Equal Opportunity:
The Business Link for London together with its partners in the EQUAL DP and TCA (Transnational) teams recognise the benefits of diversity and specifically in business and will reflect this by:

• promoting equality of opportunities
• promoting the diverse needs and aspirations of all peoples in SME’s
• investigating the sources of disadvantage to minority groups
• innovating solutions to these issues
• championing change where inequality exists
• monitoring progress with facts and data
• publicising the findings and issues to the wider community
• disseminating and m

ainstreaming good practice across the UK and beyond as identified

The Partnership is committed not only to its legal obligations but also to the championing of equal opportunity in all aspects of employment, including self-employment. This covers both its internal and external operations including recruitment, promotion, access to training, access to resources, consideration of diverse customer groups and their needs and dealings with all third parties.

Records will be gathered and kept as to the ethnic origins of the target groups participating in Partnership activities. Feed-back from the target groups will also be sought in the area of equal opportunities as part of the evaluation procedure of participation in Partnership activities. Findings will be disseminated across the DP, third parties and mainstream organisations to action improvements where necessary.

Each of the DP Partners is starting from a baseline with its own organisations Equal Opportunity policy, from which this Partnership Policy has been developed. Over the course of this project, the Partnership Equal Opportunities Policy will evolve a "best practice" equal opportunities policy particularly suited to those organisations operating in the SME commercial world. This information will be provided to the partner organisations and to third parties with whom the project comes into contact with for adoption. Movements from baseline will be measured over time.

The Partnership believes that proper and effective practice of equal opportunities is an integral and necessary part for ensuring that the needs of BME’s and minority entrepreneurs are appropriately met by mainstream business service provision.

All staff involved in this programme of activities will be required to follow and implement these policies.