Equality Impact Assessments
1. Introduction
2. What is an Equality Impact
Assessment?
3. What happens if we find any unfairness
or adverse impact?
4. Reporting
5. Glossary
6. Related Documents
7. Equality Impact Assessment
Request 
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1. Introduction
Bromsgrove District Council is committed to providing
equality in service provision and employment. We recognise that
discrimination does not need to be intentional for unfair treatment
or adverse impact to occur. We are aware that different groups in
the community may have different needs.
Our approach to equalities is to recognise that there is a range of
different groups within our society and seek to ensure fair and
equitable services are provided to those different groups and to
the whole community.
To meet our legal duties and to ensure that we are being fair to
everyone we undertake equality impact assessments for all our
policies, practices and services.
2. What is an Equality Impact
Assessment?
An equality impact assessment is a way of finding out
whether a policy (or proposed policy), affects different groups of
people in different ways.
It is part of our policy making process. The term
policy refers to any activity the council undertakes whether that
is a service we provide, an initiative we run, a policy we write or
a procedure we observe.
Because it is recognised that this work takes time to complete
we have three year cycles of those policies, practices and
procedures. This means that every policy will be assessed at least
once every three years or, when there is a major change to a policy
or service, or a new service is provided.
The outcomes of any assessments done in a particular year are
then included in the Business Planning process for each service
department.
3. What
happens if we find any unfairness or adverse impact?
If our assessment shows that a policy is likely to be
unfair in some way or will have an adverse impact on some groups of
people in the community, we will try to think of ways of
eliminating or minimising this. But before making a
decision, we also try to establish that reducing or eliminating
unfairness or adverse impact on one group of people will not create
unfairness or adverse impact on another group. We recognise that
sometimes this is unavoidable and if this is so we will explain
why.
4. Reporting
Over the last few years we have compiled a list of
completed Equality Impact Assessments which are held in a
central database. This helps departments when they
develope a new policy or the policy or procedure is
re-assessed every three years.
In Autumn 2007, we trained a group of community members
from the Bromsgrove Equality and Diversity Forum to scrutinise
completed assessments and, where appropriate, participate in the
completion of Assessments, for example, when a major new initiative
or service is being developed or considered.
At the botyom of this page, you can downloadthose completed
Equality Impact Assessments which have been scrutinised by the
Equality and Diversity Forum including those in which
community members participated.
We are very grateful to these volunteers for giving up their
time to participate in this process.This contribution of community
members is vital to improving the outcome of our assessments and to
demonstrating that this process has a meaningful outcome for the
community we serve.
We recognise that we can improve the rigorousness of our
approach to Equality Impact Assessment and are continuously
striving to do so, but we are also confident that we have the
support of the community in this regard who want to be involved in
this journey.
If you would like to know more about this and any other Equality
and Diversity activities and meetings we run, please contact the
Customer Service Centre on 01527 881288 
or send an
email to 
equalities@bromsgrove.gov.uk
5. Glossary
Adverse impact
-
where one or more group of people is disadvantaged by a policy or
procedure.
Direct discrimination
- treating someone less favourably than someone else in the same
circumstances, eg:
- - Racist or sexist banter, derogatory comments and
innuendo
- - Failure to treat grievances seriously
- - Failure to investigate grievances effectively
- - Inconsistent, irrational and subjective behaviour by
employer
- - Failure to train staff and managers.
Indirect discrimination
- Where an unjustifiable condition, e.g. in the provision of a
service or job specification, has the effect of excluding a
particular group. Even if this is unintentional, it can still be
unlawful, eg:
- Unnecessary height restrictions
- Refusing training for promotion to part-timers
- Fluency in language
- Not allowing wearing of religious clothing
- Word of mouth recruitment
- Qualification requirements being too demanding for the level of
the job.
Policy, Practices and Services
- Refers to any activity the council does, be that a service we
provide, an initiative we run, a policy we write or a procedure we
observe.
- It may refer to the way we do things which are customary
- It may refer to activities we undertake such as meetings, focus
groups or publications we produce
Equality Groups
All equality groups referred to in the assessment can be broken
down into further sub groups as follows
Race/ Minority Ethnic Groups - consider all the categories in
the Census
Consider issues around race, colour, nationality, national or
ethnic origin
- Ethnic origin legally applies to Jews, Gypsies, Sikhs Irish and
Scottish Travellers
- White British
- White Irish
- Any other White Background
- Black Caribbean
- Black African
- Any other Black background
- Pakistani
- Indian
- Any other Asian Background
- White & Black Caribbean
- White & Black African
- White & Asian
- Any other Mixed Background
- Chinese
- Any other Ethnic Group
Disability - consider all types of impairment,
physical and mental, sensory, visible and hidden
People with learning disabilities
- Disabled children
- Young disabled people
- Parents of disabled children
- People with mobility impairments
- Wheelchair users
- Mental health system users/ survivors
- People with HIV / Aids
- People with visual impairments
- Deaf or hearing impaired people
- People with hidden impairments
- People with cancer
Gender ( Male/ Female ) - consider whether something has a
different impact on men or women - particularly if its more of an
impact on women, consider the impact if they have carer
responsibilities whether its childcare or other types of care
Gender Re-assignment ( Trans-sexual )
Consider all stages of re-assignment,
before, during and after
Marital status
Consider all marital statuses
- Married, widowed, divorced, separated, co-habiting, civil
partnership
Sexual orientation
Consider orientations
- Gay – usually refers to men with sexual orientation towards
other men although sometime refers to women with sexual orientation
towards other women
- Lesbian – refers to women with sexual orientation towards other
women
- Bisexual – refers to men and women with sexual orientation to
either their own gender or the opposite gender
- Heterosexual refers to men and women with sexual orientation
towards the opposite gender
Religion/ Belief – for more detailed information refer to the
Acas Booklet – Religion or Belief in the Workplace - consider the
main and the minority religions
Christianity
- Hinduism
- Islam
- Judaism
- Sikhism
- Baha’i
- Buddhism
- Jainism
- Paganism
- Parsi or Zoroastrianism
- Rastafarianism
Consider beliefs e.g.
-
Atheism
- Agnosticism
- Humanism
Age - consider all age groups
Children pre school and school age
- Teenagers
- Young adults
- Middle aged adults
- Older people
- Income group - consider all income groups
Those in employment
- Those on high incomes
- Those on low incomes
- Those on benefits
·Rural/ urban mix
·Consider all types of location in the district
- Wholly rural areas
- Villages
- Towns
- Urban fringe areas
None of these.
6. Related Documents
At the bottom of this page you will find those completed
Equality Impact Assessments that have been reviewed by the Equality
and Diversity Forum.
Bromsgrove District Council has so far completed 190 Equality
Impact Assessments and you can view a list of those here -
Completed Equality
Impact Assessments record - March 2011.
If you would like a copy of
any completed assessment or would like to join the Working Group to
review assessments from a community perspective please contact the
Customer Service Centre, Bromsgrove on 01527
881719 or send an email to equalities@bromsgrove.gov.uk
Please note that the list of completed assessments will be
updated from time to time and that the list currently reflects
a previous departmental structure prior management
re-organisation:
