Swindon Borough Council is committed to promoting equality of access to, and appropriate use of, its services and facilities and will treat all people equally regardless of race, gender, disability, age, sexual orientation or belief.

Diversity Impact Assessments allow the Council to test whether this commitment is being realised by identifying any discriminatory outcomes being caused and taking appropriate steps to address them.

Swindon Borough Council is carrying out Diversity Impact Assessments on our services, functions, policies and procedures as part of the work on the Equality Standard for Local Government. This includes existing policies, new policies or those, which are being changed. We are also using the Equality Standard as the framework for meeting our duties under the Race Relations Amendment Act 2000, the Disability Discrimination Act 2005 and the Equality Act 2006, which established a legal duty to carry out race equality impact assessments.

What are Diversity Impact Assessments?

Sometimes, these may be referred to as Equality Impact Assessments. They are a tool to identify whether or not policies, services and procedures are having an adverse impact on a particular group of people due to disability, gender, race, age, religious belief or sexual orientation. Alternatively, in the case of new or policies being reviewed, this exercise helps identify a potential adverse impact. In other words, are our policies and procedures meeting our customers' needs and meeting our legal obligations? The idea is to identify any unintended impact or "institutional" barrier, act or omission affecting individuals and communities detrimentally.

Additionally the Diversity Impact Assessment considers if the policy or service has a potential for positive impact on groups of people in terms of disability, gender, race, age, religious belief or sexual orientation equality. Conversely, the Diversity Impact Assessment looks at how the policy may actively promote equality or good community relations.

The results of the Diversity Impact Assessment are used to set equality objectives that become part of business plans, leading to improvements to services and employment practices. They might also show that we need more information about our customers and service users, for example through monitoring or consultation.

We have developed a three-year schedule of Diversity Impact Assessments across all Directorates. The full schedule is detailed below. If you require information regarding the Relevance Tests carried out on the documents, please do not hesitate to contact the Equalities Unit.

List of Diversity Impact Assessments updated on 7th Novemberr 2008

Detailed below is a list of impact assessments by directorate. This listing represents our best list at the time of publishing this document. We will review the list each year to make sure that we include new policy proposals and to revise the equality impact assessment schedule if any changes are necessary.

Contact details:

For more information and for copies of documents please contact us using the details below.

The Equality & Diversity Unit
Swindon Borough Council
Civic Offices
Euclid Street
Swindon
SN1 2JH

E-mail: equality@swindon.gov.uk

Telephone 01793 445500