5. Is EHRC guidance on PSED comprehensive and understood? This chapter examines how far the test guidance is successful in helping stakeholders to understand the PSED and its purpose and benefits, what the legal requirements are, what compliance looks like, and what represents good practice (beyond compliance). Comparisons are drawn between the test guidance where possible and relevant. The main evidence for this chapter was gathered using a cognitive interviewing approach to investigate the level of understanding and elicit responses on specific sections of the test guidance (see section 1.3 for more detail on the method). However, it was difficult for some public authority respondents, even those with good background knowledge of equalities issues or legislation, to back’ from the ‘stand guidance sufficiently to offer an objective view of the content and how it is communicated: tell you what’s weird for me, because I’ve been reading all this stuff ‘I’ll since about 2002, it’s hard for me to know how much is in my brain and how much I just read, because I might just be making loads of assumptions that I don’t even know about. I see the duty as something that I’ve been aware of and had to comply with in some form since the Race Equality duty which was way back when. So I don’t even know what I see [the guidance] as, because it’s been so much of my job for so long.’ (England, public authority, local government, equalities specialist, Essential Guide for England) Some aspects of the PSED examined here are covered in all the Essential Guides and in Fair Financial Decisions’ (for example, its purpose and benefits); ‘Making others are covered in the Essential Guides only (for example, the specific duties) but not necessarily all of them (for example, only the Essential Guide for England
5. Is EHRC guidance on PSED comprehensive and understood? This chapter examines how far the test guidance is successful in helping stakeholders to understand the PSED and its purpose and benefits, what the legal requirements are, what compliance looks like, and what represents good practice (beyond compliance). Comparisons are drawn between the test guidance where possible and relevant. The main evidence for this chapter was gathered using a cognitive interviewing approach to investigate the level of understanding and elicit responses on specific sections of the test guidance (see section 1.3 for more detail on the method). However, it was difficult for some public authority respondents, even those with good background knowledge of equalities issues or legislation, to ‘stand back’ from the guidance sufficiently to offer an objective view of the content and how it is communicated: ‘I’ll tell you what’s weird for me, because I’ve been reading all this stuff since about 2002, it’s hard for me to know how much is in my brain and how much I just read, because I might just be making loads of assumptions that I don’t even know about. I see the duty as something that I’ve been aware of and had to comply with in some form since the Race Equality duty which was way back when. So I don’t even know what I see [the guidance] as, because it’s been so much of my job for so long.’ (England, public authority, local government, equalities specialist, Essential Guide for England) Some aspects of the PSED examined here are covered in all the Essential Guides and in ‘Making Fair Financial Decisions’ (for example, its purpose and benefits); others are covered in the Essential Guides only (for example, the specific duties) but not necessarily all of them (for example, only the Essential Guide for England
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