Equality impact assessment - emergency planning humanitarian assistance

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1. What is the name of the policy or service that is being assessed?

Emergency Planning – Humanitarian Assistance

2. What are the aims of the policy or service? Whose needs is it designed to meet? What are the current priorities?

To ensure that emergency plans are in place to protect the general public within Wiltshire from the effects of a major incident, and that the procedures are validated through consultation, training and exercise.

The service is designed to meet the needs of those people who live, work or transit the county.

The current priority of work for the service is establishing the Humanitarian Assistance procedures.

3. In what ways might this policy or service affect some groups of people differently? Might some groups find it harder to access the service? Do some groups have particular needs that are not well met by the current policy or service?

The aim of the Humanitarian Assistance work stream is to ensure that all welfare services are available to anyone within the county regardless of whether they are classified into particular groups.

The objective of this workstream is to ensure that no groups will find it harder to access Humanitarian Assistance services.

The systems which are being replaced did not give sufficient thought to the issues which surround the diversity of the population of Wiltshire.

4. What evidence do you have for your judgement? Is there evidence of public concern (e.g. complaints)? Have staff raised concerns? Is there local or national research to suggest that there could be a problem?

Whilst there have been no public complaints to date with regards to the provision of Welfare Services there are a number of reports from major incidents from around the country where diversity issues have been highlighted with regard to the provision of the service.

The Civil Contingencies Act which sets out the emergency planning requirements placed on local authorities refers to the issue.

5. Who have you consulted with as part of your assessment? What were the results? Have you published the results of that consultation? If so, where?

No consultation has taken place yet as the project is only mid way through development. Once we have a more clear definition of the categories of vulnerable persons, work which is being carried out in partnership with the Primary Care Trust, we will consult with representative bodies to ensure that the needs of their groups are met within the procedures.

6. If you have found that the policy or service might have an adverse impact on a particular group of people, can you justify this?

It is the intention of the Emergency Planning Unit to ensure that this service does not impact adversely on any group.

7. If the impact cannot be justified, what do you intend to do about this? Are there changes that you could introduce which would make the policy or service work better for this group of people? Is further research or consultation required?

In the event that we found that a group was adversely affected or that the service we provided did not cater for their needs we would implement an immediate re-evaluation of the service to negate the negative impact.

8. How will you monitor the take-up or impact of the policy or service in future?

All plans and procedures are regularly validated either annually or every two years dependant upon their nature. During this process the diversity impact of the plan or procedure is looked at along with a number of other issues. Further to this if there is an incident or an exercise where the set procedures were adopted then any deficiencies would be highlighted in the debrief process.

In any event, any deficiencies identified are addressed immediately through consultation with the appropriate agencies and amendments promulgated as appropriate.

9. What actions do you plan to take as a result of this equality impact assessment? Please state any resource implications

At present there are no extra actions to be taken. Once we have entered into the consultation phase this may change and we may need to adapt our procedures to take into account any unforeseen sets of circumstances.

10. There is a legal requirement to publish the outcomes of Equality Impact Assessments. Please outline how / where this will happen

In line with corporate information and freedom of information policies.

11. Name of person completing form

County Emergency Planning Officer

Date assessment completed

16 October 2006

12. Senior manager approval

Assistant Director Operations

Date

17 September 2007

Last updated: 13 May 2009