The Bar Standards Board (BSB) has today published its annual report, Diversity of the BSB Workforce and Board Members 2022. It follows the publication of the Diversity at the Bar Report 2022, which showed that the Bar continues to become more diverse and more representative of the society that it serves but women and barristers from minoritised ethnic backgrounds remain underrepresented at the most senior levels of the Bar.
In taking forward its regulatory objectives, including to promote a diverse Bar, the BSB aims to lead by example. The Diversity of the BSB Workforce and Board Members report demonstrates the BSB’s commitment to meeting its equality duties in every aspect of its work, in line with the Equality and Diversity Strategy 2022-2025.
The data were captured on 1 December 2022, with people data deriving from an anonymous and voluntary survey, and data relating to Board members being collected and analysed annually. For the ten Board members of the BSB (there are normally eleven Board members but as of 1 December 2022 there was still a vacancy which has now been filled), the key findings of the report are:
- Four members were female, and six members were male.
- Two members were in the 45-54 age range, five members were in the 55-64 range, and the remaining three Board members were in other age ranges.
- Six members were from a White background. The remaining members were from another ethnic group.
For BSB people, meaning the BSB workforce as opposed to Board members, of which there were 99 at the time the data were captured, the key findings of the report are:
- 61 per cent of our workforce was White, compared to 83.5 per cent of the UK working age population, and 39 per cent of our workforce was from a minority ethnic background. The proportion of our workforce who are from a minority ethnic background is significantly higher than the proportion of people in the working age population of England and Wales who are from that background.
- The proportion of our workforce who are female has increased by around five percentage points to 74 per cent, compared to an estimate of 50.2 per cent of the UK working age population.
- As of 1 December 2022, four per cent of our workforce declared a disability. This is an increase of one percentage point from 2021.
You can read the full Diversity of the BSB Workforce and Board Members 2022 report here.
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Notes to editors
About the Bar Standards Board
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