Equality Impact Assessment Help Resource

An EIA should be used to help you design your new document, and continuously review it right up until the document is ready to be approved. The EIA will help you identify what existing elements of a document, or status quo, is positive in relation to people with protected characteristics. You may want to keep these details or identify areas that require more development: a new document has the ability to support this.

The assessment must be completed at the start of any new or existing policy, guideline, procedure or strategy development or review. The EIA form is an integral part of the templates. An EIA should not be simply carried out after you have written a new document.

Part 1: Possible Negative Impacts

• Consider what could be included or excluded from the document that could cause it to have a negative impact on a protected characteristic. These aren’t things necessarily you have decided are going to happen, but are considerations that you have identified that must not happen, or, where they do happen, mitigation will need to be put in place. For example, if the document applies to adult patients only, what considerations are needed for children and young people? 
• If you are undertaking a change to an existing document, the starting point for this would be listing any best practice or elements that currently positively impact on people with a protected characteristic. These will form your first potential negative impacts you have considered, as there is a chance they may not be included in the final document.
• In the ‘Action/Mitigation’ column for each of the negative impacts, demonstrate how you will ensure they won’t happen or how they will be mitigated. An example of this may be an action to commit to keeping an existing element of the previous policy where this has been identified as best practice.

Part 2: Possible Opportunity for Positive Impacts

• Consider what could be included or excluded from the document that could result in things being improved from what they are currently in relation to each of the protected characteristics. 
• Start by listing any incidents, known health inequalities, complaints or issues that have been identified within the current document for people from a protected characteristic. There is an opportunity for these to be addressed within the design of the new document.
• Secondly, list any best practice from other organisations or ideas that have come from consultation as possible opportunities, to include in any new document and process. This isn’t a list of all the things you will include, however, it is meant to reflect the scope in an ideal situation where resources were not limited. Some opportunities are possible to improve the experience of people from each of the protected characteristics in the final document.
• In the ‘Action/Mitigation’ column you must select those opportunities you have decided to include in the final document design or implementation. List what actions are going to be taken to ensure they are implemented.

Part 3: Combined Action Plan

• This section should include actions identified and listed in parts one and two.
• The aim is to record what actions you will take to prevent any existing positive practice being lost and prevent any new negative impacts.

Part 4: Information Consulted and Evidence Base

• This section should include detail and information sources you have used to inform your decision making around any identified impacts and actions listed in the previous sections. This will include advice from subject matter experts, accessing journals or community organisation websites, focus groups and statistical information such as workforce metrics, health inequalities data or population demographics.

Part 5: Update Log

• An EIA should be started at the beginning of a document review or development process. 
• The assessment should be updated and amended as more information becomes available or the scope of the review changes.
• The person completing the EIA should log updates in this section to ensure there is an audit trail.

Parts 6-8: Mitigations, Accessible Information Standard, and EIA Approval

• Consider whether all the potential negative impacts identified in part one have been fully mitigated in the action plan and record this in part 6. 
• All controlled documents are published in an accessible format, however there may be aspects of your document relevant to the accessible information standard and should be recorded in part 7.  
• During the development phase and prior to your document being submitted for approval, the EIA must be fully completed and signed off by the Equality, Equity and Inclusion Team: EIA@nca.nhs.uk 
• Please note that there is a 20 working day turnaround target for EIA approval, and authors are encouraged to factor this in when reviewing their documents. 
• Where there is a statutory or significant service risk, requests to expedite the review process can be made by exception to the EEI Programme Manager.