Today we are publishing our Annual Equality Report 2021/22

The report draws attention to many highlights during the year. For example,

• our annual Sounding Board session was attended by 14 advice and advocacy bodies, who gave us detailed feedback on our accessibility
• we have continued to build our capacity to better identify equality and human rights issues in our casework
• we ensured that we considered equality and human rights issues when planning and undertaking our first investigation on own initiative
• we gained Autism Awareness Employer Status
• 71% of our staff completed racism awareness training
• we achieved ChwaraeTeg FairPlay Employer award for gender equality at silver level – for the third year running
• our median gender pay gap dropped from 21% at March 2019 to 3% at March 2022
• 86% of our staff who responded to our staff survey this year agreed that we are committed to creating a diverse, equal and inclusive workplace.

The Report also identifies some areas in which we need to do more work.  Those include the accessibility and awareness of our service as well as the diversity of our staff.  We will be looking to address those and other areas under our new Strategic Plan (which is currently open for consultation), as well as our new Equality Plan (which we intend to develop by the end of this reporting year).

The Appendices to the Report include detailed data on the equality profile of our complainants, staff and job applicants.

You can view our our Annual Equality Report 2021/22 here.

If you have any queries about the Report or would like to discuss it further, please contact Ania Rolewska (Head of Policy, Communications and EDI) at ania.rolewska@ombudsman.wales  or 07960 921 959.