Equality and diversity survey 2025
Introduction
Our regulator, the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA), requires us to collect, report and publish data about the diversity make-up of our workforce. This data is collected every other year, the latest collection being June 2025.
The survey
The SRA set 14 questions which cover gender, age, sexual orientation, religion, and socio-economic background. Responses from individuals within our company are provided anonymously and voluntarily. As a result, we have no way of verifying whether the answers given by individuals are accurate.
Data protection
Our company employs fewer than 50 staff so some of the data collected may make it easy to identify individuals. We have therefore chosen not to publish information about religion or belief, sexual orientation, or if individuals identify with their birth gender, as we believe this to be sensitive personal information.
Roles within Easthams
Three quarters of our workforce is female. Women hold key positions throughout the practice including Director, Solicitors, Chartered Legal Executives and other fee earning roles.
Age
The average length of service for our team is 9 1/2 years. Our age demographic is well balanced, with similar numbers of staff in each age group used in the study.
Ethnicity
The 2021 census reports that the population of our home town of Blackpool is 94.7% white, with 2.6% being Asian and 1.6% from a mixed ethnic background. These figures are reflected in the composition of our team.
Disability
The survey included questions about disability. 4% of our staff consider themselves to have a disability according to the definition in the Equality Act 2010, whilst more than 6% report that they have a condition or disability that limits their day-to-day activities.
Socio-Economic Background
The SRA believes that the legal profession should attract the best people, regardless of background, and they should reflect the community they serve. The SRA Equality & Diversity Survey seeks to reinforce that idea and asks questions around schooling and the backgrounds we hail from. With the advent of home working some law firms now have staff living all over the country and even abroad however, all of our team live locally in Blackpool or within a 30 miles radius and most were brought up in the local area.
Schooling
The survey seeks to find what sort of school our team attended between the ages of 11 and 16.
At least 73% of the team attended state schools with 17% attending independent schools.
Growing Up
The survey seeks to discover the background of our team by asking what the occupation of the main household earner was when the team were about 14 years old.
This is quite a difficult question to answer as the survey tries to fit so many jobs in limited brackets. The Modern Professional bracket includes jobs such as teacher, nurse, social worker, accountant, solicitor and civil engineer.
The final question in this section relates to our parents. Did they attend university?
Only 23% of the team have a parent that attended university.
Caring duties
The last part of the survey focuses on caring duties, whether that is for a child or someone with long term physical or mental ill health.
Nearly a quarter of our employees have children under 18 years old. 13% of our team care, to some degree, for someone with long term health issues.
