Governing bodies have a number of responsibilities for ensuring that institutions adopt effective policies and practices concerning equality and diversity. This includes ensuring that equality impact assessment of all policies, procedures and practices is conducted for gender, race and disability.
The governing body's legal responsibilities in this area are to ensure compliance with both its general and specific duties as set out in the legislation. Two points are worth bearing in mind:
Ensuring diversity goes beyond legal compliance, recognising that people have different needs that must be addressed in different ways.
The lead body for equality and diversity in higher education is the Equality Challenge Unit (ECU), which produces a wealth of guidance. The funding councils have statutory obligations to oversee compliance with equality and diversity legislation in their respective jurisdictions. Nationally, the Equality and Human Rights Commission has the remit to promote equality for all in society and to combat discrimination affecting specific groups. It covers England, Scotland and Wales, but in Northern Ireland the remit is undertaken by 
the Equality Commission for Northern Ireland.
The CUC Guide states that "the governing body should ensure that non discriminatory systems are in place to provide equality and diversity of opportunity for staff and students", and in relation to institutions in England "that action plans are progressed throughout the institution", and that "the governing body has a duty to take such steps as are reasonably practicable to ensure freedom of speech within the law for students and members of staff of the institution and for visiting speakers".
More information [PDF, 56Kb]. See also further material on equality and diversity [Word, 57Kb].
The Equality Act 2010 replaced much of the previous legislation and strengthens the law in this area. A concise overview can be found in issue 25 of In Practice. The ECU has also published information on the key changes.. Regulations relating to the equality duty will require public authorities to publish relevant information by 31 January 2012.
A briefing paper by the Leadership Foundation and the Equality Challenge Unit provides an update on recent changes in legislation and reviews governors' responsibilities in relation to equality and diversity.
There is a range of materials on the Equalities section of the Home Office web site.and guidance has also been published by the Charity Commission.