Equality Impact Assessment

What are Equality Impact Assessments?

An Equality Impact Assessment (EIA) is a tool to help the Council assess the accessibility of the services/functions we provide or the policies we produce. The assessment has to cover how our services/functions/policies help to achieve racial, disability and gender equality, as well as equality in relation to age, faith and religion and sexual orientation.

As a Local Authority, we exist to provide services to the public. It is our responsibility to ensure that our services are accessible to all, paying particular attention to the needs of groups that are more likely to be disadvantaged. We have a statutory requirement to carry out Equality Impact Assessments. The possible disadvantaged groups include all seven strands of equality as defined by current legislation:

• Race
• Disability
• Gender
• Sexual Orientation
• Religion or belief
• Age
• Transgender

We must ensure that we are meeting the needs of all our service users and carrying out EIAs helps us to do this. EIAs help us to take a step back from our day-to-day work and assess how we are providing our services and structuring our policies with regards to accessibility. By looking at equalities data relating to our service users and thinking about the accessibility of our services, we can identify any groups who are disproportionately under-using our services or who are very dissatisfied with the services we provide. We may have to remove barriers to make our services more accessible.

The purpose of such assessments is to identify:

1. whether the service or policy is having, or is likely to have, a disproportionate impact on any particular group within the population;
2. whether such an impact is positive or negative; and
3. whether such an impact might constitute unlawful discrimination.

Where disproportionate negative impact and/or unlawful impact is identified, the assessment provides a means for the Council to take appropriate steps to either avoid, or to take appropriate action to mitigate this. An action plan is developed where appropriate to deliver on this.

How does it work?

The law requires that, as a first step, we screen all of our services and policies to identify those which are most likely to have an impact on possible disadvantaged or minority groups. We then develop these into a prioritised list of services and policies for which we will conduct full EIAs. Following the conduct of an EIA by one of our services, we subsequently publically consult on our findings, to ensure we have got it right, and that where we have missed something, we can include it in our assessment and action plan.

How you can help us

The Council conducted an initial set of EIAs on high priority services and policies at the end of 2009. We are now making these publically available and would very much welcome your views to ensure that we are getting things right. Whether you are a member of the public, one of our elected members, an employee of the Council, or a representative of an organisation or group, we very much welcome your feedback on any of the assessments we have carried out. Your feedback will help us to adjust our action plans where necessary to ensure our services and policies are accessible to all who need them.

Below is a list of the EIAs we are currently consulting on. Each EIA includes a description of the service or policy being assessed. Some of these services are public facing, while some are services essential to the running of the Council.

You can provide feedback to us electronically using the |online EIA feedback form we have provided, or you can also |print the EIA feedback form and post it in to us. Please provide any feedback you may have by Friday the 19th of March 2010.We will consider all responses received and publish revised versions of the EIAs on this page at the end of March, at which point the action plans will be incorporated into the Council's service delivery plans.

The Equality Impact Assessments we are consulting on are:

• |The main reception area in the Civic Centre
• |Our Housing and Council Tax Benefits service
• |The Elmbridge Museum
• |Our Centres for Retired People
• |Our Environmental Health Enforcement Policy
• |Our Electoral Services
• |Our Customer Care Charter (|view our Customer Care Charter)
• |Our Building Control service
• |Our Waste Collection service
• |Our Executive and Member Services
• |Our Finance Division
• |Our Internal Audit service
• |Our Information Services Division

We can provide you with the consultation feedback form or any of the EIA documents in large print or Braille, or on an audio tape. If you have difficulty understanding English, we can provide assistance in helping you understand these and feeding back to us. Please |contact us if you require assistance in this regard.

Thank you very much for taking the time to help us improve the quality and accessibility of our services and policies. For more information on the Council's commitment to equality, see our |Corporate Equality Plan.