Equality Impact Assessment

EIAs make our work fairer and protect us from legal challenge.

• They are a proactive way to ensure our work is fair and inclusive, helping create a culture that truly thrives on difference.
• They show how we’re meeting our Public Sector Equality Duty to consciously consider eliminating discrimination, creating equality of opportunity, and fostering good relations.

EIAs should be used for new work, or existing work that is being significantly changed

• Start an EIA early in the creation of the work it’s for, update it as the work is developed, and review after the work is launched/implemented to check for any unforeseen impacts and take action to address or mitigate them.
• Use EIAs for work that impacts people and which is new or significantly changing. A few factors to consider:
  • Novelty - You don’t need an EIA for everyday activities, it’s for significant things which are new, changing, or ending.
  • Scale - You’re more or less likely to need one depending on how many people are impacted and how much they are impacted.
  • Relevance - You’ll need one if people may be impacted differently or have varied needs and/or there are known inequalities.

A good EIA is

• Thorough: A good EIA demonstrates enough has been done to try and uncover any impact, so we can foresee all we reasonably can.
• Genuine: A good EIA shows change/mitigation has been genuinely considered, so we are doing what we can to remove disadvantage.
• Ongoing: A good EIA plans for future review (especially if the impacts are not yet clear), so we can check in on how it’s going.

There is more on how to complete an EIA in the guidance linked above.

The owner of an EIA (usually the person leading the work being assessed) is asked to keep a copy of the completed EIA to produce on request. As such, if you would like to see an EIA for a piece of work, feel free to contact people directly to request it. If the work is presented at a committee meeting, findings from the EIA should be referred to in the paper.

If you are looking for the old EIA Portal, you can find it here - but please note this has not been in use since February 2023 so is not an up to date record of EIAs.

See examples of fictional completed EIAs below.

Our Values-Based EIAs guidance outlines how to apply our values and behaviours to EIAs. By embedding these values into EIAs, we ensure that our policies, decisions, and actions not only meet legal requirements but also align with our vision for a better world.

Our EIAs and Freedom of Speech guidance outlines how to use an EIA as an opportunity to think about how work impacts both inclusion and freedom of speech. By identifying risks in both areas and, if appropriate, weighing them carefully, an EIA supports balanced, fair, and legally compliant decision-making.

This LGBTQ+ Considerations for EIAs resource from the WIHEA Queering University project offers a set of reflective and practical question prompts to aid you in identifying risks and mitigating any negative impacts of your work on LGBTQ+ people.

For an idea of what a completed EIA form might look like, see these (fictional) examples - Built Environment, Policy, Project, Software.