Priorities and Evidence

We are required to carry out EIAs by law; the Race Relation Amendment Act, Disability Equality Duty and Gender Equality Duty have carrying out EIAs as a specific duty.

There been legal cases regarding equality impact assessments. For example, in July 2008 Southall Black Sisters won a case against Ealing Council who had cut funding for its services for BME women experiencing domestic violence. Ealing Council was charged with failing to carry out a full and proper equality impact assessment and also misinterpreting the race equality legislation.

Prioritising

The legal requirement and inspection expectation is that we do EIA’s of “every policy and practice” before we put them in place and before we make changes to them. This is an impossible task and should attempt to prioritise as follows:

issues raised which could result in legal action.
new policies and major projects
policies and major projects that “face to the public” or are about our staff and will adversely affect people from the equality strands

To help prioritise your issues, use the EIA Prioritising Template produced by the equlaities team.

Evidence

When completing an impact assessment, evidence for the issues identified will need to be presented and will support any actions required, or a decision not to act on an issue. What evidence are you using to support your answers? You might look to:

local, national or regional research or data
complaints or customer comments
results of surveys (yours or others if relevant)
comments or feedback from frontline staff
articles in local or national media
equalities legislation
previous consultation or focus groups
guidance on the intranet
issues identified in government policy
profile of York
existing service business plans
satisfaction or service take-up data

When looking at your data and evidence ask yourself:

Are there lower participation rates for some groups in accessing my service?
Are there lower success rates in selection processes in the areas of employment, benefits, services etc for some groups?
Does the eligibility criteria disadvantage certain groups, even unintentionally?
Is access (physical or communicative) denied to or harder for some groups?
Does one group experiences poorer quality of treatment compared to another?
Will the proposed change(s) have a positive impact on the 6 strands?
Does the proposed change go against any of our legal equalities duties?
Are the services I procure/commission accessible and inclusive? How do I know this?

For more support around these issues please look to the support and training page for who would be best to contact.