Successes so far

We’ve created a very successful Opportunities Mentoring Programme, which focuses on helping staff develop and achieve their full potential. This scheme targets groups under-represented in management, including disabled people, women and BME groups. 60% of those who took part in the scheme felt it really helped their careers. What’s more, it’s the first initiative of its kind to receive a Gold Standard from the International Standards of Mentoring Programmes in Employment. In the future, we plan to build on this success, developing another mentoring project to help all our people achieve their full potential.

We’re also soon to start working with the Social Mobility Foundation. The Foundation helps high achieving students from low-income backgrounds gain skills, confidence and experience, spending time as interns with companies they might never have considered.

Other successes include our rating in Stonewall’s Workplace Equality Index. The Index identifies the UK’s top 100 employers for lesbian and gay people. We’re the only inspectorate on the Index, and are proud to have moved from rank 91st in 2006 to joint 42nd place. We’ll be continuing to participate in the index, aiming to improve our ranking year-on-year.

Every building we own is fully accessible for disabled people, and we also participated in the Employers' Forum on Disability’s Disability Standard Index for 2007, gaining a rank of 9th in our sector and 46th nationwide. Though our results were above average in every category of assessment, we’ll definitely strive to improve our ranking in the future.

Finally, we’re proud of the fact that 51% of our staff are women. Of that 51%, 40% work at higher levels, and in our last pay review survey there were no inequalities between men and women. The Opportunities Mentoring Project has contributed to more women considering senior management.