Everton Football Club has achieved the Advanced Level of the Premier League Equality Standard (PLES).
The standard has been designed to reflect current equality legislation and case law, and provides a framework to guide professional football clubs towards achieving equality, ranking them Preliminary, Intermediate or Advanced.
To achieve the Advanced Level of the standard, Everton underwent an assessment led by a panel of independent experts and demonstrated the Club’s commitment to continuous improvement with regards to equality, and how that is mainstreamed throughout the Club.
Everton also submitted extensive evidence to show how it is meeting a range of equality-related requirements, linked to the nine protected characteristics set out in the Equality Act 2010: age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation.
Following Everton’s assessment, the panel commended the Club’s commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion and how it is embedded in everything that it does.
In December 2018 Everton launched All Together Now, its campaign to celebrate diversity and increase awareness of everything done by the Club and Everton in the Community to promote equality.
The successful campaign has helped the Club achieve a number of firsts, such as becoming the first Premier League club to be named a Disability Confident employer, the first professional English club to use its Women’s team to launch a kit and the first football club in England to register its buildings as breastfeeding friendly, signing up to the Babies and Mums Breastfeeding Information and Support Initiative (‘Bambis’) Quality Mark.
The Club’s All Together Now campaign, with the tagline 'a football family for everyone', is front and centre of Everton’s brand presence online and on matchdays, reflecting the prominence and importance of equality, diversity and inclusion in everything that the Club does.
Kim Healey, People Director at Everton Football Club, said: “We are extremely proud to have gained the Advanced Level of the Premier League Equality Standard (PLES). The whole Everton Family has played a part in achieving this top-level accreditation - it is a real testament to our culture as The People’s Club and a football family for all.
“Our commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion is led from the top, through Professor Denise Barrett-Baxendale’s leadership and strategic drive. This commitment is deeply engrained in everything we do – from how we design our facilities and how fans experience a matchday, to what our marketing material looks like and how our website works.
“Teams across the Club and Everton in the Community have worked hard to identify where we can make a real difference, and they have shared their ideas to ensure that we are inclusive in everything we do. We will continue to ensure that we are always identifying opportunities to further improve and develop new initiatives to promote equality, diversity and inclusion.”
The Equality Standard encompasses two broad areas – Club culture, policies, leadership and people, and Developing Club services – the work that Clubs do to encourage people from all communities to participate in all their activities.
Find out more about All Together Now by clicking here.
