Home to vibrant, heritage-rich Brixton, the world-class arts institutions of the South Bank, and residential neighbourhoods full of character, Lambeth has long been a borough that thrives on diversity.
The same is true at the council, where nearly 60% of employees are BAME, and a drive to improve workforce equality is beginning to bear fruit.
Over 18 months, the percentage of the council’s top 5% of earners who were BAME rose from 23.4% to 35%, while the gender pay gap fell from 4.8% to 2.1% in a year.
There are three new talent development and support programmes to help BAME members of staff develop and progress within the organisation.
“Staff felt that they reached a sort of ceiling of seniority that they were never able to break through and that we needed to enable them to do that much more easily,” says chief executive Andrew Travers.
The Future Leaders programme is for middle management, while Black on Board supports talented staff in more junior roles who want to break through to the next level. There’s also an intensive scheme for senior staff who are on the cusp of getting into the top jobs in local government.
Other measures include staff forums for women and staff who are disabled, BAME and LGBTQ+. “The forums were put in place so staff had the opportunity to talk without management in the room, and to be open and honest about how they felt about working for the council,” says councillor Sonia Winifred, the council’s cabinet member for equalities and culture. “We are working with staff to understand what is preventing them from moving forward, and learning from past mistakes.”
Openness is a key theme, and the council brought in an external equality, diversity and inclusion adviser, the social commentator and activist Patrick Vernon OBE, to give staff the chance to speak confidentially after a group of employees complained of unfair treatment due to racism.
Recognising that issue was crucial in addressing it, says Travers, and the action plan in place as a result also builds on recommendations from the council’s 2017 Equality Commission. “We’ve got a clear way forward and a clear way of measuring our success into the future,” he adds. “We’re determined to see it through.”
Lambeth’s strategic director of resident services, Bayo Dosunmu, who joined the council last year, says staff on the ground can see real change happening. “They’ve seen a number of their colleagues who have been doing the same job for years moving to the level that reflects their contribution and performance,” he says. “We’ve identified unfairness and dealt with it very decisively and openly. People are going for opportunities, getting promoted. They feel like they’re adding value.”
Winifred is a member of the Windrush generation who remembers Brixton as “the place to be” for the black community in London when she arrived from St Lucia in 1965, and has lived there ever since. Having a workforce that mirrors the borough’s diversity is critical for community cohesion, she believes.
“If you want to take the community with you, you have to reflect it in your workforce and also in your leadership,” she says. “As a member of the community it makes you feel far more represented.” The poverty in Lambeth makes it a challenging but hugely rewarding place to work, Winifred adds. “When you get it right, it makes it worthwhile,” she says. “The way we do things is about trying to ensure we make life that much better for the most vulnerable in our community.”
The Vernon review also covered all other dimensions of diversity and equality. A new development programme for women, BeYou, encourages staff to identify their strengths and set personal and career goals – line managers can now do an e-learning course in disability discrimination and reasonable adjustments, and last summer Lambeth unveiled the UK’s first permanent rainbow road crossing, to show solidarity with the LGBTQ+ community.
Lambeth’s newly simplified Borough Plan, which identifies 20 aims for the council, is closely linked to the process of change in the workforce: for each of the target areas identified, it’s looking not just for absolute measures of success but also at equality of outcomes. Mental health is a good example, Travers says: “We have plans to improve that generally, but we also know we have very marked worse outcomes for black people in this borough and we need to narrow those gaps.”
For Dosunmu, the borough’s many startups and tech businesses, together with its optimistic, resilient residents, help make Lambeth a place where council staff can work with the community and witness real results. “We’re a progressive, dynamic, innovative organisation,” he says. “We believe in empowering staff to do stuff: if you come to Lambeth and you’ve got an idea, you’ll be supported to implement it, and you’ll have a willing partner in the community. You can make a huge difference locally and to your career development.”
