Equalities

Increasing the diversity of our workforce at all levels is one of the highest priorities for the Authority and we have a dedicated outreach team focussing on attracting more applicants to the services. Our outreach strategy, as agreed in 2000, has had considerable success, resulting in a 54% increase in Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) operational staff and a 91% increase in women firefighters. The current figures are 413 BME (7.15%) and 128 women (2.22%). In our most recent recruitment campaign, for the first time, 36% of applicants were from BME candidates.

We have recently revised our selection process for firefighters ahead of the national review and are currently piloting a new system which is designed to reduce any adverse impact within that process. An initial assessment of the impact of the changes will be available early in 2004. Our focus now is on increasing the diversity of our workforce at all levels and on improving the number of women applicants. We think a Government-led national advertising campaign is needed to update the image of the service and would welcome the GLA's support on this.

On retention, we have adjusted our local performance indicator to monitor those who leave voluntarily (i.e. by resignation or transfer) as this is a better indicator than overall leavers including retirements. The retention rate of BME staff does not differ from that of white males and over the past five years the number of women leaving the operational service as a proportion of the total has decreased substantially. Numbers are very small for both BME and women leavers (only 3 women have left this year to date).

So far as age discrimination is concerned, the upper age limit for recruitment as an operational firefighter has been abolished. We have an established procedure for dealing with individual requests for extensions to service beyond the age of 55 for operational firefighters and each request is dealt with on a case by case basis.

We monitor the age profile of the workforce. The age breakdown of our staff is:

Age
Occupational Group 15 " 24 25 - 34 35 - 44 45 - 54 55 " 64 >=65

Uniformed Operational 311 1464 2638 1361 4 0
Main Grade 32 130 276 235 81 2

The present pay settlement under negotiation includes phasing out of pay increments awarded for length of service. The requirement for main grade staff to retire at 65 is currently under review and, as for operational staff, each request for an extension to service beyond 65 is dealt with on a case by case basis.

Further information is set out in my response to questions 330 and 331.
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