One minute guide: Equality impact assessment

An Equality Impact Assessment (EIA) is a tool that helps us to place equality, diversity, cohesion and integration at the heart of everything we do, across all services, from strategic decision making to policy and practice. EIAs ensure our strategies, policies, services and functions do what they are intended to do, for all the citizens of Leeds.

Carrying out an EIA involves assessing the likely (or actual) effects of decisions, strategies, policies, services and functions on people in respect of protected equality characteristics including age, disability, race, religion and sexual orientation. This includes looking for opportunities to promote equality that may have previously been missed or could be better used, as well as negative or adverse impacts that can be removed or mitigated where possible. If any negative or adverse impacts amount to unlawful discrimination, they must be removed.

Why we carry out equality impact assessments

For our society to be fair, cohesive and prosperous inequality needs to be tackled and unlawful discrimination ended. The Equality Act 2010 requires public bodies to have: 

• due regard to eliminate discrimination, harassment, victimisation and any other conduct prohibited under the Act
• advance equality of opportunity and
• foster good relations across all protected characteristics

The Public Sector Equality Duty (section 149 Equality Act 2010) requires public authorities to have due regard equality considerations when exercising their functions. EIAs should be carried out prior to implementing a policy, with a view to identifying its potential impact on equality.

What we do in Leeds

In Leeds, the due regard process used by the council has been developed to ensure we can evidence how our key decisions consider equality and improve outcomes for citizens of Leeds. Every year, the Children and Families Directorate should be able to evidence that equality issues have been considered in 100% of major decisions.

To meet the requirements of the Public Sector Equality Duty, officers must first complete an equality screening to decide if a full Equality Impact Assessment needs to be completed when seeking a major decision to be made by the council. The full EIA form must set out: 

• How relevance to equality has been determined and how due regard was given; 
• What key equality related information/ data has been taken into account; 
• Any key findings:
  • potential positive and/ or negative impacts on different equality characteristics 
  • potential impact on relationships between different groups; and
• Any key actions/ mitigating factors

Once the screening form or full Equality Impact Assessment has been agreed and approved, it should be included as an appendix in the report detailing the proposal for the strategy, policy, function or service.

When equality screening or EIA should be completed

Within Leeds City Council, equality screening or EIA should be completed during the initial stages of developing new strategies, policies, functions or services, prior to starting a procurement exercise and before decisions are made.

A screening process can help judge relevance and provides a record of both the process and decision. Screening should be a short, sharp exercise that determines relevance for all new and revised strategies, policies, services and functions.

A full Equality Impact Assessment (EIA) should be completed when screening indicates that a proposed policy, strategy, service change, or project will have a significant impact on people with one or more protected characteristics.

The full range of what are now known as ‘protected equality characteristics’ need to be considered and addressed. These are: age; disability; gender reassignment; marriage and civil partnership; pregnancy and maternity; race; religion or belief; sex; and sexual orientation. In Leeds, we also have locally agreed protected characteristics, which are: care experience, caring responsibilities, social class and trade union activity.

Examples of when you should consider equality, diversity, cohesion and integration include:

• any proposals to introduce or add to a service
• any proposals to remove, reduce or alter a service
• any new policies or changes to policies
• any proposals to adopt policy priorities, strategies and plans
• services or practices that have not previously considered equality and diversity
• changes to staffing structure where groups of employees are likely to be negatively affected
• any proposals in relation to procured or commissioned services.

Other agencies may also carry out equality impact assessments. Practitioners should follow their agency procedure and guidance in doing this.

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