Screening in an equalities impact assessment

Screening is the first stage of an equalities impact assessment, and its job is narrow: establish whether the proposal is likely to affect people sharing a protected characteristic differently from everyone else, and if so, whether the effect is substantial enough to need a full assessment. Screening is not a shorter version of the assessment. It is the decision about whether the assessment is needed, and it has to be evidenced in its own right.

The duty that drives it sits on the council, not on the applicant. That single fact shapes how the document should be written.

Where the duty comes from

Section 149 of the Equality Act 2010 imposes the public sector equality duty. A public authority must, in the exercise of its functions, have due regard to the need to eliminate discrimination, harassment and victimisation, to advance equality of opportunity between people who share a relevant protected characteristic and those who do not, and to foster good relations between them.

Determining a planning application is the exercise of a function, so the duty applies to it. The protected characteristics are age, disability, gender reassignment, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, and sexual orientation, with marriage and civil partnership relevant to the first limb only.

The courts have been clear about what due regard means. It must be exercised in substance, with rigour and an open mind, before the decision is taken rather than assembled afterwards to defend one already made. It is not a duty to achieve a particular outcome, and it is not satisfied by a general statement that equalities have been considered.

An equalities impact assessment is not itself a statutory requirement. It is the recognised way of producing the evidence the authority needs to discharge the duty, which is why an applicant's Equalities Impact Assessment is best written as material the officer can use rather than as a document arguing for the scheme.

Identifying which characteristics are engaged

Start from the proposal and its users, not from the list of characteristics. A screening that walks down the list writing "no impact" nine times tells the reader nothing except that the exercise was performed.

Ask instead who uses the site now, who will use it after, who lives nearby, who works there, and who passes through. Then ask which of those groups has a characteristic that makes the change land differently.

Some patterns recur.

• Level changes, step-free routes, dropped kerbs, surface materials and gradient affect disabled people and older people directly, and the detail is in the drawings rather than in the narrative.
• The loss or relocation of a community facility affects whichever groups used it, and that is a question of fact to be evidenced rather than assumed.
• Housing mix and accessible dwelling standards affect older and disabled households, and the numbers are set by the policy position in the development plan.
• Meanwhile and construction effects, including diversions of footways and loss of parking, fall hardest on people with mobility impairments and on carers.
• Facilities with a religious or cultural function raise questions about race and religion or belief that need engagement rather than inference.

Note also the interaction between characteristics. A proposal can work for disabled people in general and still fail disabled parents with pushchairs, and screening that treats each characteristic in isolation misses that.

Deciding between screening out and assessing fully

The output of screening is a reasoned decision in one of three forms: no likely differential effect, so no further assessment; likely differential effect that is minor and can be addressed by a specific design change recorded here; or likely differential effect of a scale that needs full assessment.

The middle category is the most common and the most useful, and it is the one thin screenings skip. A screening that identifies a step-free route problem, records the design change that fixes it, and closes the point is doing the work the duty contemplates.

A full assessment is warranted where the scale is large, where a facility serving a protected group is lost or relocated, where the proposal changes access to services, where consultation has raised equalities concerns, or where the authority has asked for one. Major residential and mixed-use schemes in London, where the London Plan and borough policies carry explicit requirements, are routinely assessed in full.

Record the reasons for screening out as carefully as the reasons for going further. The screening decision is the one most likely to be challenged.

Evidence that will hold

Screening fails on evidence more often than on reasoning.

Census data from the Office for National Statistics gives the population profile for the relevant output areas, and it is the standard starting point for age, disability, ethnicity and religion. The English indices of deprivation add a picture of access to services and health. The authority's own evidence base, including the joint strategic needs assessment and the local plan housing needs work, is usually stronger than anything an applicant can assemble independently, and using it has the advantage that the officer already accepts it.

Site-specific evidence matters too: who currently uses the building, at what times, and for what. For a community building, attendance records or a letter from the operator carry more weight than an inference from the building type.

Consultation responses are evidence, and they are the part applicants most often discard. Where a response raises an equalities point, it belongs in the screening whether or not the applicant agrees with it. The consultation record in a Statement of Community Involvement is the natural place to draw that from.

Be honest where evidence is thin. A screening that says a group could not be characterised from available data, and explains what was tried, is more useful than one that fills the gap with assertion.

Mitigation that changes the scheme

The point of screening early is that it can still change the drawings. Once the design is fixed, an assessment can only describe effects.

An illustrative example. A screening on a mixed-use scheme identifies that the proposed public route between the high street and a health centre includes a flight of steps, with the step-free alternative adding roughly 200 metres. The response is not a paragraph explaining that the steps comply with the building regulations. It is a ramped route at a gradient usable without assistance, a rest point, and a level threshold at the health centre entrance, all drawn before submission. That is what due regard looks like in practice.

Other mitigations that commonly emerge are accessible parking in the right place rather than the convenient place, a changing places facility where footfall and dwell time justify it, lighting and sightlines on routes used after dark, wayfinding legible to people with sensory or cognitive impairment, and a construction management commitment on footway diversions.

Where health effects are also in play, the analysis overlaps with a Health Impact Assessment, and the two documents should share a baseline rather than contradict each other.

Writing it so the officer can use it

The officer report is where the authority evidences its due regard, so write the screening to be lifted into it.

1. State the duty and the characteristics considered, in one short paragraph.
2. Set out the evidence used, with sources and dates.
3. Report the screening conclusion for each characteristic engaged, with reasons, and say plainly which were screened out and why.
4. List the design changes made in response, cross-referenced to drawing numbers.
5. Identify any residual effect and whether it can be mitigated by condition or obligation.
6. Note that the duty is continuing, so material scheme changes require the screening to be revisited.

Point six earns its place. Schemes change between validation and committee, and a screening carried out on the submitted layout does not cover a revised one.

Where thin assessments get picked apart

The recurring criticisms are predictable and avoidable. Screenings that assert no impact without evidence. Screenings carried out after the design was fixed, which cannot have informed anything. Documents that conflate the equality duty with a health assessment or a community involvement statement. Assessments that consider the completed development and ignore the construction period entirely. And templates carried over from another scheme with the site name changed, which officers recognise immediately.

The deeper problem with a thin screening is that it weakens the authority's position rather than the applicant's. If the officer report relies on it and the duty is later challenged, the document is the evidence. That is the argument to make internally when the fee for doing it properly is questioned.

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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