Alcohol and drugs strategic plan: equality impact assessment summary

Monitoring and Review

Monitoring of equality impacts will be embedded in the wider programme management framework for the Plan. This will ensure that progress on equality objectives is systematically tracked, and that any unintended consequences are identified and addressed early.

Key actions for monitoring:

• Data collection: Regular collection and analysis of disaggregated data (e.g., by age, disability, gender, race, sexual orientation, religion) to assess service reach and outcomes. Work is ongoing to improve equalities data with regards to alcohol and drugs.
• Service feedback: Ongoing engagement with people with lived and living experience, third sector organisations, and equality advocacy groups to identify emerging issues. This will primarily be undertaken at a local level, but with the ongoing development of lived experience data sources at the national level, building on a lived experience survey pilot undertaken by PHS.
• Implementation oversight: Regular review of progress against accessibility, inclusion, and equality will be embedded throughout programme delivery and oversight. This will include the use of risk and issue management processes to identify where potential negative impacts may emerge and ensure timely mitigation including escalation through established governance routes where required. These mechanisms will also support the identification of opportunities to enhance positive impacts, enabling adjustments to policy design or implementation where doing so could deliver improved outcomes for equality groups.
• Commitment renewal: To ensure the Plan remains responsive, the commitments will be reviewed and updated every three years over the nine-year cycle of the Plan. The impact assessments will be reviewed in line with this to ensure that the Plan remains responsive to the evolving needs of equalities groups.