The Bar Standards Board (BSB) has today published its annual report, Diversity of BSB Staff and Board Members 2020. It follows the publication of the Diversity of the Bar report 2020, which showed that while diversity in the profession was gradually increasing, further progress was needed.
The report demonstrates the BSB’s commitment to its legal obligations as an employer under the Equality Act 2010. The BSB also remains firmly committed to encouraging a strong, independent, diverse and effective legal profession and to meet its equality duties in every aspect of its work.
The data were captured on 1 December 2020, with staff data deriving from an anonymous and voluntary survey, and data relating to Board members being collected and analysed annually.
For the twelve Board members of the BSB, the key findings of the report are:
- seven members were female and five were male;
- ten members were from a White background, with the others from another ethnic group; and
- of the eight members who responded to the question about disability, the most frequently given responses was “no disability”.
For BSB staff, of which there were 83 at the time the data were captured, the key findings of the report are:
- 65% of all staff were female and 35% were male, and within the top four (of seven) seniority grades, 53% of staff were female and 45% were male.
- 34% of BSB staff were from a minority ethnic background, compared to an estimate of 13.3% of the working age population of England and Wales. In the four most senior grades, 66% of staff were White English/Welsh/Northern Irish/Scottish/British, 9% identified as being from another white ethnic group, 16% were Asian British, and 9% were Mixed/Multiple Ethnic Background.
- 6% of staff declared a disability, compared to an estimate that around 11.3% of the working age population have a declared disability.
You can read the full Diversity of BSB Staff and Board Members 2020 report here.
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Notes to Editors
About the Bar Standards Board
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