Equality Impact Assessments

Why do equality impact assessments?

Impact assessments play an important part in removing barriers, reducing negative impact and identifying improvements to ensure that our services, employment and decision-making are inclusive. As a public sector organisation we must remove unlawful discrimination, advance equal opportunities and promote good relations between people. This is called our public sector equality duty. 

We can't assume that everyone benefits equally from our decisions, policies or services. We need a process to check that we are taking reasonable steps to tackle disadvantage and meet the diverse needs of all our communities.

The impact assessment process requires us to record any potential or actual impact for different groups, whether this is positive or negative, including any action we need to take to address impact.

The evidence we use to do this should be from a range of sources including consultation, statistics, regional comparisons and customer or user feedback. Any decisions must be based on evidence, and any potential or actual negative impact must be addressed.

We publish our equality impact assessments on our website with relevant decision making reports, you can click on the link to the right to view our meetings, agendas and minutes.