Equality and diversity

Brent is the second most culturally diverse borough in the UK and our long history of ethnic and cultural diversity is not only one of our greatest strengths and assets, but valued by those who live and work here. 

Respect for equality is at the heart of what we do and we are committed to improving the services we provide to residents and our staff. 

We recognise the progress that has been made with our partners in the west London region towards a vision of an equal and diverse society.  This has strengthened our commitment to developing our programme on integration and community cohesion.

We are working hard to create inclusive services and employment opportunities for all people who live and work in Brent.

Internally we do this by supporting and monitoring the work of each department to ensure they address the needs of residents and staff from different backgrounds and with different needs.

Our equality objectives 2019-2023

Under the Equality Act 2010, we have a duty to develop and publish equality objectives and make sure we can show how we measure improvement over the next four years. We have set four equality and human rights objectives in order to achieve key outcomes for those who live and work in Brent:

1. Understand the barriers to equality experienced in Brent and act to remove them.
2. Provide accessible information and services that are tailored to people’s needs.
3. Tackle hate, harassment and victimisation.
4. Lead the way in encouraging diversity to flourish in Brent.

For more information about our objectives and how we implement these, please read our Equality Strategy 2019-2023.

The Equality Act 2010 brought together over 100 separate pieces of legislation under one act. This consolidation of legislation created a new, simpler legal framework to protect the rights of individuals and to advance equality of opportunity.

The Equality Act contains specific duties for each authority listed in the schedule to the regulations, which came into force on 9 September 2011. Under the specific duties, we were required to publish information to demonstrate compliance with the duty imposed in section 149(1) of the Act and to produce equality objectives.

We recognise that gathering and publishing a range of equality information is the first step in a journey that will help us to improve the services that we deliver and meet the needs of all of our residents and service users.

We are committed to continuing to improve the range and quality of information that we hold about different protected groups to help us to tackle some of the real equality issues such as poverty and health inequalities.

• Gender, Ethnicity and Disability Pay Gap reports
• Brent Equality Policy 2016 (.pdf, 354.5kB)

Equality in our employment practices

Our annual workforce equalities reports show the demographics of our staff and the progress on meeting our workforce equality objectives.

We are proud that Brent is one of the most diverse boroughs in the UK. To work effectively in such a diverse area, we need a good understanding of all our communities.

The equality characteristics have an important influence on the changing identities and needs of local people. We produce diversity profiles to help us understand the changing needs of our communities. These profiles provide an overview of the diversity of our service users and residents and will be used to:

• ensure best quality services that are appropriate for our local communities
• identify any gaps in service use or outcomes
• demonstrate where our services are working effectively
• check who could be affected by changes to policies or services
• measure the effects of the council’s decisions on local people.

View the Brent Open Data Portal and search 'diversity' to see the diversity profile for Brent, areas within Brent and results from surveys and the diversity of our service users.

Following the creation of Brent’s Black Community Action Plan, Brent Council commissioned the Local Government Association (LGA) to provide an independent review of racial inequalities in the borough.

This review was undertaken in January 2021. The council welcomes the findings of this review.