Approaches towards consultation and engagement

ESHIAs are developed alongside consultation and engagement. This is because they are screening templates, to be carried out at appropriate stocktake moments. Sometimes only one will be necessary, for example if a government change is brought in that requires implementation.

More usually as a council, we would seek to involve communities and stakeholders in development of policy or in changes proposed to policies or services and would therefore carry out one at the start of a consultation process and one at the end.

These screening assessments are recommended to be undertaken at timely points in the development and implementation of the proposed service change.

There is therefore no precise or fixed timetable for an ESHIA, as it will depend upon the circumstances in which a service change is being proposed or developed. These would always be dependent upon service area policy development and the timescales and other context in which a service area is considering a service change or a policy is being proposed.

This enables energies to be focussed on review and monitoring and ongoing evidence collection about the positive or negative impacts of a service change upon groupings in the community, and for any adjustments to be considered and made accordingly.

Where a policy is being proposed or a new strategy is being developed, upon which we then seek to gain views from the community and from groupings within the community, an initial Equality, Social Inclusion and Health Impact Assessment (ESHIA) would be carried out and presented to cabinet alongside the request for permission to consult on changes proposed. This first screening would accordingly include consideration of likely anticipated impacts, whether positive, neutral or negative, based upon evidence available at that point including any previous consultation and engagement. A further screening is then planned in to be undertaken following the consultation, to record and seek to utilise the feedback received.

Additional efforts would be made to engage with the protected characteristic groupings most likely to be affected and their advocates, as well as stakeholder groups and organisations, and to identify and seek to enhance any likely positive impacts, identify likely neutral impacts, and identify and minimise likely negative impacts.

The approach also demonstrates efforts around continuing to review and monitor impacts, for example through keeping abreast of good practice, evidence and data from elsewhere and continuing to develop our own good practice and build upon our own evidence base. Using this part of the ESHIA helps us to put on record how we will continue to involve and engage with communities and groupings and with elected members as representatives of those communities and groupings.

This approach, used for examples such as the development and production of the Economic Growth Strategy, demonstrates efforts made to gain feedback from target groupings, the wider community, and stakeholders, including with regard to impacts that could be either positive or negative or neutral in relation to equality, social inclusion and health and wellbeing.

Another example would be the Local Plan Partial Review, as that had to go through a series of formal stages, each presented to cabinet, and an ESHIA was therefore completed at each stage.

There can be a tendency to view ESHIAs primarily as documents that focus upon risks and that record likely negative equality impacts. It is truer to say that, more often than not, they present as an opportunity to articulate a range of likely positive impacts and neutral impacts across protected characteristic groupings as well as identifying and seeking to minimise any likely negative impacts. It holds good, for example, that policy around enhancements to the public realm, designed to facilitate economic growth through measures such as lighting and walking and cycling routes, are likely to achieve positive equality impacts for people in the grouping of disability, including those with neurodiverse conditions as well as those with visual impairments or other physical access considerations.