text: Equality Impact Assessment - Renfrewshire Website
  The Equality Act 2010 introduced a duty on public bodies such as Planning Authorities to ensure that they consider the needs of all individuals.
  The Equality Act is central to plan, policy and strategy preparation providing an opportunity to promote equality and human rights and to ensure that plans and strategies do not result in discrimination.
  When a plan, policy or strategy is being prepared, planning authorities should consider the potential consequences on particular groups. The Act covers nine protected characteristics and the protected characteristic groups, they are as follows:
  To assess the potential impact of plans, policies and/or strategies, an Equality Impact Assessment requires to be undertaken.
  The Equality Impact Assessment is a two part process which involves initial screening of the strategy or policy framework and then if required a full Equality Impact Assessment will be undertaken. A full assessment is required if the initial screening identifies that any of the equality groups would be negatively affected by the plan/policy/ strategy.
  Considering the potential impacts in the early stages of plan or strategy preparation helps ensure that people's needs are met in different ways and opportunities to promote equality and human rights are maximised.