Draft Strategic Plan 2025 – 2028

The Equality Act 2006 sets out by statute our duties, powers and governance.

Our duties include:

• promoting equality and diversity
• protecting and promoting human rights
• monitoring the effectiveness of equality and human rights legislation
• publishing reports on progress in society

As a regulator, we hold governments and duty bearers to account for meeting their equality and human rights obligations. We interpret the law and assess compliance with the law or the effects of the law. Where necessary, we enforce the law by taking action against those who break it. We promote awareness, understanding and protection of human rights and encourage public bodies to comply with the Human Rights Act 1998.
 

​​​​​​​As a national equality body and NHRI, we maintain independence from both the government and civil society.

Our work is built on a long history of progress. 2025 will be:

• 60 years since the Race Relations Act

• 55 years since the Equal Pay Act

• 50 years since the Sex Discrimination Act

• 30 years since the Disability Discrimination Act

• 21 years since the Gender Recognition Act

• 15 years since the Equality Act 2010

The 20th anniversary of the Equality Act 2006 will follow in 2026 and the 20th anniversary of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) in 2027.

Since it was established, our mandate has remained largely consistent, and its objectives increasingly embedded in British society and practice.

In 2023, we published our most recent analysis of equality and human rights in Britain in our Equality and Human Rights Monitor. We assessed progress on equality and human rights issues for people with protected characteristics, across all areas of life. Many equality and human rights issues are the subject of political contestation. We are only at the start of understanding the equality and human rights impact of the next phase of technological change.

Since 2010, EHRC’s budget has decreased while our regulatory duties have continued to expand. We must prioritise to maximise our impact.

This Strategic Plan is based on a fundamental premise: to fulfil the mission set out for us in the Equality Act 2006.

We need to make best use of our resources to focus on areas where:

• we have the sole responsibility to regulate

• we have unique opportunities to create positive change

To do this, we need to be agile, independent and authoritative at all times.

Our regulatory model describes how we use our powers and statutory functions, including as a National Human Rights Institution, to improve equality and human rights and enforce the law. This model helps us to plan our work, and identify and measure the impact we achieve.

Over the period of this Strategic Plan we will focus on our purpose and duties. We will take an evidence-based approach which considers our powers, our potential to create impact and our analysis of equality and human rights priorities. The approach has two parts:

• Pillar 1: Guardian of Equality and Human Rights Protections

• Pillar 2: In-depth Impact

Pillar 1 describes how we will promote and protect equality and human rights, and respond to new challenges.

Pillar 2 describes themes and priorities we will focus on making specific, planned advances on.

There are two parts to this pillar:

1. Our core duties in equality (including the Public Sector Equality Duty, Guidance and Codes of Practice, and the Equality and Human Rights Monitor) and human rights (including fulfilling our role as a National Human Rights Institution as outlined in the Paris Principles)

2. An agile and rapid response to address new and pressing equality and human rights issues. This will include effective regulation of equality and human rights in emerging technologies.

We will do this by:

• acting as the guardian of equality and human rights protections, including evidencing issues, supporting more effective standards, improving compliance and enforcing the law

• making systematic use of our legal powers, while improving our response to new and pressing equality and human rights issues

• maintaining and promoting an authoritative and comprehensive evidence base through the Equality and Human Rights Monitor

• making clear, authoritative and up-to-date guidance and codes of practice available to duty bearers to help them comply with the law, improving understanding of the law and obligations under it

• promoting the Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED) as a constructive way to raise compliance in priority sectors

• establishing our position as a regulator of equality and human rights in emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence

• continuing to build relationships and collaborate with other

• communicating with the public with clarity and confidence on the presence and value of their rights and our role

• playing a convening role to support mutual respect between groups based on understanding and valuing of diversity and on shared respect for equality and human rights

We have identified three themes for specific focus over the next three years. These are:  

• work

• participation and good relations  

• justice and the balance of rights 

Theme 1: Work

In the next three years we will focus our efforts on a selection of priority areas, described below, within the themes of Work, Participation and Good Relations, and Justice and the Balance of Rights. We believe we can use one or more of our regulatory powers to support long-term change and improvement in equality and human rights in these areas.

Theme 1: Work

1. Sex discrimination, harassment and/or victimisation, including sexual harassment, in the workplace.

2. Pay and employment gaps for women, disabled people and  several ethnic minority groups.

3. Barriers to participation in the workplace for disabled people, including issues related to reasonable adjustments.

4. Major public sector investments don’t sufficiently support equality through addressing skills, employment and poverty.

5. Disproportionate levels of discrimination, harassment and victimisation within the workplace for workers with certain protected characteristics, including ethnic minority groups.

6. Increasing likelihood of being in insecure employment (such as zero-hour contracts).

7. Risk of discrimination or rights breaches due to new technology in the workplace, for example, automated recruitment processes.

8. Risk of discrimination or rights breaches due to the increasing prevalence of home/hybrid working arrangements.

Theme 2: Participation and Good Relations

1. Impact of public services moving to digital by default, particularly on some groups, including older and disabled people.

2. Private sector organisations do not have to comply with website accessibility regulations and meet digital accessibility requirements.

3. Disabled people face barriers when accessing public transport.

4. New and existing technology, such as artificial intelligence, increases the risk of discrimination and breaches to privacy rights.

5. Higher levels of school exclusions for Black Caribbean children, Gypsy, Roma and Traveller children, children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), additional learning needs (ALN), additional support needs (ASN) and boys.

6. Social tensions due to polarised public discussion of equality and human rights issues.

7. Risk to freedom of expression by prohibiting the expression of certain views, or ‘shutting down’ debate.

Theme 3: Justice and the Balance of Rights

1. Legal clarity around issues where there may be tension between the rights of two or more groups, for example, in relation to sex and gender or matters of religion or belief.

2. Hate crime, particularly for some protected characteristic groups.

3. Low charge and prosecution rates, long delays, high numbers of withdrawals and poor treatment of some groups around rape and serious sexual offences.

4. Children in youth detention experience human rights violations, for example, solitary confinement and pain-inducing techniques.

5. Increased proportion of young people from ethnic minority groups in detention.

6. Overrepresentation of Black people in the prison population, higher rates of arrest for Black people, as well as higher likelihood of being subject to stop and search.

7. Welfare and safety of women and girls in detention, including high levels of self-harm, issues for pregnant women and risks posed by inconsistent use of safe and appropriate settings.

8. Risk to the right to protest caused by changes in legislation and policing practices.

Watch a BSL video of our Draft Strategic Plan 2025 – 2028.

Download an Easy Read summary of the draft Strategic Plan 2025 – 2028.