Every decision, every directorate, one standard of equality analysis
EqualityIQ gives councils evidence-cited EIAs for service changes, budget decisions and policy reviews — with your local population data built in, and every assessment tracked to sign-off and beyond.
The challenge
More equality-relevant decisions than any other public body
Councils make more equality-relevant decisions than any other public body — service redesigns, budget savings, closures, charging changes, local plans — across every directorate, all year round. The Public Sector Equality Duty applies to each of them, and judicial review has repeatedly turned on whether an EIA was evidenced, timely and genuinely considered. Yet most equality teams are small and research time is scarce, so thorough analysis gets rationed to the decisions most likely to be challenged. The result is familiar: strong assessments on the high-profile decisions, thin ones everywhere else — and the thin ones are where the risk lives.
What changes
Built for the way councils actually work
Your area's data, in every assessment
Census 2021, deprivation indices and public health indicators for your area are loaded during onboarding and drawn on throughout — so analysis reflects your population, not national averages. Every figure states which area it describes.
Consistency across every directorate
The same evidence-based structure and the same impact-rating thresholds whether the proposal comes from adult social care, planning or leisure — reviewable, comparable and committee-ready.
A register you can govern
Dashboards track every EIA's status, risk rating, actions and review dates across the council — so equality leads see the whole picture, not a folder of documents.
Facing reorganisation?
Local government reorganisation means new unitary councils inheriting the policies, services and decisions of the councils they replace — and every harmonised policy needs fresh equality analysis. That's hundreds of assessments on a fixed timetable, at exactly the moment officer capacity is stretched thinnest. EqualityIQ is built for that: the same evidenced analysis applied consistently across the whole inherited register, so the new council starts with a complete equality evidence base rather than a backlog.
The real problem
Beyond the tick-box
Everyone in the public sector knows the failure mode: an equality impact assessment written after the decision, from a template, under deadline pressure — completed, filed, and never used. That's rarely a failure of the people writing them. It's that thorough analysis has always been expensive enough to ration, so it goes to the highest-profile decisions and everything else gets what's left. The duty asks for due regard, not paperwork — and when the evidence arrives with the first draft, on every assessment, genuine engagement becomes the realistic path rather than the exceptional one.
See it on one of your real policies
Request a demoEvidence for your sector
What your assessments draw on
- Census 2021 demographics for your local authority area, down to ward level
- Index of Multiple Deprivation and OHID Fingertips health indicators for your area
- A curated evidence base of approved organisations, matched to your sector and cited by characteristic
- Your own submissions — JSNAs, consultation findings and local research — added to a private knowledge base
Questions
Common questions from councils
See it on a real council decision
We'll run EqualityIQ on one of your live proposals — no commitment, no setup required.
Request a demo