Local Democracy Reporting Service
BBC News, North East and Cumbria
BBCDiversity training for councillors at a Reform-led council has been removed.
The equality, diversity, inclusion and climate change modules were removed from the Member Induction and Development Programme on 13 June following a request from the leader of the council, Durham County Council said.
Leader Andrew Husband told a full council meeting earlier this month that there was “no requirement in law for councillors to complete equality, diversity and inclusion training”.
Former Labour councillor Rochelle Lainé said the move risked “undoing years of progress”.
Reform gained political control of Durham County Council after winning 63 seats out of the 98 elected in the recent local elections.
It comes after the party’s national leader Nigel Farage said members would boycott the training because “all people should be treated equally”.
Ms Lainé, a teacher and former county councillor, had submitted a question for the meeting on 16 July asking how a refusal to attend training would impact councillors’ ability to make “legally informed and compliant decisions”.
Husband told the full council meeting that EDI training for councillors had been removed.
The local authority then later added that, in making the request, the leader asked the council’s monitoring officer what other arrangements could be put in place to assist councillors in discharging the public sector equality duty.
Ms Lainé said she believed that Reform was “reintroducing casual racism, sexism, and discrimination by outright refusing to participate in training that promotes fairness”.
She added that the party was “pushing a rhetoric that is dangerous and divisive”.
Deputy leader and Reform councillor Darren Grimes said the claims were baseless.
Mr Grimes said: “I removed the module on unconscious bias because it’s uniquely racist, peddling the idea that people are inherently prejudiced based on race.
“Our Reform caucus, many of us descendants of miners, have no time for this divisive notion of privilege based around immutable characteristics such as skin colour,” he said.
