The Equality Act (2010) places a legal duty on all public sector organisations to pay due regard to the need to eliminate discrimination and promote equality with regard to race, disability and gender. For those decisions identified as having a high relevance to equality, an assessment must be made of the potential for them to affect equality between different groups.
High quality information about the equality impact of savings proposals is necessary to enable budget decisions to be taken in an informed, fair and transparent way. At a time of significant financial pressure this is essential to maintaining the council's commitment to tackling inequality and disadvantage, as well as fulfilling the authority's legal duties.
These are the equality impact assessments for the budget proposal for 2011-12. These Equality Impact Assessments have been undertaken to enable us to understand the impact the savings proposals may have on equality of different sections of our community.
The equality impact assessments relate to specific proposals and should be read in conjunction with the Budget 2011-12 document pack for the cabinet meeting on Wednesday, February 9.