Our Race Equality Charter submission

At Essex, we are fully committed to submitting to the Race Equality Charter (REC). We want to ensure that we carry out a meaningful self-assessment process and set ourselves targets that will help us to achieve sustainable cultural change.

However, we have not made as much progress as we would have liked. This is due to delays in establishing our new Inclusion team, as well as changes to our REC Self Assessment team, and various other challenges.

We have therefore agreed a year’s extension with Advance HE and will now submit to the REC in July 2023. Advance HE will also provide us with feedback on an early draft of our submission earlier in the year and we are now working on a revised project plan for completion. This extension will allow us time to ensure we provide the necessary amount of time, the necessary resources, and the best possible support for those involved in completing our submission, it will also allow the opportunity for us to involve and engage more colleagues via events working/focus groups etc.

We would like to assure you that, whilst we have agreed an extension, this work will be on-going, and we will be regularly reporting to University Steering Group on our progress against the Anti-racism Action Plan.

We also want to acknowledge the hard work that those involved have done so far and thank them for their continued commitment to this process. If you would like to be involved in the REC or have any questions about it or our wider work to tackle racism, please contact inclusion@essex.ac.uk.