Policy Briefing 12: Equalities Impacts Assessments (Sept 2011)
A summary of provisions relating to equality impact assessments, and how they can be used by scrutiny
As local authorities and others make decisions that will have increasingly significant effects on local people, those decision-makers will need to be able to assure themselves that negative impacts of decisions are minimised.
EqIAs provide a method - backed up by statute, in the form of the Equality Act 2010 - to assess the impact of decisions on local people. Scrutiny can and should use these assessments as part of investigations - scrutiny can also use the common methodology of EqIAs to inform the evidence-gathering approach for reviews themselves.
This is the thirteenth in the Policy Briefings series.