Equality impact assessment for consultation online services
Issue date: 29 July 2010
Link to 'Equality impact assessment for consultation online services
What is an Equality Impact Assessment (EQIA)?
As a public body the Charity Commission has statutory duties to produce equality schemes for race, disability and gender. As anti-discrimination law has evolved over recent years we have seen the introduction of laws and regulations prohibiting discrimination in respect of age, sexual orientation, gender identity and religion and belief. EQIAs are one of the ways in which the Charity Commission ensures that it meets these obligations.
Why are we consulting?
The Charity Commission already provides an online option for a number of its services and the range and sophistication of our online offer continues to increase. At the moment more traditional methods of using a particular service are still available, for example a paper based form.
The Commission is now seeking to move to a position where the bulk of our interactions with customers are done online. This means that some traditional hard copy methods of doing business will be phased out.
A move to online services has a number of benefits for the customer, the Commission, and the environment. However, the increasing use of online options and the withdrawal of some existing methods of operating will have an impact on our customers.
Who is this EQIA aimed at?
The main focus of this EQIA is on charity trustees and employees and their professional advisers who use our services.
The consultation period is 12 weeks. We will accept responses up to 29th October.
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Consultation document HTML format
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Consultation document PDF format
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How, where and when to send comments
Everyone is welcome to respond to this consultation and we would be grateful if you could email your response with the subject, ‘Online Services Consultation’.
It would also be helpful if you could provide us with the following standard information in the order requested as part of the introduction to your response. This will allow us to manage the responses and use the information more effectively, as well as helping us to keep you up to date with any progress:
- Organisation / Charity name (if applicable)
- Charity number (if applicable)
- Contact name
- Position within organisation (if applicable)
- Contact number
- Contact address
- Contact e-mail
- Confidentiality Statement (if applicable - see following sections)
- Consultation response / answers to consultation questions
Where appropriate, we encourage you to provide evidence in support of your response. If you are a representative group, please provide a summary of the people and organisations you represent as part of your response.
How we will treat the information provided
All information contained within the responses (including personal information) may be published or disclosed in accordance with the access to information regimes, primarily set out in the Freedom of Information Act 2000, the Data Protection Act 1998 and the Environmental Information Regulations 2004.
If you want information given in response to the consultation to be kept confidential it will only be possible to do so if it is consistent with our legal obligations. There is a statutory Code of Practice under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 which public authorities must comply with. This sets out how confidential information must be dealt with. We cannot give assurances that all information will be kept confidential but we will take into account any representations made by you.
If you object to any of the information (including your personal details) which you are giving in response to the consultation being published, please say so. It would be helpful for any such objections to be supported with an explanation of why you regard the information to be confidential so that a decision can be made as to whether there are grounds for not publishing such information.
What will happen at the end of the consultation period?
Following the formal consultation period, the Charity Commission will consider the responses and reach a decision in terms of how best to apply the findings to improve our online offer. A summary of the responses to the consultation will be available on the Charity Commission’s website and intranet, and in different formats on request. Your comments are important to us because of our increased focus on our external customers.
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