Minutes:
“Can the Leader of the Council give examples of how Welwyn Hatfield Borough Council encourages greater participation in democratic and civic processes of residents from minority backgrounds?”
Answer
The Leader, Councillor Tony Kingsbury, answered:
“Thank you for your question, Cllr Moore.
The Council is always keen to hear from our communities to help us shape our services. Equalities Impact Assessments are undertaken and reported as part of decision making, and where any impacts are identified on particular groups, any communication, consultation or engagement would be targeted at those groups to ensure they were involved in the democratic process. A recent example of where we have worked with older residents and residents with a disability is through the review of the Community Bus Service. We ran a successful consultation and listened to feedback that has allowed us to identify an option to keep this service running whilst offering further service enhancements through a new partnership with charity Communities 1st.
We are in the process of updating our equalities plan for next year and as part of this, we will be identifying where we can improve opportunities for participation for residents from minority backgrounds. This will complement the work overseen by the Council’s Community & Stakeholder Engagement group who will be identifying events to celebrate our diverse communities, such as Black History Month, religious holidays and festivals, as well as remembering those who have lost their lives in genocides in the Holocaust Memorial Day Civic Commemoration Service, which we hold in partnership with Welwyn Hatfield Interfaith Group and local secondary schools.
Building on the work of the vaccination programme, which included partnership working with Communities 1st to engage directly with local faith leaders, local community groups, minority-owned businesses, and other residents from minority groups, we will be analysing the success of different communication methods with our communities and build on this to tailor future communication and engagement. This will also inform our review of our approach to non-statutory consultation as part of the work being overseen by the Cross-Party Customer Services Project Board.
We are committed to ensuring our tenants are represented and we have recently launched our Tenant Satisfaction Measures and will be using this to further understand participation of tenants from minority backgrounds. This will then allow us to develop more targeted communications to support our tenants.
We are committed to improving our customer service and communication offering to residents. Our website is in the top 10 in the country for accessibility and other factors, ensuring that those with specific needs can use standard accessibility software or web translation. We use translation services, have a contract with sign video to support interpretation services for users of sign language and can provide information in various formats as required.”
In a supplementary question, Councillor Moore asked:
“You mentioned the equalities action plan will be reviewed next year. Will that look at things like encouraging voting and how to engage in terms of how the council functions, as part of that process?
Answer
The Leader, Councillor Kingsbury answered:
“I think it's important that it does so that's why we look at all sorts of things for the equality plan. So yes, thank you for your question and I'm glad to have answered it with all the good work we have been doing.”