Ofwat has agreed to give up on the use of ‘archaic’ non-gender neutral terms in the Wholesale Retail Code and Market Arrangements Code.
The issue was raised when members of the Ofwat Panel brought up of the term “Chairman” being used throughout the Market Arrangements Code in their meeting on 30 June.
To promote equality and inclusivity, it has been proposed, and approved, to use gender fair and inclusive terms.
Terms in the Codes are to be replaced with gender neutral alternatives, as follows:
-
- ‘Chairman’ replaced with ‘Chair’;
- ‘He’ replaced with ‘They’;
- ‘His’ replaced with ‘Their’;
- ‘Him’ replaced with ‘Them’;
- Reference to an individual will be removed, where appropriate; and
This is an administrative change intended to remove any indication of sub-conscious bias and enable the codes to be considered to be compliant with best practice in this area.
It does not create any technical changes to the operation of the Market Codes.
The proposal and accompanying documentation is available on the MOSL website and the approval can be found in the Ofwat decision letter
