Codes of Practice for the public sector equality duty (PSED) and further and higher education cancelled

Dear colleagues,

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) have announced that they will no longer be producing Statutory Codes of Practice for the public sector equality duty (PSED) and for the further and higher education (FEHE) sector and schools.

The main purpose of the Statutory Codes of Practice had been to provide detailed explanations of the provisions in the Act and to apply legal concepts in the Act to everyday situations. The EHRC will now bring out the draft Codes of Practice it has been developing to be used as non-statutory Codes instead.

From the EHRC website:

‘These non statutory codes will still give a formal, authoritative, and comprehensive legal interpretation of the PSED and education sections of the Act and will make it clear to everyone what the requirements of the legislation are.

The FEHE and schools underwent a full consultation in 2011 in the form of draft statutory codes, and we intend to publish the revised versions as non statutory codes shortly. The draft PSED non statutory codes will be published shortly for review and we will be looking for feedback on the draft texts so that we can make sure they fully meet the needs of public bodies and other potential users.’

Further information on the reasons for this decision can be found here:

http://www.equalityhumanrights.com/legal-and-policy/equality-act/equality-act-codes-of-practice/