development Strategy, and Corporate Communication and Engagement strategies

By developing and implementing a framework for positive action that includes attraction, recruitment and progression within the Service to deliver improvements in workforce representation

By addressing any findings and implementing actions from the Gender Pay Gap Report

By developing and implementing further learning and development opportunities

By providing scrutiny and transparency through relevant internal and external meetings and scrutiny boards, including Workforce Planning Group, People Performance Board

There is an increased diversity within all duty systems and levels within the Service

We have educated and informed employees who proactively embrace and promote equality, diversity and inclusion and a good workplace culture

The Service acts on findings to reduce discrimination and improve equality of access to opportunities

This will be measured through data collection and analysis across recruitment, retention and progression activities, via our performance reporting mechanisms

Theme/activity

PSED Objective 4

What are the objectives/ commitments (‘we will’ statements in Our Plan) in our strategy? How are we going to achieve this? What does success look like and how will it be measured?

We will identify opportunities to utilise digital technology to create a more inclusive and accessible environment

  • Keeping our communities safe from fire and other emergencies
  • Having a well-equipped, trained, competent and safe workforce
  • Delivering an efficient and effective service, that adds value to our communities
  • Promoting continuous improvement through effective challenge and embracing learning
  • Enabling the organisation through data and digital transformation
  • We will continue to look at ways to allow growth of individuals in our Service through training, development or assessment and by making sure our training equipment and facilities adapt to create a more inclusive and accessible environment
  • We will make use of digital technology to improve engagement with our people and our communities
  • We will ensure risk information, toolkits policies, and guidance through online platforms both internally with our employees and externally with partner organisations are accessible and easy to understand
  • We will continue to identify and invest in new opportunities to utilise digital technology and training for our operational employees to ensure they are best equipped with the ambition to further reduce mobilisation time and incident severity

Through our People, ICT, Learning and Development, and Corporate Communication and Engagement strategies

By ensuring access to a range of accessibility tools to provide effective and efficient service delivery

By providing information in accessible formats where appropriate

By undertaking equality impact assessments to identify where potential improvements in accessibility can be considered

Employees and communities can access service information

Employees and communities are able to engage in communication and consultation activities

This will be measured through qualitative and quantitative data analysis, and via our performance reporting mechanisms

Theme/activity

PSED Objective 5

What are the objectives/ commitments (‘we will’ statements in Our Plan) in our strategy? How are we going to achieve this? What does success look like and how will it be measured?

We will identify opportunities to improve the quality and relevance of data used to inform our decisions

  • Keeping our communities safe from fire and other emergencies
  • Putting people first to maintain an outstanding culture of equality and inclusivity
  • Delivering an efficient and effective service, that adds value to our communities
  • Promoting continuous improvement through effective challenge and embracing learning
  • Enabling the organisation through data and digital transformation
  • We will utilise data to identify and address disproportionalities between characteristics and participation rates in our significant processes
  • We will evaluate the success of work with our people and communities through stakeholder satisfaction reports
  • We will continually review the effectiveness of data used in our Risk Stratification Index and other prevention data sets, to ensure our targeted prevention activities are inclusive
  • We will continually review the effectiveness of the broad and inclusive data sets used in our Risk Based Inspection Programme for the identification and differentiation of at risk premises
This will be managed through our CRMP: and our People Strategy ensuring our decisions are informed by the current and available data

Success in this area will allow for adequate assessment of our people and our community data sets through all areas of our work, with any gaps and disproportionality in data easily identified and mitigated against

This will be measured through an increase in effective data sets that facilitate service delivery