Discretionary Housing Payments - creating a Scottish scheme: equality impact assessment

Recommendations and Conclusion

When reviewing the policy, we considered it against the three needs of the public sector equality duty and came to the following conclusions:

• advance equality of opportunity; this policy has the potential to bring people above the poverty line, giving children and priority families greater opportunities to succeed in education, the workplace and have better outcomes in health and life expectancies. The policy will particularly improve the equality of opportunities for children and young people, women and minority ethnic groups, where higher levels of poverty persist.
• eliminate unlawful discrimination; as above, there are particular groups who tend to be the hardest hit by UK Government welfare changes, namely lone parents, who are mainly women, and large families. Bringing in a Scottish DHP scheme will give LAs more flexibility in how they support their communities including fuller mitigation of the benefit cap. We hope that this will give people more financial stability, allowing them to live more comfortable lives free from discrimination.
• foster good community relations; this policy will encourage greater interaction between LAs and groups within the community, which may help build better community relations. Furthermore, the more financially comfortable families are the easier they may find it to integrate better with society through their children attending local clubs and partaking in other activities within the community.

It was agreed throughout discussions on creating a Scottish DHP scheme that the impact of it on protected characteristics could only be positive. We aim to maximise the positive impact on people affected by the benefit cap by targeting communications and uptake efforts. There are no instances in which any of the protected characteristics will be negatively impacted by the policy.

SG officials hold regular DHP practitioner group meetings where they will speak to LAs about how well they are managing to reach the intended beneficiaries of the scheme. Methods of client-identification and the Scottish guidance manual will be evaluated and best practice shared.

LAs return a breakdown of spending data twice yearly which will be assessed against Scottish Fiscal Commission forecasts. Under- and over-spends will be addressed, and, if necessary, steps taken to balance pressures between LAs.

Spending data on the different purposes of DHPs will be compared against national DWP data on benefits payments and benefits cuts to estimate the coverage of the scheme among those it is aiming to assist.

Regular correspondence with third sector organisation stakeholders will allow us to hear how the policy is being rolled out and the impacts of it from the viewpoint of those on the front-line, as well as clients.