Public Sector Equality Duty: report 2025 to 2029 - easy read

Part 1: What is this report about?

The Scottish Government wants a society where everyone is treated fairly. We want people to enjoy their rights and live in safe and inclusive communities.

One way to help to make this happen is by making the Public Sector Equality Duty. PSED is part of the Equality Act 2010. It says everyone should be treated equally.

What is the PSED?

The PSED has 3 needs which say that public authorities must try to:

• Make sure no-one is treated unfairly.
• Give everyone equal opportunities.
• Support good relationships between people with and without protected characteristics.

Public authorities provide services for the public, like the Government, police or NHS.

Protected characteristics are things about a person that might cause them to be treated unfairly, like their age, race or disability.

What is this Report for?

This report sets out ideas to make the PSED work better for everyone in Scotland over the next 4 years.

These ideas are based on:

• Listening to people’s views.
• Looking at what other countries are doing.
• Information and learning from what has worked well.

We have also made a Mainstreaming Strategy, Action Plan and Toolkit. These all help our plan to promote equality and human rights for everyone in Scotland.

Equality Outcomes

We have plans to meet Equality Outcomes. These set out goals to promote equality across the Scottish Government.

These are based on:

• Improving equality data
• Getting better at involving the public and asking about their experiences
• Getting better at equality impact assessments

An equality impact assessment is when the Scottish Government looks at how different groups of people will be affected by a change they make.