Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Strategy

The Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Strategy 2024-29 was approved by the Vice-Chancellor’s Group in May 2024. Building on a wide range of existing initiatives and good practice, it provides an overarching framework to guide Brookes’ work on EDI.

As an enabling strategy of the Strategy 2035, it sets out our ambitions to:

• Put in place a strong supporting framework to underpin effective work on EDI
• Support every member of the University community to embody the Brookes guiding principle of ‘inclusivity’
• Embed EDI considerations into each of the four pillars of the Strategy 2035.

The Strategy will be realised through an implementation plan, setting out in more detail the actions that we will take. The implementation plan will be developed annually, to allow it to be responsive to the current institutional context, as well as any emerging external pressures.

Implementation will be overseen by the EDI Advisory Group, chaired by the Vice-Chancellor, and updates on progress will be provided on these pages.

We have sought to make the strategy development a collaborative process, and to ensure that it builds on and is aligned with other relevant strategies and initiatives. Our starting point was a review of existing strategies, action plans and data. We have also met with the senior leadership teams of each Faculty and Directorate over the last few months to listen to feedback about their main areas of interest and concern.

The consultation meetings were extremely positive, showing high levels of engagement with EDI, awareness of challenges, a strong desire to take action to address them, and a demand for more support and guidance to improve practice.

These conversations have fed into the development of the draft Strategy and also revealed a number of common themes, pointing to areas that will be prioritised during implementation.

An all-staff consultation on the draft Strategy ran until 8 March. Thank you to everyone who submitted feedback.