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Agenda item

Equality Impact Assessments - Annual Review 2019/2020

Minutes:

The Consultation, Engagement and Equalities Manager presented a report, in order to provide members with an annual update on the council’s requirement to undertake Equality Impact Assessments (EIAs), an overview of the council’s approach to EIAs and an outline of EIAs undertaken in Bridgend County Borough Council (BCBC) service areas in 2019/20.  

 

By way of background, she advised that the Equality Act 2010 sets out a general duty that, as a public body in Wales, BCBC is required to have due regard in its decision making processes (including financial decisions) to three factors:

 

Ø  To eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation;

Ø  To advance equality of opportunity, and;

Ø  To foster good relations between people who share a protected characteristic and those who do not.

 

She explained that the EIA is a tool to assess whether new (or changes to existing) policies/services/functions, or the removal of services, could impact on different sectors of society in different ways. If the Council were creating a policy or making a major change to a service or function, through a report for example, to Cabinet, then an EIA should accompany the report, or if not then an EIA Screening should have been completed.

 

EIAs helped the council make better decisions, identify how services can be more accessible or improved and consider the nine protected characteristics as well as the impact on the Welsh language.

 

The Consultation, Engagement and Equalities Manager, added that the EIA toolkit will be revised in readiness for the implementation of the socio-economic duty in March 2021, to include guidance for officers on the socio-economic duty and when this needs to be considered.

 

The administration of the EIA processes will also be reviewed, and consideration given to an online assessment process to assist in the collation and publication of data. Currently full EIAs are linked to Cabinet reports and as such become public documents. All EIA screenings are retained by the service area. 

 

In terms of training, the Consultation, Engagement and Equalities Manager confirmed that an e-learning module continued to be available for employees which provides an overview of EIAs, their role in improving services and a guide to conducting them. At the end of the module, staff have an opportunity to complete an EIA and compare this against an already completed version to assess how the module has assisted in terms of knowledge and understanding. The Consultation, Engagement and Equalities Manager, added that to date, 225 council employees had completed the EIA e-learning module.

 

She added that bbetween February 2019 and March 2020, 8 full EIAs were undertaken and accompanied Cabinet reports and these, were listed in Appendix 1 to the repot.

           

68 EIA screenings were undertaken during this period and these were listed in Appendix 2. These screenings were referenced in the relevant Cabinet report/s and indicated that the policy/ies being assessed could either be “screened out” or would require a full EIA to be undertaken. This had compared favourably to last year, when there had been 6 full EIA’s conducted and 33 EIA screenings.

 

The Chairperson advised that she was pleased to note that EIA had developed on-line as part of e-learning and that the number of full EIA’s and EIA Screenings were increasing compared to last year.

 

A Member noted that an Air Pollution Control report had recently been considered by Cabinet and with this impacting upon people with breathing problems, he was surprised to see that this report had not been accompanied by an EIA document.

 

He also asked of the employees in management positions who had taken up EIA training to date, what proportion of this was compared to the total number of management staff the training was made available to.

 

The Consultation, Engagement and Equalities Manager advised that she would take the above point up with Human Resources and provide an answer to the Member, outside of the meeting.

 

The year before last she confirmed that the training had been face to face with an external training organisation called Red Shiny Apple. This tranche of training had identified that 60 – 65 Managers should have signed up for the training and 56 of these actually attended, so this was quite a high percentage overall.

 

In terms of the Air Quality Management report that had recently been considered by Cabinet, this had been an update report and due to this, had probably not necessitated it being accompanied by a full EIA.

 

RESOLVED:                             That the Cabinet Committee noted the progress made in the Council during 2019/2020 in the completion of Equality Impact Assessments, the progress made with training (e-learning and development of face to face training) and the review of the administration processes to support service areas.   

 

Supporting documents:

 

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