An Equality impact assessment (EIA) is a risk assessment which focuses on fairness, access and inclusion.

We carry out EIAs early in the planning, development or review of any activity within the organisation. This helps ensure that we place equality at the heart of everything we do.

An EIA considers a policy, service or process in terms of how it might impact differently on different groups protected in law.

We use EIAs to:

• Identify and remove barriers in services which might stop people knowing about the service, using it, and getting the best from it
• Enable us to make adjustments to the service in the planning stage, to make it suitable for all users
• Help open up services to new groups

EIAs are proportionate to the size of the activity they are assessing, so an EIA for a major infrastructure project will be more comprehensive than that for a small policy change.