Introduction

Our regulator, the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA), requires us to collect, report and publish data about the diversity make-up of our workforce. This data is collected every other year, the latest collection being July 2023.

The survey

The SRA set 14 questions which cover gender, age, sexual orientation, religion, and socio-economic background. Responses from individuals within our company are provided anonymously and voluntarily. As a result, we have no way of verifying whether the answers given by individuals are accurate.

Data protection

Our company employs fewer than 50 staff so some of the data collected may make it easy to identify individuals. We have therefore chosen not to publish information about religion or belief, sexual orientation, or if individuals identify with their birth gender, as we believe this to be sensitive personal information.

Roles within Easthams 

Nearly three quarters of our workforce is female. Women hold key positions throughout the practice including Director, Solicitors, Chartered Legal Executives and other fee earning roles.

Age

Since the previous survey in 2021 Easthams has recruited a lot of new staff, but we are pleased to say that a third of our team have been employed by the company for at least 10 years. Our age demographic is well balanced, with similar numbers of staff in each age group used in the study.

Ethnic Group

The 2021 Census showed that 2.6% of Blackpool residents identified their ethnic group within the “Asian, Asian British or Asian Welsh” category.

About 2.2% of our staff fall into that category, with another 2% coming from a White/Asian background. More than 4% of our team hail from other European countries.

Disability

The survey included questions about disability. Nearly 7% of our staff consider themselves to have a disability according to the definition in the Equality Act 2010.

Socio-Economic Background

The SRA believes that the legal profession should attract the best people, regardless of background, and they should reflect the community they serve. The SRA Equality & Diversity Survey seeks to reinforce that idea and asks questions around schooling and the backgrounds we hail from. All of our team live locally in Blackpool or within a 30 miles radius and most were brought in the local area.

Schooling

The survey seeks to find what sort of school our team attended between the ages of 11 and 16.

At least 64% of the team attended state schools with 18% attending independent schools.

Growing Up

The survey seeks to discover the background of our team by asking what the occupation of the main household earner was when the team were about 14 years old.

This is quite a difficult question to answer as the survey tries to fit so many jobs in limited brackets. The Modern Professional bracket includes jobs such as teacher, nurse, social worker, accountant, solicitor and civil engineer.

The final question in this section relates to our parents. Did they attend university?

Only 27% of the team have a parent that attended university.

Caring duties

The last part of the survey focuses on caring duties, whether that is for a child or someone with long term physical or mental ill health.

Only 20% of our employees have children under 18 years old. 13% of our team care, to some degree, for someone with long term health issues.