Equality Impact Assessment in United Kingdom

Equality Impact Assessment (EIA) in the Context of Equality Law

The meaning of Equality Impact Assessment (EIA), published by the Equality and Diversity Forum (a United Kindom network of equality and human rights organisations), is the following: is a formal structured approach to assessing the impact of proposed policies or practices on people with different protected characteristics. The courts have confirmed that there is no legal requirement for public bodies to carry out formal EIAs. Compliance with the Equality Duty involves giving open-minded and rigorous consideration to the three aims of the Equality Duty as part of the process of decision-making. This entails understanding the potential effects of the organisation’s activities on different people, but there is no prescribed process for doing this. Nevertheless in order to comply with the general Equality Duty, public authorities must gather information about who is going to be affected by a decision, policy or practice; ensure that they have sufficient information; consider the nature, extent and duration of any adverse impact and if there is a greater negative impact on one protected group compared to another then they must consider whether the adverse impact can be reduced, removed, mitigated or justified. Many people think that this information is most easily collected within an Equality Impact Assessment but it is not necessary to have such a document if this information is collected and recorded in some other way and is made available to those seeking to understand how a decision has been reached.

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See Also

• Equality Law
• Equality Act
• Equality Legislation
• Human Rights