UK employment law - equality & diversity

I'm trying to find out if there are any regulations regarding the implementation of diversity/equality policies in the UK.

Personally I feel that true equality is completely blind and I would rather just employ the best people for the job regardless of any requirement to hit a quota but a personal belief is not going to hold up against the regulations if there are any!

Google brought up some pages relating to public bodies - this is concerning a limited company.

Note: I think it would be helpful if this was tagged employment-law?

I'm not a legal expert (standard disclaimer about consulting a qualified lawyer goes here) but as far as I'm aware the only legislation that you need to be aware of are the anti-discrimination laws. As long as you can justify your hiring decisions with respect to not discriminating against people based on age, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation or any other protected characteristic you should be fine. For example, you can't legally favour a man over a woman to avoid dealing with maternity leave. Likewise, with the recent age discrimination law, you can't choose a 30-year-old over a 55-year-old just because they are younger (if the younger person is better qualified, then that's fine).