Legislation

The Equality Act 2010 protects people from discrimination in the workplace and in wider society and makes it unlawful to directly or indirectly discriminate based on one or more of the 9 protected characteristics, and provides protection in terms of harassment, victimisation, perceptive or associative discrimination.

Protected characteristics:

• Age
• Disability
• Gender reassignment
• Marriage and civil partnerships
• Pregnancy and maternity
• Race
• Religion and belief
• Sex
• Sexual Orientation

For more information go to: Equality Act 2010: guidance

With the Equality Act came the Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED). The broad purpose of the equality duty is to:

• integrate equality into the day-to-day business of public sector organisations and make public sector bodies accountable for their performance on equality and
  transparent to public scrutiny
• It requires ‘equality’ considerations to be reflected in the design of policies and other documents and the delivery of services and for these issues to be kept under review.

The Human Rights Act 1998 sets out the fundamental rights and freedoms that everyone in the UK is entitled to. It incorporates the rights set out in the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) into domestic British law. The Human Rights Act came into force in the UK in October 2000.

The act gives effect to the human rights set out in the European Convention on Human Rights.These rights are called Convention rights.

Examples of Convention or human rights include:

• the right to life
• the right to respect for private and family life
• the right to freedom of religion and belief.
• The Human Rights Act means you can take action in the UK courts if your human rights have been breached.

For more information go to The Human Rights Act Equality and Human Rights Commission

The Modern Slavery Act 2015 makes provision about slavery, servitude forced or compulsory labour and human trafficking, including provision for the protection of victims. Modern day slavery refers to any form of forced human exploitation for labour or service, such as human trafficking and forced labour.

For more information go to Modern Slavery Act 2015

Equality Impact Assessments (EIA’s) is a tool that is used to assess the potential or actual impact of any policies, procedures, services or projects that might have on staff, patients/service users, carers and parents from different equality perspectives based on the Equality Act 2010’s protected characteristics definitions.
The EIA should be carried out in the early stages of the development or review of the policy, procedure or project. It will enable any adjustments to be made at an early stage, rather than as an afterthought. This helps to ensure that equality is placed at the heart of everything we are doing.