Introduction

The Scottish Police Authority (the Authority) is a non-departmental public body based across various locations in Scotland.

We aim to build a workforce reflecting the society we serve with an inclusive culture which values and respects diversity. Each year we publish employment monitoring data we have collated and considered in our equality and diversity workforce reports. This publication continues our reporting process which supplements the key insights included within the Joint Equality and Diversity Mainstreaming and Outcomes Progress report.

This report assists the Authority to regularly analyse data to identify trends and required actions to support delivery of our Joint Equality Outcomes with Police Scotland.

As outlined in last year’s report our Equality Outcomes recognise the need for timely workforce insights to support evidence based planning and decision making. This reflects the journey we are on in partnership with Police Scotland. As part of this journey we will continue to work with Police Scotland to undertake and further develop our understanding of the insights our data provides.

In last year’s report we developed an EDI Action Plan based on the data and insights included. An update on progress against the action plan is included at Appendix A with any outstanding and follow up actions from the plan being mainstreamed into relevant delivery plans going forward.

The data presented in this report cover the overall workforce profile as well as specific detail in relation to recruitment, retention, development and pay. To ensure more meaningful reporting and comparison over time we now report workforce profiles to two decimal points rather than rounding to a full percentage point.

For the purpose of this report, promotion refers to any internal member of staff who successfully applies for a role at a higher grade. In relation to pay SPA and Police Scotland currently report on pay gaps in relation to disability, ethnicity, sex and sexual orientation and detail of these are included throughout the report.

Due to the low numbers in terms of recruitment and leavers there are limitations in the level of progress that can be made in increasing the diversity of the workforce profile year on year.

1.1 Our Responsibilities as a Public Body

The Authority has a specific legal duty to gather and use data in relation to recruitment, development and retention split by relevant protected characteristic. We publish this information to demonstrate our commitment to developing an inclusive workplace and our legal responsibilities against the three aims of the general equality duty, to give due regard to the need to:

Eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment, victimisation and any other conduct that is prohibited by or under the Act
Advance equality of opportunity between persons who share a relevant protected characteristic and persons who do not share it
Foster good relations between persons who share a relevant protected characteristic and persons who do not share it.

1.2 Scope

Where available, external benchmarks have been drawn from relevant sources, including the National Records of Scotland (2017) based on data from the last available Scottish Census.

These external benchmarks are based on the proportion of residents from protected characteristics within the total population, as opposed to within employment.

1.3 Interpreting the Data

Please note the following when interpreting the data presented in this report:
Information is published in accordance with GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018 and so does not identify individuals
Low numbers of staff within any characteristic group have been combined to protect anonymity
For some characteristics this report is based on relatively small data sets which makes robust analysis challenging. It is also means that small changes could show a significant impact in terms of percentage increase/decrease
We acknowledge the existence of gaps within our data and are committed to developing our data, where possible for future reports.