Website Equalities and Diversity Consultation 2008

Surrey Heath Borough Council's mission is to have an accessible, dynamic, top quality website that meets the needs of Surrey Heath residents, surrounding boroughs and people finding out information when they are moving into the Borough. We will develop one source of accurate, up-to-date service information that can be easily accessed by the public whether self-serving, via the Contact Centre, telephone or face to face at an office. We consulted the community carrying out usability testing by consulting the community to test the effectiveness of the website for finding information and using the site to carry out transactions.

The Council is required to cover all services and links to any useful non Council websites which it deems to be of use to residents. We provide online services for payments, planning applications, online reporting and much more. We have invested in Browse Aloud and Large Text options for sight impaired residents. (so that residents and businesses are able to self serve without the need to telephone or visit the Council Offices).

There are residents who for whatever reason do not own a computer but in Surrey Heath we have one of the highest levels of computer and broadband usage in the country. Obviously we are unable to achieve our goals where residents do not have a computer but there are public computers in Surrey Heath's Contact Centre, the Camberley Library has over 15 computers and also Frimley Green Library has about 5 computers. During our Web Roadshow week we spent 4 hours in the Camberley Library and 2 hours in the Frimley Library and these computers were used constantly by residents.

Improvements need to be made on the website for ethnic minority groups. Although it was noted from the survey that there was approximately 6.1% of the group we consulted with who fitted into this category. If we discounted 'White Irish', 'other' and those who preferred not to answer. We are currently working on a new area for the local community to include a variety of religions and nationalities linking to associations and events.

We have completed our Equality and Diversity Survey and the results can be found in Annex A to this document.File Type: Adobe PDF document, File Size:65.96 Kb (10 seconds @ 56K) Opens in a new window

The Council already has an Equality Policy 'Recognising Diversity' and is committed to equality of opportunity. The Policy outlines the Council aim that no one is discriminated against either directly or indirectly on the grounds of race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, disability or age.

The Council has an Equality Scheme which incorporates the requirements for a Race Equality Scheme and a Disability Equality Scheme as set out in the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000 and the Disability Discrimination Act 2005. All local authorities are required to comply with these Acts.

The Equality Scheme is intended to address equality as a whole and takes into account anticipated legislation as well as the statutory duties of the Acts.

• The feedback from the survey has now been analysed and we have worked on the various outcomes to improve the website as in Annex A.File Type: Adobe PDF document, File Size:65.96 Kb (10 seconds @ 56K) Opens in a new window
• We consulted with the following groups, Surrey Heath Islamic Centre, Gay Surrey, Disability Initiative, Ian Goodchild Centre, The Camberley Library, Old Dean Advice Centre, High Cross Church, SHBC Contact Centre and the Camberley Theatre with both a hard copy and an online form. We also asked on the form if they required a translated or large print version of the survey.
• Adding the questionnaire and analysing the results

The Equality and Diversity survey was posted out to 2,900 residents in Surrey Heath and hard copies were also placed in the Islamic Centre, Disability Initiative, The Camberley Library, SH Contact Centre, Camberley Theatre, Ian Goodchild Centre, Old Dean Advice Centre as hard copies and we collected these from each location. We received a total of 601 response of which the following information was ascertained.