Equality Impact Assessments

We need to understand whether our services are meeting everyone’s needs and that everyone who needs them has access to those services.

We have developed an Equality Impact Assessment process for the assessment of any new or significantly changed policies, practices, procedures, functions and services.

Undertaking Equality Impact Assessments enables us to take action to prevent direct and indirect discrimination by ensuring that as far as possible, any negative consequences for a particular group or sector of the community are eliminated, minimised or counterbalanced by other measures.

Our aims

Our ultimate aim is to improve our services. By making sure we have considered the potential impacts of a policy, strategy or plan at an early stage potential barriers or problems can be avoided and actions put in place these it can be fully incorporated into any decisions and not just a ‘bolt-on’ at the end.

Working in this way helps us to integrate and mainstream equalities into our work. Likewise, when reviewing the effectiveness and performance of our services, we can use this procedure to identify equality issues and opportunities as an integral part of our review.