Equality Impact Assessments (EIAs)
The Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000, as well as the Equality Standard for Local Government, places a statutory obligation on local authorities and public sector organisations to carry out race EIAs for each of their existing policies and newly proposed policies.
NPA has decided to go beyond this statutory duty and will incorporate, into the race EIA process, an impact assessment for each of the equality target groups.
What are EIAs?
EIAs aim to make authorities think more carefully about the likely impact of their work on equality target groups and to take action to improve their services - ensuring that they are not inadvertently discriminating, inaccessible or inappropriate.
What are equality target groups?
Equality target groups are groups of people classed as being ‘hard-to-reach’ or those in a minority. These are: women; black and minority ethnic people; young people and children; older people; disabled people; lesbians; gay men; bisexual people; transsexual people; and people from different faith groups.
These equality target groups can be categorised into the equality strands of gender, race, disability, age, religion or faith and sexual orientation.
What is a policy?
A policy can be a function (i.e. a consultation event), a project (i.e. best value review), a strategy (i.e. communication strategy), a process (i.e. sending out an agenda or dealing with a complaint), or an operating procedure (i.e. communicating information via the internet or holding a meeting). In essence, a policy is a principle or criteria that an organisation has developed to help carry out its functions or role, and to meet its duties:
“any practice or written document which sets out a course of action, guiding principles or procedure which is adopted and implemented by an authority. This includes any decision taken or recommendations made at meetings which may lead to an action to implement.”
(Home Office and the Commission for Racial Equality definition of policy)
Why is Northumbria Police Authority (NPA) doing EIAs?
The purpose of NPA carrying out EIAs is to improve its work and ensure that, in all of its activities, it is transparent, meets the needs of its customers, eliminates unlawful discrimination and promotes equality of opportunity and good relations between persons of different equality target groups.
Completing an EIA is similar to a risk assessment as it involves predicting and assessing the implications of a policy on a wide range of different needs. This therefore, needs to be done in consultation with stakeholders (i.e. those people likely to be affected by the policy).
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