Rationale for our approaches

Our template for our impact assessment is very much grounded in our Strategic Equality Objectives Action Plan, which is something we are likewise required to do under our Public Sector Equality Duty placed upon us by the Equality Act 2010. In the current plan, for 2020-2024, approved by Cabinet in July 2020, we identified this work as a specific action to address, as follows:

Strategic Equality Objectives Action Plan 2020-2024
Overall Strategic Action B: collect and analyse more proactively

Incorporate health and well-being assessments into equality and social inclusion impact assessments for service areas, in order to equip service areas to have due regard to the three aims when considering and planning service changes, and to link in with climate change appraisals to form a coherent suite of materials.

Our revisions bring health and well being to the fore, and link in with the Shropshire Plan as well as into the work that we do with partners through the Shropshire and Telford and Wrekin Integrated Care System (ICS), to ensure that health is within all our policies. The aim is to visibly demonstrate that we are working together to address health inequalities for people in protected characteristic groupings, and across all communities. These revisions also very much sit alongside our continued efforts to keep the screening template proportionate for our service areas to complete when they are proposing a service change such as a new policy, a revised strategy or the introduction of new national legislation.