Equality Impact Assessments
Equality Impact Assessments make sure that we think carefully about the likely impact of our policies, procedures, strategies and services have on individuals or groups of people that access them.
Their key purpose is to pre-empt the possibility that a proposed policy or service could affect individuals or groups unfavourably. Appropriate action must be taken to remedy the issue or improve the situation for those groups that are most disadvantaged.
The assessment helps us to make sure that we do not negatively discriminate in the way that we provide services and employment and that, where possible, we do all we can to promote equality and good relations between different groups.
Equality Impact Assessments are made up of two stages:
Stage 1 Screening policies or services to establish their relevance to equality.
Stage 2 A full assessment of a policy/ service to identify any issues and to develop actions to address potential adverse impacts on any individuals or groups.
Public organisations have a legal responsibility under equality legislation to carry out equality impact assessments on their policies and services and to set out how they will monitor and take action to address any possible adverse impacts on any individual or group.
We have now completed equality impact assessments for a range of policies and services. We aim to have a full suite of equality impact assessments and develop actions to address any issues by the end of March 2011.
