Equalities Impact Assessment

The Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED) is set out in Section 149 of the Equality Act 2010. It requires public authorities, including local planning authorities, to have due regard to the need to eliminate unlawful discrimination, advance equality of opportunity, and foster good relations between people who share a protected characteristic and those who do not. Planning committees must demonstrate that they have considered equality implications when determining applications.

The Equality Act 2010 defines nine protected characteristics: age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race (including ethnicity and nationality), religion or belief, sex, and sexual orientation. An EqIA considers how the development may affect people who share any of these characteristics, recognising that some people may experience intersecting disadvantages across multiple characteristics.

There is no statutory requirement for developers to submit an EqIA with a planning application. However, the local planning authority must comply with the PSED when making its decision, and an EqIA from the applicant helps them discharge this duty. Where the council identifies potential equality impacts, they may request an EqIA as additional information. Some councils include it on their validation checklists for qualifying applications.

Yes. Planning decisions have been successfully challenged through judicial review where local authorities failed to have due regard to the PSED. If a council grants or refuses permission without properly considering equality implications, affected parties can seek to have the decision quashed. Submitting an EqIA with your application helps ensure the council can demonstrate compliance with the duty.

An accessibility assessment focuses on physical access for disabled people, covering features like level thresholds, lift provision, and wheelchair-accessible routes. An EqIA is broader, considering impacts across all nine protected characteristics and examining social, economic, and cultural effects beyond physical accessibility. A good EqIA draws on accessibility assessments as one input but also considers impacts on elderly residents, ethnic minority communities, religious groups, and other protected groups.

Key data sources include census data on population demographics, deprivation indices, local authority equalities monitoring data, public health profiles, community profiles published by voluntary and community organisations, housing needs assessments, and the results of any community engagement carried out as part of the EqIA process. The depth of data analysis should be proportionate to the scale of the development and its potential to affect protected groups.

Construction can disproportionately affect certain groups. Noise and dust may particularly impact elderly or disabled residents who spend more time at home. Temporary road closures and diversions can affect mobility-impaired people, pregnant women, and parents with pushchairs. The EqIA should identify these differential impacts and propose mitigation through the Construction Management Plan, such as maintaining accessible routes and providing advance notice of works.

Common mitigation measures include designing accessible public realm and housing that exceeds minimum standards, providing community facilities that meet the needs of diverse groups, ensuring construction phase communication reaches non-English speakers, maintaining accessible pedestrian routes during construction, providing affordable and specialist housing to address identified needs, and establishing monitoring frameworks to track equality outcomes. Measures should be specific, measurable, and implementable.

For major developments with significant potential to affect protected groups, community engagement is strongly recommended and may be expected by the council. Engagement should use methods that are accessible to diverse groups, such as multilingual materials, accessible venues, varied consultation times, and targeted outreach through community organisations. The views gathered should directly inform the assessment of impacts and the design of mitigation measures.

An EqIA and social value assessment are complementary but distinct. The EqIA focuses on compliance with the Equality Act 2010 and identification of differential impacts on protected groups. Social value is a broader concept encompassing the economic, social, and environmental benefits that a development delivers to the community. A development that scores well on social value metrics may still have negative equality impacts that need to be identified and mitigated through the EqIA process.