Welsh Assembly and the lost equality impact assessment

Whoever did that needs competency procedures to take place.

And it's not an EQIA. Swing and a miss.

FOIRequester

They really haven't got one have they? I bet sweat is pouring in buckets in central offices.

There is absolutely no way I'd sign off such a poor quality piece of shit work.

It states, no negative impact.

This is a generic document.
We don't know who they consulted.

Viva is an LGBT charity providing support meets for young people. Apparently.

But we don't know who they are, no expert knowledge, no analysis and no consultation of the group most affected by this, ie girls.

What a disgrace.

Thanks FOI, that was everything I expected it to be. No consideration of the impact on other protected characteristics. Denbighshire is a long way from the metropolitan centre and seems to be playing woke catch-up, blithely introducing policies that have already been thoroughly discredited elsewhere.

There has already been an issue at the local high school of girls not being able to use the toilets during the afternoon - I believe it was a discipline thing and boys were barred too but they don't have periods do they? The school is in special measures and quite run-down, would anybody take a bet that the first area for investment will be remodelling the single-sex toilets?

Incredible. Literally NO negative impacts to safety observed from this policy? None? Just blank spaces?

No policy has no drawbacks. This is work that would get you a warning, and if you kept it up, fired from a corporate workplace.

If that is the quality of their assessments then it's a damning indictment of their competence.

Even if it just wellbeing rather than equality.

They have supplied a "Wellbeing Impact Assessment".

And that didn't fob you off? Oh dear.

How about an NCAP safety report on a Nissan Micra. That is, in a very real sense, an impact assessment.

@OhGodWhatTheHellNow @dontdoxmeeither

Response from Denbighshire Council has just arrived.
www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/equality_impact_assessment_for_t_4#incoming-1433779

They have supplied a "Wellbeing Impact Assessment". I haven't read the whole thing yet, but this doesn't seem to be an Equality Impact Assessment.

They say they don't yet have a list of schools where the policy has been implemented.

Not mine dont - I'm secretary too and haven't sent those forms out yet! (Having a bad start to the year ).It does look like SIMS, the national school database, has added a load of gender id checkboxes over the summer, doesn't bode well.

@OhGodWhatTheHellNow I'm Denbighshire! Hope it's not my DS'S school. We've already had the usual "update your details" form on the first day of term and one of the boxes asks "What is your child's Gender?" with a blank space to write it in (as opposed to multiple choice).

I wrote "Sex" under gender before writing "male"

Bloody brilliant work!!

Talking of Welsh MPs - how about trying David TC Davies, Conservative Monmouth (was the Webberley's constituency)

www.david-davies.org.uk

Previously helpful on the GRA Reforms:

Questions to Women and Equalities Committee:

www.theyworkforyou.com/search/?q=section%3Awrans&pid=11719&phrase=Women+and+Equalities&exclude=&from=&to=&person=David+Davies&section=wrans&column=

Some Mumsnet Threads

www.mumsnet.com/SearchArch?mustmatch=David+Davies&dontmatch=&nickname=&src_displ_option=s_t_d_t&fromDate=&toDate=&topicmode=chs&availtops=16549&chosentops=5365

Currently Chair of the "Welsh Affairs Committee" so he might respond to a concern about "Welsh Affairs" rather than just to Constituency Issues, although it is a bit of long-shot:

Role of the Welsh Affairs Committee:
www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/welsh-affairs-committee/role/

Extract:

The principal powers of Select Committees

• to send for persons, papers and records
• to adjourn from place to place (i.e. to travel and to meet away from Westminster)
• to appoint Specialist Advisers

"In practice, the Welsh Affairs Committee, in common with the other departmental committees, prefers to proceed by consent, inviting the submission of written memoranda and inviting witnesses to appear before it."

By the by . . .

Another interesting FOI Request, from someone trying and failing to get answers to questions that David Davies MP asked in Parliament about meetings with trans lobby groups - now the subject of an FOI Review due to the House of Commons "misunderstanding" the request:

"David Davies question on how many times Stonewall, Gendered Intelligence and LGBT groups met and or attended Commissions, Ministers or staff generally."
www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/david_davies_question_on_how_man#incoming-1283253

Fair enough that the title of the request could be misleading but actual request was clear enough!

Thanks FOI , watching this space!

Well Conwy were doing inspections in schools a year ago. I did wonder who the inspectors were made up of. I know there was a legal person involved.

I'm clerk to the governors of a Denbighshire school, the new Trans guidance came out earlier this year, complete with our old friend the genderbread man.

I should have a reply to my FOI request for the Equality Impact Assessment for this guidance from Denbighshire Council next week. I'll post on here when I hear from them but you will be able to see it here:

www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/equality_impact_assessment_for_t_4

I think schools are also supposed to do their own EIA before implementing any of the guidance in order to comply with the Public Sector Equality Duty. Welsh government have helpfully provided some guidance on how to do that. www.eiapractice.wales.nhs.uk/undertaking-an-eia

Excellent work, FOI - what a mind-boggling clusterfuck this whole episode is.

Martin's got a few ishoos I see....

On Twitter-

https://twitter.com/sdewherst/status/1171176678976045056?s=21

Report from Penarth News. Sarky comment alert from "Martin" in the comments ref MN not to mention an outrageous comment about there being "some advantage about removing some single sex facilities"

and

I can't wait for the answer on that one, I really can't.

I've now asked for an internal review of the handling of the request for correspondence and minutes of meetings.

Details here.
www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/documents_relating_to_the_equali#outgoing-937813

This is bizarre, at our Welsh primary school. A person at a party on NYE was telling me that they had inspected a number of schools and recommendations were being written re: toilets and changing facilities because of this. That was nine months ago.

Welsh Government Civil Servants have been unable to find the document on any hard-drive, or any server, or on any lap-top, or on any memory stick and it’s not in any of the hundreds of government filing cabinets . Apparently even draft versions of the text have somehow disappeared into the ether.

And apparently all emails discussing it, the names of who was commissioned to carry it out, the minutes of the meetings where it was planned, discussed, fed back on and applied into the writing of the plan.....

Bollocks. It doesn't exist.

FOIrequester, this was your second request for the email trails and minutes of meetings, and all you got was the one circulated email saying it had been drafted and the action plan itself?

If I've understood you correctly then yes, this confirms it plain wasn't done, and we're into intentional faking of and avoidance of following due process. Which, by inference, must have been in order to compel a desired outcome by avoiding recording information that would have prevented it. Which is a lot worse than the incompetency of not doing it, because it shows deliberate intent to deceive for a political purpose in the knowledge it would damage other protected groups.

So now this goes to the next level of ombudsman/MP/government equalities office/newspapers, because it isn't incompetence, it's corruption.

Read this earlier. Comments are open!

penarthnews.wpcomstaging.com/2019/09/05/welsh-government-wipes-and-shreds-key-trans-sex-document/

Dontdox: Helen Mary tweeted that she'd look in to this after she was tagged (is that the phrase? I'm not very technically adept!) in several tweets about the 'lost' EIA. Don't think there's been anything from her since but yes, it might be worth lots of us tweeting her and anyone else who might have a brain / a bit of integrity / any concern for women (all three might be asking too much).
Boobili She was. She now says that TW are W, and that misgendering is a hate crime.