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Local Elections 2019 – Take Action With The Fairness Four

On May 2nd Local Elections will take place in parts of the country. Despite the focus on Brexit other issues need to be discussed. These elections are an ideal opportunity to push for egalitarian policies to improve our society. After their success last year we are therefore reaching out to you to put these four simple asks – The Fairness Four – to your sitting councillors and candidates:

1. Evaluate the likely impact of council policies on socio-economic inequality*
2. Pay all directly contracted staff the real Living Wage (as set by the Living Wage Foundation)
3. Ensure all council contractors are required to pay staff the real Living Wage
4. Publish a plan to reduce the pay ratio between the CEO and the lowest-paid directly employed council worker.

In recent weeks we have had a significant win, working with our partners Just Fair, as 53 candidates and councillors in the North East have pledged to support implementation of the Socio-Economic Duty. We are now reaching out to you to impress upon your sitting councillors and local candidates the importance of applying inequality reducing policies at a local level.

You may be able to find your local council candidates here using this citizen-led database. Your local council website and/or your local library may well also have candidate information. Please forward any responses you receive from any councillors or candidates to us at info@equalitytrust.org.uk – thank you.

And if you want to get more involved in local equality campaigning you can use our local manifesto, The Fairness Fifteen, to work with your local council to tackle inequality and poverty where you live. The best way to do this is to join or start a local equality group and we can help you do that.

By taking these actions you are actively helping to build a fairer, better UK. Thank you very much for your support.

The Equality Trust Team

* As per the Socio-economic Duty, section 1 of the Equality Act 2010. This was, regrettably, not brought into force by central government but local councils can take action on this and many are doing so, eg: Newcastle and other major cities. The Equality Trust and Just Fair are campaigning to encourage the Government to bring the duty into force: https://1forequality.com/ and you can ask your MP to support EDM 591 to support this campaign – thank you.