Equality impact assessments

In most cases reports for major decisions will include an equality impact assessment, which will be published and available for the public to read. They look at the positive and negative effects a decision may have on different groups of people. We can then enhance the positive impacts and minimise any negative effects.

Understanding how different people will be affected by our decisions helps us develop policies and services that are appropriate and accessible to all, and meet different people’s needs.

Equality impact assessments for savings 2016/17

The Council faces further funding cuts from the government in 2016/17, but continues where possible to develop savings proposals which protect frontline services. The impacts of all proposals for 2016/17 have been reviewed and where there is a material impact, an equality impact assessment has been completed. These are listed below.

Given the scale of savings to be found it is becoming increasingly difficult to minimise impacts without stepping back and considering radically different ways of delivering services. To support this process the Council has adopted a corporate plan and is delivering cross cutting programmes to redesign services. Budget scrutiny task groups have also been established by the Governance and Resources commission.

This year the Council also carried out a cumulative impact assessment to understand the compounding impacts on a specific equality or vulnerable groups that arise from changes across a set of services.