At Peaks & Plains Housing Trust, we are committed to ensuring our services are accessible and useful to everyone and that all our customers are dealt with fairly and equitably, regardless of race, religion, gender, marital status, sexuality, disability, age or any other factor that may cause disadvantage. Equality and diversity is integral to all our activities and people from all sections of society are valued and respected.

We want to deliver our services how and when you need them. If you need to receive our services in a different way, please contact us and tell us.

The Trust undertakes to deal firmly and promptly with any cases of discrimination or harassment that are brought to its attention. This applies to everyone who applies to us for housing, everyone who applies to us for support, every existing tenant and service user, every applicant for a job or contract and every existing staff and Board Member.

We put our commitment to equality into practice in a number of ways:

Access to Housing

• We will make our homes and services available to all in a fair and equitable way to people from all groups within our communities.
• We will actively find out more about the neighbourhoods and communities we serve.

Lettings

• We will carry out monitoring of performance against set targets for lettings which reflect the BME make-up of the community.
• We will set targets for lettings and report performance against targets to the Board.

Involvement and Consultation

• We will involve our customers in the local communities we serve using a range of involvement and consultation techniques and in our organisations work.
• We will ensure that all groups, in particular vulnerable and marginalised groups and communities, are offered appropriate opportunities to take part in our activities.

Access to services and information

• We will make sure that our reception areas and offices are easy for you to get into and to move about in.
• We will provide services which are fully appropriate to the diverse needs of different individuals in the communities which we serve.
• We will make sure all key information is made available in a range of formats and languages following a thorough assessment of what is needed locally and by individual residents.

Customer Satisfaction

• We will work hard to make sure that the satisfaction levels of minority groups are at least as high as non-minority groups and want to encourage you to complete our customer satisfaction surveys.

What we expect of others

• We also expect that our individual Board members, staff, contractors, tenants, service users and leaseholders will do all they can to treat people fairly as well.

Members of the Club

We are extremely proud to announce that we are now members of the Housing Diversity Network (HDN). The network is a leading organisation offering specialist consultancy and training on equality and diversity issues to the social housing sector. As members, the Trust would benefit from access to a vast range of resources to assist us in the development of strategies to improve the service we provide, various training tools and techniques for front-line staff and board members and a practical range of resources such as fact sheets, email briefings, free advertising on the HDN website and access to group mentoring classes for staff from minority groups.

Local Support Groups

Sexual Health Clinic
Macclesfield District General Hospital, Victoria Road, 01625 264116

Core
01270 653 156, gay and bi men’s group

Outrite Groups
01270 653 153, support and social groups, http://www.outrite.org

TransForum (MCC Manchester Trans Discussion Group)
4th Saturday of the month at 3:30pm
Website: http://www.mccmanchester.co.uk/trans.htm
Email: jennyannebuk@yahoo.co.uk
Phone: 07500741995
Directions: http://www.mccmanchester.co.uk/mccmmap.htm

Useful Links

Stonewall - The Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Charity
Website: http://www.stonewall.org.uk

Want to find out more?

You should contact us directly on Freephone 0800 012 1311 (it may be cheaper to call 0330 440 9707 from a mobile), email trust@peaksplains.org or write to Peaks & Plains Housing Trust, Ropewalks, Newton Street, Macclesfield, SK11 6QJ.

These other documents have been added for your information:

   Equality & Diversity Leaflet

   Equality and Diversity Implementation Plan

   Gender Equality Forum - Notes & Action Points 30102009

   Jamaica Day - 15th August 2009

   New Group to Tackle BME Challenge