We want to understand the needs of our diverse community and strive to treat everyone as an individual, with dignity and respect, in accordance with their human rights.

NHS Gloucestershire ICB is committed to upholding the NHS Constitution and, specifically in relation to equality, diversity and human rights, the principle which requires us to provide “a comprehensive service, available to all irrespective of gender, race, disability, age, sexual orientation, religion or belief, gender reassignment, pregnancy and maternity or marital or civil partnership status”.

We recognise that Gloucestershire has a diverse population and that individuals may have multiple identities which can cut across more than one protected characteristic; e.g. we all have an age and a racial identity. Some of our characteristics may change over the course of our lives, e.g. we may acquire a disability, some of us may change our religion.

To help us understand “what matters to you”, we undertake a significant amount of local engagement across the county. Working in partnership with voluntary sector and community groups and organisations across One Gloucestershire (our Integrated Care System) we aim to provide a range of opportunities for people to get involved and influence local health care services. To find out more about our engagement work and how we can support you to get involved, click here.


The Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED)

The PSED is designed to support ICBs and other bodies to think about equality across our work programme, to identify the major challenges and to agree the actions we will take to tackle them.

The PSED consists of a general duty and specific duties. The general duty requires ICBs to think about how they can prevent discrimination, advance equality and foster good relations. This applies to the services that are provided and commissioned and to the employment of staff. The PSED requires a thorough consideration of the needs of people with each protected characteristics and is therefore different to the focus of the health inequalities duty which includes a focus on geographical inequalities and other non-protected characteristic inequalities.

The specific duty requires the ICB to be transparent about our work on equality and to show how we are meeting the requirements of the general duty. Each year we must publish equality information that demonstrates how we are thinking about equality across the services we provide and commission and the employment of staff.

ICBs should also have one or more published equality objectives, that are specific and measurable and cover a period of up to four years.


Equality Objectives

In line with the Public Sector Equality Duty requirements we are required to have one or more published equality objectives, that are specific and measurable and cover a period of up to four years. In recognition of the issue identified through the EDS22 process and drawing upon existing priorities for the ICB, we have set the following 3 equality objectives for the ICB:

  • To develop the quality and range of equality and health inequalities data as part of our clinical programmes of work to improve our understanding of the impact of inequalities and the opportunities to take improvement actions.
  • To deliver our programme of work in the Core20PLUS5 clinical priority areas.
  • To work with system partners across One Gloucestershire on the implementation of the Equality Delivery System to share information, learning and good practice.

We will report on progress on these objectives throughout the coming year.


Overview of Gloucestershire’s Equality Information

The 2021 Census data information is now available providing us with more accurate and up to date information about the profile of our local population. The infographic below shows our position across the nine protected characteristics.

Demographic profile