• The Union successfully set up the Black student’s Group (BSG) as a volunteer advisory and campaigning group. This was recognised by The Union as a subgroup under its governance arrangements, with all the associated powers and support. The Chair and volunteers of the BSG were invited to attend regular meetings with the Officer team to form an executive committee. This was unsuccessful as no meetings could be agreed and the BSG itself was unable to establish itself fully. There were a few interesting learning points from this this experience.
• The BSG did not want to elect a single representative to sit on the executive but wanted to act as a group. We should consider opportunities for elected officers to meet groups in their spaces, ahead of creating any new spaces for students to meet with union officers.
• Whilst it was right to create the Black Students’ Group in this instance, groups and societies are stronger if they are created and led from the outset by the student membership, rather than the union building structures for members to populate. The purpose of the SU Executive committee was to ensure the elected officers had access to BAME lived experience to influence their work. There were no BAME elected SU officers for the academic years 19/20 and 20/21.
  
  The Union has significantly improved the BAME representation within the Officer team for the academic years 21/22, 22/23 and 23/24 with 10 of the 15 positions over the 3 years being held by BAME officers. The Union has been successful in diversifying the elected officer team and was unsuccessful in the plans of ensuring BAME lived experience was heard through the establishment of the executive committee.

• Having access to student data for BAME students is key to ensuring we can identify how inclusive we are in practice. Do our surveys reach all student communities proportionately? Do BAME students secure access our societies to the extent white students do? Is the Advice Centre seeing any race-based imbalances in any areas of work such as discipline or academic misconduct?
  
  Now we rely on students answering questions about their race and culture in our surveys and feedback forms. This provides a good estimate of inclusivity but does not provide the full picture. Plus, it is frustrating for students to constantly must remind us about who you are. The goal has been to safely share race and ethnicity-based data with the University, which is currently restricted.
• This type of student data is sensitive, and we take its protection seriously. Sharing data requires us to be noticeably clear about how we are going to use student data, how we will ensure its protection, and where we can use other methods to achieve our aims.
  
  The University and the Union want to share this type of information and we have been working together to think these things through and update our data sharing agreement accordingly. We are in the final stages of completing the agreement. A frustratingly long but reassuringly thorough process.
  
  This commitment has taken longer than anticipated. The Union should complete this commitment within the next few weeks.

The Union Trustee Board approved a working race equity plan in March 2021. This is reviewed and updated every year and is intended to improve our performance as an inclusive employer.

The plan covers measuring and understanding BAME inclusion, diversifying recruitments, supporting BAME Staff progression and creating a culture of support and openness. Initial analysis of the annual employee engagement survey, undertaken in March 2023, shows that 71% of all employees believe that The Union works to attract, develop, and retain people with diverse backgrounds, a small improvement on the previous year.

Work continues to analyse this data and the experiences of our BAME staff members to inform the continued improvement and removal of barriers within our recruitment, selection and induction policies, procedures, and systems. The Union met its commitment to incorporate a race equity plan and commits to implementing and improving the plan with each iteration.

• Rob Croll was appointed to the Trustee Board for a one-year co-option. Rob’s work focused on projects linked to black and BAME issues, including the See My World Festival hosted by the Union. With Rob in post, the board continued its search for a DEI specialist and successfully appointed Naseem Ahmed, a global D&I professional to the board in October 2022.The Union met its commitment to diversify our Trustee Board and will use new board expertise to further improve diversity and inclusion across The Union.

• Ahead of any recruitment, all managers with responsibility for recruitment undertake unconscious bias training and some levels of race equity training. Based on sample data taken from equal opportunities monitoring exercises during student staff recruitment, we believe our student staff team better reflect our community with between 30- 40% being students of colour throughout the year (the size and shape of the student staffing compliment changes throughout the year in line with demand for services and student availability.
• In addition, our BAME career staff team has diversified with BAME staff members accounting for 23% of the career workforce in the most recent survey conducted in March 2023.The Union met its commitment to diversify its student staff team and will continue to support.

• The Union has already undertaken broader whole organisation race equity training and learning that included elements relating to unconscious bias and micro-aggressions with a total of 44 career staff participating. The Union has now appointed Equality & Diversity UK Ltd to deliver bespoke face to face micro-aggressions training. The training is to be held over two half days in the final semester providing all staff with the opportunity to attend.
• The training will focus on enabling staff to understand what micro-aggressions are and why they occur. To understand the complexity of micro-aggressions, the impact that they have and how they reinforce inequality. Staff will explore experiences of micro-aggressions and learn about and develop strategies to manage and reduce micro-aggressions on both individual and organisational levels.
• The Union has been unsuccessful in completing the delivery of dedicated micro-aggressions training but has appointed a training provider to deliver this training in the final semester.