Promoting equality, diversity and inclusion

We have set two equality objectives to progress our continued journey to drive forward EDI.

Objective 1: Develop our EDI leadership 

As an independent body overseeing regulation and registration and setting standards for organisations, we recognise we have an important role in championing EDI practice and outcomes. This is why our first equality objective is focused on developing our EDI leadership. We understand that developing our EDI leadership includes promoting EDI in our work and those we oversee. It also includes using our influence and convening powers to be timely, visible and current in responding to emerging and ‘new’ EDI issues, whist maintaining the profile of more longstanding and persistent EDI matters.

Our Strategic Plan sets out our aim to make regulation and registration better and fairer. In doing so it sets out our intention that by 2026 EDI indicators across the regulators and Accredited Registers show significant progress when compared to 2022/23.

Objective 2: Build an inclusive workplace

We recognise that creating and sustaining inclusive workplace practices requires continuous commitment and action. This is why our second equality objective focuses on driving forward EDI within the workplace and more specifically building and improving upon our existing inclusive practices.

Self-assessment on Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI)

Our ongoing commitment to EDI

We are pleased to share our second self-assessment against the EDI Standard of Good Regulation, reviewing our performance from April 2024 to March 2025. This assessment demonstrates our ongoing commitment to transparency, accountability, and continuous improvement in our EDI work. In our summary report, you will find what we have achieved in the past year, where we are progressing, and the steps we will be taking next to further our work in this area.

Background

We first committed to a robust assessment of ourselves as part of our EDI action plan for 2023-24. Our intention then, and now, was to demonstrate leadership by holding ourselves to account for the quality of our work on EDI. Our first self-assessment reviewing our EDI performance for 2023-24 was rigorous and we committed to reassessing our performance this year.

When we published our first self-assessment last year, we took the opportunity to reflect on our EDI journey, particularly the progress we had made since launching our first EDI action plan. While we recognised much work had taken place and there were many positive achievements, we acknowledged that at that time, we had not fully met all the expected outcomes of the Standard. We identified several opportunities for improvement: we needed to strengthen how we collect and use EDI data, and we needed to examine where bias might exist within our processes. We also wanted to be better at hearing public, patient and service user voices.

Our progress in the last year

Over the past year, we have taken strong steps to improving our EDI work in response to the opportunities identified in our initial self-assessment. We now maintain up-to-date EDI data on our panel decision makers and have broadened our engagement efforts to reach and listen to more diverse audiences. Our approach to staff EDI development has progressed, with new training sessions delivered and learning and development that is increasingly self-directed and tailored to the needs of individual teams. Internally, we've put processes in place to support continuous improvement and foster learning around EDI. We also completed an audit of EDI considerations within our Section 29 decision-making. These actions reflect our ongoing commitment to strengthening our EDI work. 

Our key findings from the self-assessment 

Based on our activity last year, we are pleased to be able to say that overall, we consider that we have met the Standard. 

As with the performance reviews of each of the regulators, meeting the Standard means that we are satisfied, from the evidence we have considered, that we are performing well in that area. It does not mean there is no room for improvement. Consequently, as part of the assessment, we have identified there is more that we can do. We need to improve our EDI data analysis as part of our evidence-based policy.  This includes improving the consistency of our equality impact assessments (EIAs) and using findings from EIAs to drive forward better EDI outcomes. We also need to collect data from those raising concerns with us and focus on improving how we hear more from patients and service users in our work. We look forward to reviewing our progress again next year.