Good practice in Section 75 equality monitoring

Section 75 of the Northern Ireland Act places a statutory obligation on public authorities to carry out their functions with due regard to the need to promote equality of opportunity and good relations. In this briefing document we reflect on what equality monitoring and Section 75 mean as well as monitoring requirements. We also highlight good practice examples and consider the advantages and disadvantages of using hard copy or online questionnaires.

What is equality monitoring?

According to the Equality Commission for Northern (ECNI), equality monitoring is the process of collecting, storing and analysing information that is relevant to, and necessary for, the purpose of promoting equality of opportunity between different categories of persons.

Both in employment and service delivery, monitoring enables the service provider to keep under review the existence or absence of equality of opportunity or treatment between different categories of persons. The basic purpose is to highlight possible inequalities, help to investigate why these might be occurring and whether action needs to be taken to remove any unfairness or disadvantage.

Equality monitoring is not solely about the collection of data. Nor should it be seen as an end in itself. Rather, monitoring provides a basis for positive action to promote equality of opportunity.

View Equality Commission’s Short Guide (PDF)

What does Section 75 of the Northern Ireland Act mean?

Section 75 of the Northern Ireland Act 1998 requires designated public authorities to have due regard to the need to promote equality of opportunity in relation to the nine equality categories:

• Between persons of different religious belief, political opinion, racial group, age, marital status or sexual orientation
• Between men and women generally
• Between persons with a disability and persons without
• Between persons with dependants and persons without

Public authorities are required to have regard to the desirability of promoting good relations between persons of different religious belief, political opinion and racial group.

Under the Brown principles, it is good practice to keep adequate records that will show that Section 75 goals have actually been considered and pondered and to promote transparency and discipline in the decision-making process.

Good practice examples

We are promoting and showcasing good practice examples in collating and reporting Section 75 equality monitoring.

Our good practice includes case studies from Developing Healthy Communities Clear Project and AWARE.

The Clear Project – “At Developing Healthy Communities we work to a community development approach which values diversity because it ensures services are fair and accessible to all. The Clear Project have been asking training participants to complete a standardised Section 75 monitoring form for many years. The introduction of online training meant we had to rethink how we captured this information and that’s when we introduced online data capture processes. We’re delighted at how this has automated our work and helped with reporting the information back to our funder. The total row function in Microsoft Excel helped when computing the overall information so we would encourage you to look further into this.”

View Case Study

AWARE – “AWARE is the depression charity for Northern Ireland - and the only charity working exclusively for people with depression and bipolar disorder. Treating people equally and with respect is one of our key ways of working. We deliver mental health and well-being programmes for a variety of providers. Section 75 information has been captured for services provided through statutory funding. We look forward to reflecting on the information we have compiled to help identify current and future needs, possible inequalities and checking that a cross-section of people have been reached.”

View Case Study

Advantages and disadvantages of using paper or online questionnaires

Here is a short reflection from our case study projects on some of the advantages and disadvantages of using paper or online questionnaires for collating Section 75 information.

Version	Advantages	Disadvantages
Paper	· You can encourage everyone to complete it	· Covid risk concerns with using paper · Information has then to be compiled manually · Remembering to add the questionnaire into the training pack · Trainer could forget to collect this at session
Online	· The participant is inputting the data therefore process is automated · Allows for a large amount of information to be processed quickly · Data can be exported into Excel spreadsheet e.g. from Survey Monkey or Google Forms · Pivot tables can be created easily in spreadsheets to display and report back on data · Some packages provide survey results which can give a quick analysis of all answers presented in bar charts, pie charts, etc.	· Some software packages will cost money e.g. Survey Monkey costs £372 (£310 + £62 vat)[1] per year for the standard annual plan. This allows access for two devices at any one time.[2] You can change the devices, but you are limited to the number of changes you can make. · Design customisation and data analysis is limited on free packages e.g. Google Forms (Techradar, 2020). · Time consuming at first to set up initial questionnaire · Have to chase people up so return rate could be smaller · Some participants prefer paper copies · Health literacy issues can’t be supported

[1] Price was correct as of 28^th January 2022

[2] Information was correct as of 29^th April 2022

Call for other examples

We would love to hear from other contract holders who are willing to share their model of good practice in terms of collecting, storing and analysing Section 75 information.

We would encourage you to visit the ECNI website for further details on Section 75. The equality policy for Service Providers is a particularly useful resource which can be downloaded from their resources section.

Please contact brenda@dhcni.com with your ideas and for further details.