Driving positive change to make a difference

Everything the WMCA does is about improving life for people in the region. Our ambition is to ‘build a more prosperous and better connected West Midlands which is fairer, greener and healthier’. Equality, diversity and inclusion are essential to this.

We want an economy where everyone can do well and no-one is left behind. All residents should benefit from it. The benefits include jobs and economic opportunities. They also include good physical and mental wellbeing, and inclusive, well-connected, supportive, vibrant communities.

These aims are more important now than ever. Poverty is a big problem, and the gap between rich and poor is growing. Your background and wealth affects your health and what health services you can access. Unemployment, low skills and poor performance at school are problems for our region’s young people. Race, class, gender, disability and age still affect what opportunities you get and how well you do in life.

The Covid-19 pandemic has seriously affected the economy and society. It has hit some communities harder than others. This includes the poorest people in society and also some minority groups. These groups already faced inequality and disadvantage and this has got worse, regionally and nationally.

Although WMCA and others have worked to try to reduce the inequality gap, society is still very unequal. There is still a lot of work to do. We can make that work bolder, broader and deeper in several ways.

• We need more information about different inequalities and how they are linked to each other. We can use this to challenge inequality and remove barriers to equality for everyone.

• We need to make sure that none of our plans and strategies have an unfair impact on anyone. Equality, diversity and inclusion must be part of everything we do.

• We need to work with communities, especially communities who haven’t been listened to in the past. We will involve citizens in our decisions and how we work. We will recognise that different groups and individuals have different needs. That way, we can make sure that everything we do works for them.

• We want to be a model for the other organisations in the region. We will show others how to promote equality, diversity and inclusion, instead of just telling them.

• As we work, we will look back at what we’ve done to see how well it worked. We will learn from this. If we need to, we will change how we work.