Thursday 4 November 2010

Comprehensive Spending Review: equality impact (1)

Meeting this morning of members of the Equality and Diversity Partnership (EDP) at Leicestershire Centre for Integrated Living (LCIL). We're focusing on the Comprehensive Spending Review and its likely impacts on those people who would be classed as belonging to the various protected characteristics (i.e. age, disability, gender, race, religion or belief, sexual orientation, transgender).

We're told that Leicester City Council is preparing to carry out a thorough Equality Impact Assessment of the effects of the CSR and Emergency Budget, drawing on reports and commentary by the Trades Union Congress, the Fawcett Society, Institute of Fiscal Studies amongst others to inform its approach.

The City Council will be taking as its baseline the economic impact on families in terms of poverty, then considering the proportionality of the people affected within the different protected characteristics. This has been made the priority of the council's Equality Officers, to be completed for presentation to Cabinet on 26 November.

Members of EDP from the Voluntary and Community Sector need to provide up-to-date information about which (and how many) groups, projects and so on within their respective protected characteristics are likely to be negatively affected. Of course, there are disabled people (for example) in the various faith communities, of different ages, sexual orientation etc, so there are cross-cutting issues to consider too. More proof that we're all in this together!

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