Blackburn.gov.uk

Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council
Initial Screening
When should I do an Equality Impact Assessment (EIA)?
An EIA should be done when revising, introducing or measuring a new activity.
What is an activity?

‘activity’ throughout the document

EIA Flow Chart
Service details / overview
(Complete sections 1 – 2)
Initial Screening
(Complete section 3)
identified any
negative
impacts?
Complete Full EIA
(Section 4)
Complete Action Plan
(Section 5)
Complete
Send to Diversity &
Implement
Monitoring & review
Cohesion Manager
Action Plan
(Section 6)
More advice is available in the EIA Guidance Notes
EIA Initial Screening Form

Section 1: Your Details
Managers Name:
Section 2: What is being assessed?
Name of ‘activity’:
Public protection service
Implementation Date: N/A
How was the need for the ‘activity’ identified?
N/A
Statutory regulatory service
How is the service meeting that need?
The Public Protection Service consists of environmental health, trading standards
and licensing. The aim of the service is to provide a safe, healthy and equitable
trading & living environment. This is achieved by a range of actions including:
 Inspection of business premises – providing advice and support where appropriate and enforcing the law where necessary  Investigation of complaints and accidents The service engages with a broad range of partners to achieve its aims. Partners include AGMA Public Partnership, Environmental Health Lancashire and Trading Standards North West together with the Police and Lancashire Fire and Rescue and agencies from the voluntary sector Guidance
What are the aim & objectives of the ‘activity’? The service engages with a broad range of partners to achieve its aims. Partners include the AGMA Public Protection Partnership, Environmental Health Lancashire and Trading Standards North West together with
the Police and Lancs. Fire & Rescue and agencies from the voluntary sector.
The vast majority of the service areas within the Public Protection service are statutory in nature. The areas
consist of Food Safety & Standards, Animal Health & Welfare, Infectious Diseases, Environmental Protection
(Air Quality, Contaminated Land, Statutory Nuisance, Private Water Supplies), Commercial Health & Safety
including safety at sports grounds, Smokefree Compliance, Metrology, Fair Trading, Consumer Safety,
Underage Sales and Alcohol, Gambling and Hackney Carriage & Private Hire Licensing and other
miscellaneous licences. The 20010/11 priorities have been selected to satisfy the Roger’s review of public
protection services and the requirements of Central Government whilst balancing the local needs of the
community
Objectives 2010/2011:
Objective 1 To implement measures in pursuit of acceptable Air Quality within the Borough
Objective 2 Alcohol Licensing & Enforcement
Objective 3 Improve Hygiene in Food businesses
Objective 4 Improving Health & Safety standards in the workplace
Objective 5 Fair & equitable trading environment
Objective 6 Animal Health Enforcement
Objective 7 Addressing the impact of economic downturn to the community
Objective 8 To deliver other core functions of PPS
Group Y/N Positive Y/N Negative
Please refer to
Section C of the
 Have a positive
guidance notes
Explain how
consultation with
 Have a negative
Explain how this
was identified?
Evidence/
Consultation?
hire forum, partner agencies, disability enforcement ops due to the number associations/ services are available. 3) A large number of SME food premise proprietors are of ethnic minority backgrounds and so some inspections undertaken at Ramadan are conducted sensitively during this religious period. 4) Officer trained to communicate food safety to mandarin/Chinese groups. Important information leaflets in English sent to minority groups have a strapline in various relevant languages to seek translation of the content as a matter of urgency 5) Delivering ‘SFBB’ (Safer food better business) advice and mentoring to businesses to improve food safety compliance where there is a record of non compliance vehicles within the borough are wheelchair accessible. A full disability impact assessment will be undertaken in June 2010 for all alternative purpose built hackney carriages to potentially extend the fleet’s accessibility to a wider range of disabilities. 2) Food/Health and Safety service web pages provide a hyperlink to the FSA/HSE web pages where they require translated text and leaflets 3) Exploring options of introducing Braille text on PH/HC licence badges to assist blind and partially sighted people to identify drivers for various reasons established and being monitored. Consumer advice policy – assistance to vulnerable consumers through small claims court. 2) Electric blanket testing campaigns undertaken for the elderly and faulty blankets replaced for new. parents of children under 5 years of age in socially deprived areas – educating parents in best practice methods of buying, preparing and making fresh nutritional meals within a budget. 2) Assistance given to private hire/hackney carriage driver licence applicants in the form of discretionary funding (means tested) by job centre plus None at present. The potential indirect discrimination raised at Race/ethnicity may need exploring further, See Pg 11 of the
although the risk in this occurring is seen as minimal as the service is operated transparently and Guidance notes
consistently using ISOQAR accredited quality managed processes. The licensing of private hire and hackney carriage drivers and vehicles is open to anyone to apply and will only be issued to applicants positively impacts some groups and fulfilling the required criteria irrelevant of race/ethnicity. The enforcement of unmarked vans potentially belonging to the travelling community is also not seen as a high risk activity as these vans are normally only negatively impacts or overlooks other targeted following intelligence received and not chosen because they belong to a particular group sections of the community, what effect will this have on the relationship between these groups? How will you manage this relationship? The majority of the cost is picked up within the existing PPS mainstream budget, however a small element of achieve benefits of grant funding is given from external sources such as the community safety and Children’s Services where we share a service or deliver on behalf of a service Benefit Indicator For example
A holistic and efficient way to deliver shared NI182, NI190, No of inspections, No of educational services by means of a combination of improving campaigns, No of schools and the no of children targets/indicators will public health and safety and potentially reducing participating, no of parents participating, no of enforcement activities by the delivery of early intervention work and education to both consumers In your initial screening (Q2) have you identified any negative impacts?
- Complete a full EIA

No √ - Sign & send this form to Diversity & Cohesion Manager
Signature of person completing the initial screening: Y Powell Signature of Diversity & Cohesion Manager:

Source: https://www.blackburn.gov.uk/EIA/1813-DL-Public_Protection_Service_Initial_Screening_Form_2010.pdf