Arts Council demands data on sex orientation in return for grants

ARTS COUNCIL England will “pressure” organisations to reveal data on the sexuality of their staff in a drive for diversity.

Institutions including the Royal Shakespeare Company and the English National Ballet are required to adhere to diversity targets to receive their funding.

Arts Council England demands information on the ethnicity, age, gender, and sexual orientation of staff from organisations they fund in order for them to be assessed and rated.

But often this data is not provided, with organisations giving an answer of “unknown” or staff themselves saying they “prefer not to answer”, particularly when quizzed on sexuality.

Arts Council England, which plans to invest £1.45bn in public funding in the coming years, has said it will apply pressure to gain the information on sexual orientation, having followed advice from LGBT charity Stonewall to make data gathering a priority.

Pressure to provide data has been branded “unacceptable” by privacy campaigners.

As their an annual report on diversity was published today, the Arts Council said: “While the report shows that fewer people are now responding to questions with ‘prefer not to say’, many organisations still return a high level of ‘unknown’ responses, showing they hold no data about an individual.

“This is especially true of sexual orientation.”

A spokeswoman for campaign group Privacy International said: “It is unacceptable to pressure employees to provide such personal and private information.”

A spokeswoman for Stonewall said: “In the UK, capturing LGBT data is common practice and helps employers meet their legal equality duties.”