Part of the new Public Sector Equality Duty comes into force on the 6th April 2011. The new duty is divided into a “general” and “specific” duties. The specific duties are supposed to set out a number of particular tasks that public as authorities carry out in order to help them comply with the general duty.
It was originally planned that the specific duties would come into force on the same day as the general duty, however, on the 17th March 2011 the coalition government announced that the draft regulations on the specific duties for England are to be revised and would not become law on 6th April, as originally planned. A delay in implementing the specific duties has also been announced by the Scottish Parliament, but not in Wales, where the specific duties will come into force according to the original schedule.
The Public Sector Equality Duty combines the previous public sector equality duties into one and extends the areas of discrimination covered. The previous Public Sector Equality Duties were:
- the Race Equality Duty which came into force in May 2002
- the Disability Equality Duty which came into force in December 2006
- the Gender Equality Duty which came into force in April 2007.
Following the introduction of these duties public authorities became legally obliged to promote equality of opportunity and eliminate discrimination for service users and staff, rather than waiting for individuals to complain. To extend the areas of equality covered and combine them into one duty, the new duty covers a series of “protected characteristics”.
People who share these characteristics are regarded as being members of certain “protected groups”. The protected characteristics are:
- race
- disability
- pregnancy and maternity
- age
- religion or belief
- sex
- sexual orientation
- gender reassignment
nick venedi
