Evidence for protected characteristics in an EqIA

An Equalities Impact Assessment submitted with a planning application is not a document the developer owes anyone. The duty belongs to the council. Section 149 of the Equality Act 2010 requires a public authority, when 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.

The assessment exists to give the authority the evidence it needs to do that. Which means the test of a good one is simple: could a case officer lift its analysis into a committee report and defend it?

The duty the assessment supports

Due regard is a process obligation, not an outcome obligation. The council does not have to reach any particular decision. It has to consider the effects on people with protected characteristics, properly and with an open mind, before the decision is made rather than afterwards.

Courts have made the timing point repeatedly. An assessment produced after a resolution to grant, as a tidying-up exercise, does not discharge the duty. So the document belongs in the application, not in the correspondence after committee.

It also has to be proportionate. A householder extension does not need an equalities analysis. A 400 home scheme replacing an estate with an established community, a change of use displacing a facility used by a particular group, or a street and square scheme altering how people move through a town centre on foot all do.

Identifying the relevant characteristics

Section 4 of the Act lists nine protected characteristics: age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, and sexual orientation.

Most assessments fail here by covering all nine at equal length, including the ones the scheme cannot possibly affect. That produces a document nobody reads and hides the two or three that matter.

Screen first. For each characteristic, state whether the proposal could have a differential effect and why. Where the answer is no, say so in a sentence and move on. Where it is yes, go deep. A scheme removing a place of worship engages religion or belief directly. A scheme removing step-free access engages disability and age. A scheme changing night-time routes through a car park engages sex.

One drafting note. Marriage and civil partnership is treated differently in the duty itself, where it applies only to the first limb concerning discrimination. Say so rather than analysing it as though all three limbs applied.

Baseline data and its limits

Baseline evidence should be local, dated and sourced.

The census is the anchor for age, sex, disability, ethnicity, religion and, since 2021 in England and Wales, sexual orientation and gender identity for respondents aged 16 and over. Use output area or lower layer super output area geography for a site-level picture rather than borough averages, which hide everything.

Around that, useful sources include the local authority's joint strategic needs assessment, the indices of deprivation, school census data for child population, and the authority's own housing needs evidence.

Be honest about three limits. Small area statistics are suppressed or rounded to protect confidentiality, so a very local figure may not exist. Some characteristics are under-reported, particularly where questions are voluntary. And a census is a snapshot that ages, so state the year and say what has changed since where you know.

Where a number cannot be sourced, describe the effect without one. An assessment that invents a percentage is worse than one that says the data is not collected at this geography.

Assessing differential effects

The analytical step is to ask, for each engaged characteristic, whether the proposal affects that group differently from the population as a whole, and whether that difference is adverse, neutral or positive.

Split the assessment by phase, because construction and operation affect people differently. A two year construction programme with a haul route past a special school is a construction-phase effect on disabled children that the operational scheme does not have. Noise, dust, severance of walking routes, loss of parking and temporary closure of a community facility all belong in that section.

Then assess the operational scheme: access and movement, housing mix and tenure, affordability, the design of public space, the location and design of any replacement facility, employment and training opportunities, and the effect on existing residents if the proposal involves decanting.

Where an effect is adverse, say so plainly. An assessment concluding that a scheme has no adverse effects on anyone is not believed and does not help the officer.

Mitigation through design

Mitigation for equalities effects is mostly ordinary good design brought forward deliberately.

Step-free routes throughout, not only to the front door. Accessible dwellings distributed across the scheme rather than clustered on one floor. Level thresholds, generous door widths and turning circles beyond the minimum where the market allows. Seating at intervals on longer routes, which matters to older people and to pregnant women. Legible wayfinding that does not depend on colour alone. Lighting designed for the routes people actually use after dark, with clear sight lines and no entrapment spots. Play space usable by disabled children, not just adjacent to them.

Where a facility is being replaced, the replacement has to be usable by the same people: same accessibility, same affordability, reachable by the same journeys. A replacement community room on the first floor of a new block with a lift and a fob entry system is not equivalent to a ground floor hall with an open door.

Health effects often travel with equalities effects, and where a Health Impact Assessment is also being prepared the two should share a baseline rather than contradict each other.

Engagement with affected groups

Evidence of engagement carries more weight than desk analysis, and it is the part most often skipped.

Identify the groups likely to be affected and approach the organisations that already work with them: disability groups, faith organisations, youth services, older people's forums, carers' groups, tenants' and residents' associations. Ask specific questions rather than presenting a finished scheme.

Make the process usable. Accessible venues, materials in large print and plain language, translation where the local population needs it, online and offline routes, and timings that work for people with caring responsibilities or shift work.

Record what was said, what changed as a result, and what did not change and why. That last part is what makes the record credible. The engagement narrative sits naturally alongside the Statement of Community Involvement, and the two documents should tell the same story.

Recording due regard

The assessment should end with a clear, structured record: the characteristics screened in and out with reasons, the effects identified by phase, the mitigation proposed and how it is secured, the residual effects after mitigation, and the engagement undertaken.

Secure the mitigation properly. Design commitments belong in conditions or in the approved drawings. Tenure, affordability and facility provision belong in the planning obligation. A mitigation measure that appears only in the assessment document is not secured at all.

An Equalities Impact Assessment drafted this way gives the officer a section they can use. Our note on the equality analysis section goes through the structure of that analysis in more detail.

This is general guidance, not legal advice; check the position with your local planning authority or a qualified professional before relying on it.

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