News in Brief

 

Sky appoints new diversity and inclusion experts to its advisory council

SKY has appointed two new members to its independent diversity and inclusion (D&I) advisory council on Wednesday (26).

Phyll Opoku-Gyimah, co-founder of UK Black Pride, and Tunde Banjoko, founder of Making The Leap charity and the UK Social Mobility Awards, are the newly appointed members of the advisory council.

They will assist the company as it broadens its attention to D&I issues that touch on socioeconomic mobility and the inclusion of LGBTQ+ people.

Tunde Banjoko said: “Sky is such an important business, that it is an honour to be able to support its efforts. It’s also a privilege to work alongside the other members of the Diversity Advisory Council.”

Roland White and Leon Mann, who just finished their terms on the council, are replaced by Banjoko and Opoku-Gyimah.

Sky’s Diversity Advisory Council, which was established in January 2021, is made up of nationally renowned diversity and inclusion professionals who provide guidance to Sky’s leadership on the creation and execution of inclusion initiatives affecting corporate governance, employee diversity, and supplier diversity.

 

Met Police failings are a combination of incompetence and institutional racism says woman behind probe

DAME LOUISE Casey, the author of last year’s landmark review into Metropolitan Police standards The Baroness Case Review believes that both institutional racism and incompetence have let Londoners down basically.

She was talking to Channel 4’s social affairs editor and presenter Jackie Long on Monday (24).

Certain incidents where Met Police behaved in a racist manner towards black people and ongoing legal battles related to these incidents were part of the discussion.

Casey said: “I do think it’s very very clear from the review that we undertook which was a 14-month deep look into the Metropolitan Police and what I think it showed and what (it) illustrated is – it’s a combination of incompetence and essentially institutional racism.

“Misconduct complaints and complaints from the public just take forever so the average misconduct complaint takes at least 100 days.

“The majority of the complaints made by the public are found with no further action at all. They are never upheld and never listened to. So, I think there is an issue of incompetence that I found in the Metropolitan Police,” she added.

On asking whether she is confident in Sir Mark Rowley, commissioner of Police of the Metropolis promising to oversee a radical change in the organisation, Casey replied: “The huge challenge facing British policing and the Met Police in London is that black and people who aren’t white for a long time have had no trust in the police. It’s going down and down.

“Their ability to admit it and to do something about it means it will continue to go down. Until we all wake up and realise what it’s like for black people, particularly the people in charge of this country and in charge of the Met, we won’t see the change we need.”

The Baroness Casey review investigated the culture and standards of the Metropolitan Police that found institutional racism, sexism, and homophobia.

 

Regional venture capitalists promise to address the lack of diversity and southern bias

VENTURE capital and private equity firms established in the North have said they stand ready to capitalise on investment by responding to criticisms made by MPs.

Senior players in the Northwest vowed to be “part of the solution” in response to the MPs of the cross-party Treasury Committee slamming the industry’s “unacceptable failure” to invest in regional businesses and attacked a lack of diversity in investee companies.

Only two per cent of all venture capital funding went to women-led businesses in 2022.

The Committee has urged the industry to make quick changes and is requesting support from the government to hasten.

The MPs have also asked the Treasury to make it a criterion for eligibility to collect and disclose the diversity data of venture capital companies and their investments.

To know more: https://diversityhub.com/mps-criticise-the-lack-of-diversity-in-the-venture-capital-industry/