We are committed to challenging discrimination and promoting equality both as an employer and a major provider of healthcare services.
Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust is one of the largest and busiest NHS Trusts in the country. We see about a million patients a year who are drawn from large and evolving local and regional populations.
We are proud to be delivering a wide range of health services to the diverse communities in Leeds and across the region. We recognise that diversity and difference are strengths that enrich the work of our organisation and help us to deliver services that meet the needs of our local communities.
We are committed to challenging discrimination and promoting equality both as an employer and a major provider of health care services. We aim to make sure that equality and diversity is at the centre of our work and is embedded into our core business activities.
The Trust acknowledges all protected characteristics to be of equal importance, including age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation. The Trust also acknowledges the limitations of The Equality Act 2010 and considers additional characteristics such as gender diversity.
The Trust created the Equality and Diversity Strategic Group in November 2013, led by the Chief Nurse / Deputy Chief Executive and Director of Human Resources and Organisational Development, to deliver on the equality and diversity agenda. In 2020 the group expanded into two in response to the evolving agenda with one group focusing on workforce and the other patients.
Workforce
At LTHT, we have committed that “We are inclusive and champion diversity” , as one of our People Priorities.
We are progressing our ambition to be fully inclusive using the NHSE EDI Improvement plan 6 high impact actions and continuing to embed our ‘Three Strand Approach’ to: De bias our processes, Embed a culture of Conscious Inclusion and Take positive action. View NHS equality, diversity, and inclusion improvement plan.
Our workforce information is measured and reported nationally each year through the Workforce Race Equality Standard (WRES), Workforce Disability Equality Standard (WDES), the Gender Pay Gap Report (GPG) and the NHS Staff Survey (NHSSS), as well as monitored locally across the city of Leeds and wider Yorkshire Region. This year we are also reporting on our Ethnicity Pay Gap (EPG). We are required to ensure this data is visible and publish this on the Trusts Internet by 31st October 2024. We are also required to publicise the actions we are taking to address what both this data and are staff are telling us. Our EDI Action Plan outlines the actions LTHT will take in 2024/2025 to build on successes and address areas needing improvement. These actions will respond to both the metrics we can see in our reported data, but also areas less easily measured based on intelligence shared through our Equality Staff Networks.
All actions are underpinned by the Equality Act 2010 and designed in collaboration with our five LTHT Equality Staff Networks (the Disabled Staff Network (DSN), Black, Minority Ethnic Staff Network (BME), Empower Leeds Women Network (ELW), Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Trans+ Network (LGBT+) and Faith & Belief Network). Actions are then approved by the Trust Equality, Diversity & Inclusion (EDI) Strategic Group, which reports to the Trust Board via the LTHT Workforce Committee.