Building Safety Levy (Scotland) Bill: equality impact assessment
Equality impact assessment for the Building Safety Levy (Scotland) Bill.
The Scope of the EQIA
This EQIA considers the potential for this policy to impact equality with regards to the protected characteristics of age, disability, gender reassignment, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, and sexual orientation. As the policy does not relate to work, this EQIA does not consider the protected characteristic of marriage and civil partnership.[1] This assessment also gives due regard to the need to: eliminate unlawful discrimination; advance equality of opportunity between people who share a protected characteristic and those who don’t; and foster or encourage good relations between people who share a protected characteristic and those who don’t.
The Scottish Government ran a consultation[2] on the SBSL for a period of eight weeks which received a total of 78 responses, predominantly from property developer organisations. A partial BRIA[3] was published alongside this consultation. The consultation invited responses to a range of open and closed questions on several aspects relating to the SBSL, including the strategic context for the tax, scope, calculation, operational considerations, and impacts (including a question on potential impacts of the SBSL on the protected characteristics).
The consultation was accompanied by a programme of engagement with stakeholders to facilitate further collaboration with the residential property sector. These engagement sessions provided further evidence in addition to views gathered through the Scottish Building Safety Levy Expert Advisory Group, comprised of representatives from the residential property development sector, as well as representatives from relevant professional bodies in connection with tax and local government building standards.
The SBSL will be a wholly new national devolved tax in Scotland. There is no existing UK measure to compare to when considering impacts. The consultation and engagement therefore sought contributions from stakeholders on what the potential indirect impacts of the SBSL could be. These views are set out below.
Given that evidence gathering and initial framing exercises on equality impacts did not indicate that the policy will have any significant or direct impacts on the protected characteristics, proportional desk-based research was undertaken to source further existing evidence on equalities that may be relevant to the proposal in considering potential indirect impacts.