About EqualityIQ

Built by equality experts,
powered by AI

EqualityIQ is built by Equality Impact Consulting Ltd — one of the UK's leading specialist equality and social impact consultancies — to solve a persistent problem across the UK public sector.

Who we are

A partnership between equality expertise and technology

EqualityIQ is the digital platform of Equality Impact Consulting Ltd — bringing Laura Walker's specialist PSED expertise, built up over more than 22 years of practice, directly into the day-to-day equality assessment work of councils, colleges and housing associations.

We set out to solve a problem we kept seeing across the public sector — that producing legally defensible Equality Impact Assessments takes significant officer time, specialist knowledge that isn't always available in-house, and a consistency that's hard to maintain across departments.

EqualityIQ embeds genuine PSED expertise into an AI-powered tool that uses real local data to help organisations produce thorough, evidence-grounded assessments in a fraction of the time.

Laura Walker, Director of Equality Impact Consulting Ltd
Fellowship
FIEDIP
Fellow, Institute of Equality & Diversity Practitioners
Experience
22+
years in equality & social impact

The expertise behind EqualityIQ

Laura Walker FIEDIP

Director, Equality Impact Consulting Ltd

Laura Walker is one of the UK's leading social impact specialists, with over 22 years of experience in assessing, measuring, and evaluating the equality and social impacts of infrastructure and planning projects.

Throughout her career, Laura has supported public and private sector organisations to comply with their duties under the Equality Act 2010, while helping to maximise positive social outcomes. Her project experience includes major national infrastructure programmes — HS2 Phase 1 and 2b, A303 Stonehenge, Thames Tideway Tunnel, the Bakerloo Line Extension, and the A428 Black Cat — as well as local authority work including Westminster City Council and West Oxfordshire. Laura has also represented councils in Compulsory Purchase Order processes, providing specialist equality expertise at public inquiry stage.

As Associate Director at AECOM, Laura supported National Highways to develop a social value framework for major projects and developed evidence and methodology for DfT's Transport Appraisal Guidance (TAG). Her expertise in equality impact assessment practice directly informs the EqualityIQ knowledge base, assessment structure, and evidence standards.

Expert certification available: Organisations can opt for Laura's direct review and certification of individual assessments — a named FIEDIP practitioner signing off your EIA for added assurance and legal defensibility.

About Equality Impact Consulting Ltd

Equality Impact Consulting Ltd

Equality Impact Consulting Ltd provides specialist equality and social impact services to public and private sector organisations. Services include Equality Impact Assessments for projects, plans and policies; support with PSED requirements for planning applications, DCO and CPO processes; social value plans; community benefits plans; bespoke social impact measurement frameworks; and focused engagement with equality groups.

Clients include West Oxfordshire District Council, Westminster City Council, Hyndburn Borough Council, National Highways, and major infrastructure developers.

Visit equalityimpact.co.uk →

Why we built EqualityIQ

Expertise that exists but doesn't scale

EqualityIQ came from a simple observation: the expertise needed to do equality assessments well exists, but it doesn't scale. One experienced practitioner can only review so many assessments, and most public bodies can't have that expertise in every team.

By combining Laura's specialist methodology with AI and verified local data, we've built something that applies that same standard to every assessment an organisation produces — while your officers keep the judgement, the local knowledge and the sign-off.

EqualityIQ extends that expertise to the councils, colleges and housing associations that need it — at a scale a single consultant cannot reach alone.

The problem

How EIAs often get produced

  • Commissioned days before the deadline
  • Officer researches from scratch each time
  • Evidence thin or missing for several characteristics
  • Quality varies by officer and workload
  • No audit trail of what evidence was considered
  • Template completed, not genuinely analysed
  • Decision already made before EIA is started

What EqualityIQ changes

How EIAs work with EqualityIQ

  • Thorough first draft from the outset — space to review before the decision is taken
  • Evidence pulled from curated knowledge base automatically
  • All nine characteristics covered consistently
  • Same evidential standard on every assessment
  • Full citation trail for every claim made
  • Structured output built for committee papers
  • Officer reviews, contextualises, and signs off

Our principles

What we believe about equality analysis

Evidence, not assertion

An EIA that says "disabled people may be affected" without citing evidence is not analysis. Every claim in an EqualityIQ output is tied to a named source.

Officers stay in control

AI produces the draft. The equality officer reviews, contextualises, and signs off. Professional accountability always stays with your organisation.

Transparency over black boxes

Every citation is traceable. Officers can see exactly where the evidence came from and follow it up. No hidden reasoning, no unexplained conclusions.

Built for the duty, not just the document

The PSED requires genuine engagement with equality, not a completed form. EqualityIQ is designed to support real analysis — not to help public bodies tick boxes faster.

Your data is yours

Proposal descriptions are never used to train AI models. Your organisation's work stays in your account. Full stop.

Better decisions, not just better documents

The goal isn't a well-formatted EIA. It's decisions that genuinely account for the people most likely to be affected by inequality.

How it's built

Purpose-built for the UK public sector — not adapted from something else

EqualityIQ is not a general-purpose AI tool with an equality impact assessment template bolted on. It is built specifically for the requirements of PSED compliance across the UK public sector.

The knowledge base is curated by hand — research selected from approved organisations for each protected characteristic, reviewed for quality and relevance, and updated as new publications are released. The AI is instructed to draw only on this curated evidence, not the open web.

The output structure is designed around what equality officers and governance teams actually need: characteristic-by-characteristic analysis, transparent citations, impact ratings, and a format ready for committee papers.

EqualityIQ is built on Claude, Anthropic's AI model, chosen for its accuracy, careful reasoning, and strong safety standards — important qualities for a tool used in professional public sector practice.

Claude (Anthropic) UK-hosted infrastructure UK GDPR compliant Census 2021 data OHID Fingertips Curated knowledge base

Evidence drawn from approved sources

Age UK Mencap Runnymede Trust Scope Stonewall Barnardo's Fawcett Society NSPCC Early Intervention Foundation Census 2021 OHID Fingertips

See it on a real proposal

We'll run EqualityIQ on one of your organisation's live decisions — free, no commitment required.

Request a free demo See all features