The Council demonstrates its commitment to Equalities and Diversity as Equalities is implicit in the Council's vision, “Merthyr Tydfil will be a safe healthy and exciting place to live and visit. Our ambition is to become a sustainable, confident County Borough which recognises and promotes equality of opportunity and where people want to achieve in all aspects of their life, through work, leisure and learning.”

 
The importance of this agenda is demonstrated further as it is a key theme in the Community Strategy under the theme entitled ‘People Power & Community Empowerment’. This is about social justice, about individual and social responsibility. Communities need to be developed by helping people to become empowered, so that they may be more discerning and assertive about their community’s needs. It is about becoming better informed and connected in order to bring about change.

These objectives teamed together culminate a key message: ‘We all want to live in a better world’.

The Council has a dedicated Equalities Officer. The officer deals with corporate policies and strategies such as the Equalities Policy and the Single Equality Scheme. The officer works with both internal and external partners to deliver these aims both in terms of employment and service delivery to achieve equality for all.

The aims are:

• To promote equality of opportunity for everyone working and living in Merthyr Tydfil.
• To ensure that employees and local residents are not discriminated against but are treated fairly and with respect.
• To recognise and value people’s differences and acknowledge that everyone has a unique contribution to make to Merthyr Tydfil.
• To tackle discrimination in the workplace and in service delivery.
• To raise awareness and understanding of equality issues among staff.
• To ensure that recruitment processes are fair, equal and non discriminatory.
• To improve access to advice and information in local communities and ensure our services are accessible to all.
• To address inequality and disadvantage in local communities by developing innovative projects to promote and sustain change.