How Brighton & Hove City Council works with D/deaf, disabled and neurodivergent colleagues

As a predominantly non-disabled workforce, we must recognise what we don’t know, experience and see.

We aim to be a fair and inclusive place to work. It's everyone’s responsibility to take action to address inequalities.

Read about Brighton & Hove City Council workforce diversity and inclusion in our annual workforce equalities reports.

There's significant work and upskilling to be undertaken across Brighton & Hove City Council to better support, understand, and improve experiences for D/deaf, disabled and neurodivergent colleagues and residents.

What Brighton & Hove City Council has done to address inequalities

To address inequalities, we have: 

  • reviewed and agreed on our Fair and Inclusive Action Plan with stakeholders for 2023 to 2027
  • created an additional safe space, our virtual Fair and Inclusive team, to raise and report issues of discrimination
  • implemented a new Attendance Management Policy
  • included mandatory fair and inclusive briefings in Brighton & Hove City Council's induction for all staff
  • increased our online e-learning offer to include intersectionality and allyship
  • used our paid membership of the Business Disability Forum to review and update policies including our reasonable adjustments and Disability Confident offer of an interview scheme guidance
  • implemented an IT&D accessibility workstream project group to address issues identified by disabled staff including assistive technology users

We have also increased our disability-related training offer, including providing training on:

  • disability in the workplace for managers and staff
  • supporting neurodiversity in the workplace
  • creating accessible content
  • sight loss awareness
  • D/deaf awareness
  • mental health awareness
  • managing mental health for managers

What Brighton & Hove City Council will do to address inequalities

To address inequalities, we will: 

  • hold managers to account through our performance management framework
  • communicate to disabled, D/deaf and neurodivergent staff how and where to raise issues and get support
  • communicate our accessibility and inclusion values and behaviours to existing and future employees
  • deliver disability-related training and publish accessibility and inclusion resources for all staff
  • continue to collect, use, and share data to ensure actions to address inequalities for disabled, D/deaf and neurodivergent staff are targeted and effective
  • continue to collaborate with our Disabled Workers Staff Forum, Carers Network Staff Forum and disabled community groups to improve the experience of our disabled staff, and improve the experience of disabled applicants applying for roles at Brighton & Hove City Council
  • develop an understanding of reasonable adjustments across the council and directorate to enable timely adjustments to be put in place for our staff, service users and customers, while we better understand requirements, identify barriers to access and reasonable adjustment provision, and develop council-wide solutions
  • create accessible documents and communications for our staff, service users and customers following accessibility toolkit guidelines
  • embed disability-inclusivity and accessibility by default in Brighton & Hove City Council's 2023 to 2028 Corporate Plan