Commentary

• Why is transparency and review important?

The business case

Transparency and accountability allows for participation and monitoring by individuals and groups with an interest in the issues concerned. It also has the potential to improve outcomes by highlighting impacts that might have been missed.

On-going monitoring is vital to ensure that ensure that any action that is taken as a result of the assessment has the desired effect.

The legal case

The Equality Act 2010 (Specific Duties) (Scotland) Regulations 2012 requires listed authorities, where and to the extent necessary to fulfil the equality duty, to assess the impact of applying a proposed new or revised policy or practice against the need to eliminate discrimination, advance equality of opportunity and foster good relations.

A listed authority must:

• Take account of the results of the assessment in respect of the policy or practice

• Publish, within a reasonable period, the results of any assessment of a policy or practice it decides to apply

There is no legal requirement under The Equality Act 2010 (Specific Duties) (Scotland) Regulations 2012 regarding monitoring and review. However a court could consider non-statutory guidance published by the EHRC , including  Assessing Impact and the public sector equality duty when deciding whether the actions of an authority have been reasonable. This guidance explains how assessment of impact should include monitoring and review of actual impact.

• What are the practical considerations?

Information that should be published will include:

• The methodology used for carrying out EQHRIAs and

• The report on any EQHRIA which has been carried out including details of consultations and other evidence used to inform the assessment; conclusions, recommendations and further monitoring required; and a person identified as responsible for the EQHRIA in question.

EQHRIAs should be displayed in such a way that they are easily accessible to interested groups and individuals. This means that they should be clearly signposted on relevant web pages of the organisation’s website, and not simply catalogued in a long list of EQHRIAs on a single web page. 

Post-assessment monitoring and review procedures should be set up to consider whether recommendations have been implemented, whether they have been effective, and what the on-going impacts of the policy or practice are.  The monitoring procedures should specify: who is responsible for monitoring the policy, the date when the policy will next be reviewed and what evidence would trigger an early review. The procedures should also specify if there is any data which needs to be collected on an on-going basis and how often it will be analysed. Consideration should also be given as to how to continue to involve affected groups and communities in the monitoring process.

Practice pilot example:

In Renfrewshire a template to ensure that impact assessment results are reported to Elected Members in a standard format and publicised with Board Reports on the Council website was devised and was rolled out from August 2013.