Support of LBGTQ+ people in Fareham

Fareham borough Cllr Gemma Furnivall talking about motion - support of LBGTQ+ people after FBC policy and resource scrutiny meeting Oct 21

Transcript

00:00Gemma Furniball, Councillor for Fort Fairham, Fairham Borough Councillor.

00:04Gemma, this evening you brought a motion. Can you tell me about that motion and

00:08what it means to have brought that motion? It's a motion in support of the LGBTQ

00:13plus community in Fairham. It was a response actually to the awful comments

00:19made by our MP in the States just after the general election. Lots of people

00:24contacted me saying how terrible those remarks were and so very quickly after

00:31being elected it was the first motion that I brought to Council and the motion

00:35really asks for recognition for the LGBTQ plus community and also that

00:41Fairham Borough Council will fly a pride flag in Pride Month and will work

00:46towards being able to use the correct pronouns for people when they interact

00:51with the Council. And how did you feel the meeting went? Because it was

00:56very much supported this evening. Absolutely supported, yeah. I think what

01:01we saw today actually was some of the best of local government, where actually

01:05members from all parties were really supportive of the motion and the

01:10community and the officers put forward suggestions about how to do better

01:14actually. So further steps towards inclusivity and equality, not just

01:20limited to flags and pronouns. So what's next? Well so my motion will come back,

01:26it's been supported, so the Council will be working up which of the pride flags

01:29to fly. It looks like that's going to be in the town centre, so very high

01:34profile, very visible for members of the community, which would be brilliant. And

01:38as far as the pronouns are concerned, what progress will be made on that? So my

01:44understanding is that they're doing a bit of an audit of how officers approach

01:48that now, because we know that some of them do do that, there isn't a formal

01:52mechanism for that. There were some brilliant suggestions from members

01:55tonight about using pronouns on email signatures, so that people, you know,

02:00recognise that that's a practice at the Council and they feel safer to do the

02:03same. So I think there are some quick wins on that and also we talked a

02:08bit about how to embed that into all of the kind of policies and procedures and

02:12change IT systems and all the all the boring stuff to make it happen. But

02:18yeah, absolutely thrilled that these things are being taken forward. It's a

02:22big important step today for that community. Thank you Gemma. That was Gemma

02:29Furnivall talking to me about her motion to bring forward LBGTQ plus flag and

02:35pronoun issues and then move it on.