Access and inclusion in an equalities impact assessment

An equalities impact assessment submitted with a planning application is not a document about your building. It is evidence that helps the decision maker discharge a legal duty that sits on the council, not on you.

That distinction changes how the access and inclusion content should be written. The council has to show it had due regard to the effects of its decision on people with protected characteristics. Your job is to give it the material to do that, in a form its legal team recognises.

What the public sector equality duty requires of the decision

Section 149 of the Equality Act 2010 requires a public authority, in exercising its functions, to have due regard to the need to eliminate discrimination, advance equality of opportunity and foster good relations between people who share a protected characteristic and those who do not.

Three features of the duty matter for a planning application.

It attaches to the decision, so the regard has to be had before or at the time the decision is taken. A document produced after committee cannot cure a failure. It is a duty of process rather than outcome, so the authority does not have to reach any particular answer, only to consider the question properly. And it has to be exercised in substance, with rigour and an open mind, which means a tick-box appendix is worse than useless because it demonstrates the opposite.

The practical consequence is that your assessment should be written so its conclusions can be quoted in the officer report. That is where the duty is recorded.

Identifying the protected characteristics actually affected

Do not run through all nine characteristics giving each a paragraph of equal length. An assessment that treats every characteristic identically tells the reader that none of them was thought about.

Work from the proposal outwards. A residential scheme with a steep external level change raises disability and age. A change of use affecting a place of worship raises religion or belief. A scheme replacing a community facility used by a particular group raises whichever characteristic that group shares. A development affecting a hospital or clinic route raises disability and pregnancy and maternity.

Then say plainly which characteristics are not engaged and why, in one or two sentences. That is what shows the screening was done rather than assumed.

Note that marriage and civil partnership is only engaged by the first limb of the duty, which is a detail that legal officers notice.

Evidence of differential effects

An effect is differential when it falls more heavily on people sharing a characteristic than on the population generally.

Use published data for the baseline. Census data on age structure, disability and ethnicity for the relevant area is available at small geography, and citing the source and date is what makes the point usable. Do not estimate figures, and do not generalise about what a group needs.

Then describe the mechanism, not just the conclusion. A 1 in 15 external ramp with no level rest is harder for an ambulant disabled person and for someone pushing a pram, which is a specific effect with a specific cause. Older residents affected by the scheme is not.

Distinguish construction effects from operational effects. A two-year construction programme blocking the only step-free route to a shop parade is a genuine differential effect even if the completed scheme improves matters, and it belongs in the assessment with the mitigation attached.

Inclusive access and the design response

This is where the assessment connects to drawings, and where most submissions go thin.

Cover the arrival sequence from the street, including the approach gradient, surface, crossing points and drop-off. Cover the entrance, including level thresholds, door opening forces and visual contrast. Cover vertical circulation, lift sizes and refuge arrangements. Cover sanitary provision, including whether the building's size triggers the requirement for a larger accessible toilet with a hoist and changing bench. And cover wayfinding, lighting levels and acoustic conditions, which matter for people with sensory impairment and are almost always omitted.

Accessible and wheelchair user dwelling standards are optional requirements in the Building Regulations, and they apply only where planning policy requires them and a condition secures them. So state the policy requirement, the proportion of units proposed at each standard, and where those units sit in the scheme. Wheelchair user dwellings clustered on the top floor of a block with one lift is a point an officer will raise.

Much of this overlaps with the design and access statement, and the two documents must agree. Where they contradict each other, the weaker one is quoted back at you.

Consultation with affected groups

Consultation evidence turns an assessment from an opinion into a record.

Local access groups, disability forums and organisations representing older residents will usually engage if asked early and given something concrete to respond to. A plan and a set of questions produces useful comment. An invitation to comment on a scheme in principle produces silence.

Record who was approached, when, what was said and what changed as a result. The last of those is the part that carries weight. An assessment that reports a comment and then explains why the design could not accommodate it is more credible than one where every comment was apparently accommodated.

Where the wider consultation programme is described in a statement of community involvement, cross-refer rather than duplicating it.

Recording the duty being discharged

Write a short section that the officer can lift, structured around the three limbs of the duty.

For each limb, state the effects identified, the mitigation proposed, and the residual effect after mitigation. Be honest about residual effects. A duty properly discharged can still result in a decision that disadvantages someone, and a candid assessment protects the decision far better than a document claiming that every effect has been removed.

Cross-refer the mitigation to conditions or obligations. Mitigation that depends on a management arrangement should be secured, because unsecured mitigation cannot be relied on by the decision maker.

The same logic runs through a health impact assessment, where the credibility of the document rests on the mitigation being deliverable rather than aspirational.

Where the assessment changes the scheme

The assessments that are worth commissioning change something, and the changes are usually small and early.

Moving a blue badge bay closer to the entrance. Adding a level rest to a long ramp. Reversing a door swing so a wheelchair user is not pushed into a road. Relocating a bin store so the step-free route to it is not the service route. None of these cost much at concept stage, and all of them are expensive after planning.

Commission the assessment while the layout can still move, and read it as a design tool rather than as a submission requirement. The structure of the analysis section is set out further in the note on the equality analysis section of an equalities impact assessment, and the report page for an equalities impact assessment sets out what a full document contains.

This is general guidance, not legal advice. The application of the public sector equality duty turns on the facts of each decision, so check the position with your local planning authority or a qualified professional before relying on it.

PlanScope provides AI-assisted draft reports for planning applications. Reports should be reviewed before submission. We do not guarantee planning approval.