Guidance

Final stage impact assessment

Published 21 May 2026

Title: Equality Act 2010 Code of Practice for services, public functions and associations

Type of measure: Act Order

Department or agency: Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC)

IA number: not applicable

RPC reference number: No RPC reference number, due to the equivalent annual net direct cost to business (EANDCB) below the agreed threshold for scrutiny.

Contact for enquiries: Penny Hobman (EHRC)

Date: 14 May 2026

Prior to measures being laid in Parliament you should prepare the final stage impact assessment (also known as the regulatory impact assessment) to be laid alongside. This template is provided as a guide to show the information which is expected in final stage impact assessment. Using this form is recommended, but not mandatory, for submitting your impact assessment. The form can be adjusted as necessary. 

If using this template, all sections should be updated and finalised, including the scorecard and evidence base, quantifying impacts where appropriate and proportionate to do so. This impact assessment is expected to be published and sensitive material, which may include the long list and summary table, should be removed prior to publication.

1. Summary of proposal 

The Code of Practice for Services, Public Functions and Associations (the Code) is not legislation. The estimated costs outlined in this assessment arise because of obligations imposed by the Equality Act 2010, rather than because of the Code itself. This assessment, which is designed to accompany draft legislation, has been completed to the extent that is relevant to the Code.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) is an independent statutory body. As set out in the Equality Act 2006, the EHRC may issue a Code of Practice in connection with any matter addressed by the Equality Act 2010. 

The Equality Act 2010 Code of Practice for Services, Public Functions and Associations is statutory guidance. It provides practical guidance to those providing and using services, those exercising public functions, and those participating in and running associations. It helps them to understand and comply with the Equality Act 2010. 

Before issuing a code, the EHRC needs to submit a draft to the Secretary of State and, if approved, the Secretary of State will lay a copy before Parliament. If there is no motion to disapprove it within 40 days, the EHRC may issue the Code in the form of a draft and the Secretary of State can bring the Code into force by order. 

2. Strategic case for proposed regulation 

The current Code was produced in 2011 and is now out of date. There have been significant developments in the law since 2011, and the Code needed to be updated in order to reflect the law accurately. The updates to the Code are primarily where there have been legislative changes, developments in case law, a change or clarification of terminology, or where new guidance has been issued since the original Code was published in 2011. 

Some of the most significant changes relate to the judgment by the UK Supreme Court in the case of For Women Scotland Ltd v The Scottish Ministers [2025] UKSC 16 (“For Women Scotland”), handed down on 16 April 2025, which clarified that sex in the Equality Act 2010 means biological sex.

3. SMART objectives for intervention

The objective of updating the Code of Practice is to make sure that the statutory guidance on the Equality Act 2010 is accurate and up-to-date in order to improve service providers, public functions and associations’ understanding of, and compliance with, the legislation. 

4. Description of proposed intervention and explanation of the logical change process whereby this achieves SMART objectives 

This Code will supersede The Equality Act 2010 Code of Practice for Services, Public Functions and Associations, enacted in 2011.
The Code is statutory guidance which provides practical advice and guidance to those providing and using services, those exercising public functions and those participating in and running associations. It helps them to understand and comply with the Equality Act 2010 and enactments made under that Act. It supports the promotion of equality of opportunity (Section 14 (2) of the Equality Act 2006), increasing compliance with the legislation, reducing the need to seek specialist legal advice and reducing the likelihood of non-compliance with the law which could lead to costly claims against service providers, those exercising public functions or those running associations. 

The provision of guidance is in line with the EHRC’s regulatory model which seeks to facilitate compliance by increasing knowledge, understanding and capability to support organisations to understand their obligations. The Code itself does not change the obligations imposed by the Equality Act 2010, which give rise to the costs set out in this assessment. These obligations exist regardless of whether the Code is in force or not.

Once in force the Code would be admissible in evidence in legal proceedings. Courts and tribunals must consider the Code in any case where it appears to the court or tribunal to be relevant. 

5. Summary of long-list and alternatives 

Not applicable: see section 6 for consideration of the relevant options. 

6. Description of shortlisted policy options carried forward 

The Code is not a policy. It is an explanation of the practical implications of the Equality Act 2010. The Code produced in 2011 is out of date and inaccurate. The options considered to address this are:

Option 1: Do nothing. The Code of Practice dating from 2011 would remain in force. This Code is now out of date and inaccurate as there have been significant developments in the law since 2011, including legislative changes and developments in case law. Some of the most significant changes relate to the judgment by the UK Supreme Court in the case of For Women Scotland.

Leaving in place the 2011 Code would mean that inaccurate advice is provided to duty bearers leading to increased likelihood of non-compliance with the law and increased claims against service providers, those exercising public functions and those running associations.

Option 2: Recommend revocation of the 2011 Code of Practice but provide no replacement. This option would mean that inaccurate guidance would be removed but there would be no statutory guidance for service providers, public functions and associations to help them to understand and comply with the law, or for courts and tribunals to consider where relevant. 

Providing no statutory guidance would increase the likelihood of non-compliance with the law and increased claims against service providers, those exercising public functions and those running associations.
  Option 3: Update the Code of Practice and submit revised draft to government as per the process set out in the Equality Act 2006. This option facilitates compliance with the Equality Act 2010 by increasing knowledge, understanding and capability among duty bearers, supporting service providers, those exercising public functions and those running associations to understand their obligations under the law and to comply with them. 

The preferred option is Option 3 – to update the Code of Practice – because this is most likely to support increased understanding of, and compliance with, the Equality Act 2010, reducing the likelihood of claims against service providers, those exercising public functions and those running associations.

Small and micro businesses assessment and medium-sized business impact

Due to limitations of the data, we cannot assess the impact on small businesses specifically of the preferred option. We do not expect small businesses to be disproportionately impacted. 

Familiarisation and data collection costs may be relatively large for small businesses. One person reading guidance material in a 10-person organisation is a greater proportion of resources than one person in a 250-person organisation. Familiarisation and data collection costs are less than 8% of the total costs, so the total cost is not expected to be significant.

We believe that SMEs will face significantly smaller capital costs (toilets and changing rooms) as they are less likely to have facilities that would need amending to be suitable for use by everyone. 

7. Regulatory scorecard for preferred option

Part A: Overall and stakeholder impacts 

(1) Overall impacts on total welfare

		Directional rating Note: Below are examples only
Description of overall expected impact	This assessment estimates only the costs to businesses and the public and voluntary sector. There has been no assessment of the benefits of increased compliance with the Equality Act 2010. However, the impact assessment for the Equality Bill (which became the 2010 Act) states that there are expected to be general benefits to the economy from enacting the legislation. The estimated costs of complying with the Equality Act arise because of the obligations imposed by the Act rather than because of the Code itself. The negative impact on total welfare is driven by costs on businesses. This is a gross, not net, impact, as benefits were not assessed.	Negative Based on all impacts (incl. non-monetised)
Monetised impacts	Our middle scenario estimate based on the cost assessment shows annualised costs to be £81.7m. This is driven by private sector costs on facilities. The lower bound annualised cost is £5.5m and upper bound annualised cost is £159.1m. This broad range reflects the uncertainty of the analysis due to the lack of robust data in this area. The costs, spread over the 10-year appraisal period, are heavily front loaded due to the one-off costs associated with familiarisation and training and changes to facilities such as toilets and changing rooms. Modelling shows that approximately 25% of the cost would be seen in year 0, and 35% of the costs would be borne in year 1. Year 2 sees 6% of costs and following years approximately 5% of the costs each. Most of the costs (around 82%) across the 10-year appraisal period are expected to fall on the private sector. The public and voluntary sectors each account for 9% of total costs. 72.6% of the total cost over 10 years are due to changes that will need to be made to facilities (including cleaning costs of new facilities). The other significant area of cost is from needing to change internal policies (15.2%). Familiarisation costs, training and data collection make up a small proportion of the costs at 3.9%, 4.5%, and 3.8% respectively.	Negative Based on likely £NPSV
Non-monetised impacts	There has been no assessment of non-monetised impacts. However, the impact assessment for the Equality Bill (now Equality Act 2010) set out there would be anticipated non-monetised benefits from the legislation including that persistent inequalities within institutions and society are reduced, that cases do not arise out of ignorance, and that it increases the efficient operation of business and markets as a result of a reduction in discrimination.	Uncertain – no assessment made Based on likely business £NPSV
Any significant or adverse distributional impacts?	No	Uncertain – no assessment made Based on likely business £NPSV

(2) Expected impacts on businesses

		Directional rating Note: Below are examples only
Description of overall business impact	As above in section (1) on overall expected impact, this assessment estimates only the costs to businesses. There has been no assessment of the benefits to businesses of supporting increased compliance with the Equality Act 2010. The estimated costs of complying with the Equality Act arise because of the obligations imposed by the Act rather than because of the Code itself. The negative net impact on businesses is driven by costs on businesses of providing services and facilities in ways that comply with the law.	Negative Based on all impacts (incl. non-monetised)
Monetised impacts	The total cost to businesses is £639m, giving an EANDCB of £74.2m. The lower and upper bounds of the EANDCB are at £4.9m and £144.7m respectively. There are no admin costs to businesses. There are no pass through costs included in this assessment.	Negative Based on likely business £NPV
Non-monetised impacts	There has been no assessment of non-monetised impacts.	Uncertain – no assessment made Based on likely business £NPV
Any significant or adverse distributional impacts?	Yes. Gross costs largely fall on businesses that have customer or service user facilities such as toilets and changing rooms, and so certain areas of the service sector are affected the most. Benefits have not been assessed.	Negative Based on likely business £NPV

(3) Expected impacts on households

		Directional rating Note: Below are examples only
Description of overall household impact	There has been no assessment of direct impacts on households.	Uncertain – no assessment made Based on likely household £NPV
Monetised impacts	There has been no assessment of direct costs to households.	Uncertain – no assessment made Based on likely household £NPV
Non-monetised impacts	There has been no assessment of non-monetised impacts.	Uncertain – no assessment made Based on likely household £NPV
Any significant or adverse distributional impacts?	There has been no assessment of expected impacts on households.	Uncertain – no assessment made Based on likely business £NPV

Part B: Impacts on wider government priorities

Category	Description of impact	Directional rating
Business environment: Does the measure impact on the ease of doing business in the UK?	This assessment has identified costs to businesses. There has been no assessment of benefits.  The estimated costs arise because of the obligations imposed by the Equality Act 2010, rather than because of the Code itself.	May work against
International considerations: Does the measure support international trade and investment?	There has been no assessment of expected impacts on trade or investment.	Uncertain – no assessment made
Natural capital and decarbonisation: Does the measure support commitments to improve the environment and decarbonise?	There has been no assessment of expected impacts on natural capital.	Uncertain – no assessment made

8. Monitoring and evaluation of preferred option

As the Code is not legislation, there is no statutory review clause. The EHRC will keep the Code under review to determine if any updates are necessary.

9. Minimising administrative and compliance costs for preferred option

The Code of Practice provides practical guidance for service providers, public functions and associations on the obligations placed upon them by the Equality Act 2010, helping them to comply with the legislation.

Declaration

Department: Equality and Human Rights Commission, sponsored by Cabinet Office

Contact details for enquiries: correspondence@equalityhumanrights.com   

Minister: Minister for Women and Equalities  

I have read the Impact Assessment and I am satisfied that, given the available evidence, it represents a reasonable view of the likely costs, benefits and impact of the leading options.

Signed: John Kirkpatrick

Date: 14 May 2026  

Summary: Analysis and evidence

For final stage impact assessment, finalise these sections including the full evidence base.

This table has deliberately been left blank. For relevant information, see the Evidence base section below. 

• Price base:
• Year:  
• PV base year:

This table may be reformatted provided the side-by-side comparison of options is retained	1. Business as usual (baseline)	2. Do-minimum option	3. Preferred way forward (if not do-minimum)	4. More ambitious preferred way forward	5. Less ambitious preferred way forward
Net present social value (with brief description, including ranges, of individual costs and benefits)	…	…	…	…	…
Public sector financial costs (with brief description, including ranges)	…	…	…	…	…
Significant un-quantified benefits and costs (description, with scale where possible)	…	…	…	…	…
Key risks (and risk costs, and optimism bias, where relevant)	…	…	…	…	…
Results of sensitivity analysis	…	…	…	…	…

Evidence base 

Context

The Code of Practice for Services, Public Functions and Associations (the Code) is not legislation. The estimated costs outlined in this assessment arise because of obligations imposed by the Equality Act 2010, rather than because of the Code itself. This assessment, which is designed to accompany draft legislation, has been completed to the extent that is relevant to inform Parliamentary consideration of the Code.

The objective of updating the Code of Practice is to make sure that the statutory guidance on the Equality Act 2010 is accurate and up to date in order to improve service providers, public functions and associations’ understanding of, and compliance with, the legislation. This Code will supersede The Equality Act 2010 Code of Practice for Services, Public Functions and Associations, enacted in 2011, which is now significantly out of date and inaccurate.

The section headings indicated for the evidence base are not relevant to the assessment of costs as the Code is not itself policy and has not followed a policy development process. The table above is also not relevant and has not been completed. 

The section headings below focus on the areas of most likely impact, specifically changes that may be necessary in order to comply with the law reflected in the revised Code, and the costs and assumptions are explained along with limitations of the analysis. 

Areas that have not been assessed are:

• benefits to businesses 
• non-monetised impacts on businesses
• any impacts on households 
• any impacts on wider government priorities
• impacts of any alternative option (do nothing or recommend revocation of the code)

Findings from the cost assessment

Total costs (in millions)

Middle estimate

Familiarisation	Policy change	Training implementation	Data collection	Facilities construction	Training yearly	Facilities cleaning	Total
£27.32	£106.96	£9.59	£26.79	£210.99	£22.16	£299.25	£703.06

Lower bound

Familiarisation	Policy change	Training implementation	Data collection	Facilities construction	Training yearly	Facilities cleaning	Total
£27.32	£10.70	£-	£8.93	£-	£-	£-	£46.95

Upper bound

Familiarisation	Policy change	Training implementation	Data collection	Facilities construction	Training yearly	Facilities cleaning	Total
£27.32	£213.91	£19.19	£44.65	£421.99	£44.32	£598.49	£1,369.87

Cost over time

The costs, spread over the 10-year appraisal period, are heavily front loaded due to the one-off costs associated with familiarisation and training and changes to facilities such as toilets and changing rooms. Modelling shows that approximately 25% of the cost would be seen in year 0, and 35% of the costs would be borne in year 1. Year 2 sees 6% of costs and following years approximately 5% of the costs each.  

Cost by sector

Most of the costs (around 82%), across the 10-year appraisal period, is expected to fall on the private sector. The voluntary and public sectors each face 9% of total costs.

Cost by type

72.6% of the total cost over 10 years are due to changes that will need to be made to facilities (including cleaning costs of new facilities). The other significant area of cost is from needing to change internal policies (15.2%). Familiarisation costs, training and data collection make up a small proportion of the costs at 3.9%, 4.5%, and 3.8% respectively.

Annualised costs

Our middle scenario estimate based on the cost assessment shows annualised costs to be £81.7 million. As explained above this is mainly driven by private sector costs on facilities. The lower bound annualised cost is £5.5 million and upper bound annualised cost is £159.1 million. This large range reflects the uncertainty of the analysis due to the lack of robust data.

Limitations of the data

There were no questions asked in the EHRC consultations on updates to the Code conducted in autumn 2024 and summer 2025 about the amount and scale of changes that each organisation would be required to make because of the updates proposed to the Code – organisations were asked only if they would make any changes resulting from the proposed updates. 

It has also not been possible to gather this information from other sources. This has made costing the changes more difficult as there is limited evidence on the scale of the changes that will be needed. This is also a relatively unique measure, removing the possibility of drawing on previous existing evidence. As a result, there have been estimations made around the time it will take: 

• to update organisational policies
• for organisations to train their employees and the number of employees who require this training
• for organisations to update their data collection systems

For the same reason as the above, we do not have robust evidence on the number of businesses that will be required to make certain changes. To mitigate against this we have used ranges to create a low, middle and high scenario using assumptions on the proportion of businesses in scope that will be impacted by each change.

The sample size of the consultation is very small for all of the public sector, voluntary sector and private sector. This means that any evidence on the potential impacts taken from the consultation are unlikely to be robust. This also increases the risk that the sample size is skewed towards people who are more likely to be affected by the changes, and so we risk overestimating the number of organisations who are required to make changes. 

Analysis of the potential impact on specific sectors has not been possible. This data was attempted to be collected within the consultation however, a significant number of respondents ticked more than one (or all) of the options within this question, meaning we do not have a clear response to the number of organisations impacted in each sector. 

Explanation of the assumptions

Businesses in scope

For the voluntary sector this is based on Department for Business and Trade (DBT) Business population estimates 2025. For the private and public sector this has been taken from the Valuation Office Agency non-domestic rating: stock of properties 2025. This has then been adjusted to consider the proportion of businesses which are customer facing and would likely have toilet or changing room facilities. 

In both cases this represents the most accurate estimate that we have for the number of organisations that will be in-scope of the changes made to the Code.   

Hourly wage rates

Where an hourly wage has been used to assess the time cost of delivering training and more, the ONS ASHE 2025 release has been used. This excludes the hourly cost of cleaning new facilities, in which consultancy data has been used to best reflect the higher non-wage costs. We believe this to be in line with other estimates, and an accurate estimate.

Cost of new toilet or changing room facilities

To estimate the cost of new toilets and changing rooms, we have used the Building Regulations 2010 (2023 edition) as an assumption on the minimum size of a single enclosed toilet and proxy for changing rooms using an ambulatory toilet. The assumption for cost per square metre comes from further consultancy data as the best assumption we have on costs. Cost of signage has been assumed to be £2.00 based on commercially available data.

Ranges used

The area of biggest uncertainty within the data is how many of the in-scope organisations will be affected. To mitigate this uncertainty a range would be used to show where the cost is most likely to fall. 

There are 4 areas where such ranges have been used:

1. Facility changes – this includes the number of premises that will need to make changes to the toilet or changing room facilities.
2. Training required – this includes the number of organisations which will have to train staff on the changes to the Code. This is expected to be mainly for front desk staff in advising on which toilets or changing rooms are appropriate to be used.
3. Policy changes – organisations that will need to change their internal policies regarding who is allowed to use specific toilets and changing rooms.
4. Data collection – this is where organisations will have to change their data collection processes to ensure accurate terminology is being used.

For the middle estimates we have used the halfway point between the upper and lower bounds unless otherwise stated.

Facility changes

For the lower bound, we have used evidence from previous legislation requiring all organisations to make reasonable adjustments for disabled people. This means that where it is reasonable to do so, all public spaces must ensure that an accessible toilet is provided for people with disabilities. 

The Code recommends that signage may be adapted and training provided to make accessible toilets open for mixed use, as a potentially proportionate measure to mitigate the risk of indirect gender reassignment discrimination against trans people and accommodate trans people who may have good reason not to use separate facilities for their own sex. For the lower bound estimate we are assuming that no new facilities are going to be required in those circumstances.

The upper bound is based on analysis from the Association for Public Service Excellence (APSE) that found that 4% of premises only have toilets or changing rooms that are unisex. This would be an upper bound as the worst-case scenario if all these organisations would have to make changes. However, for the reasons stated in the paragraph above, we believe it would only be a small proportion of these premises that would have to make a change. This is also backed up by the consultation, in which 6.4% of private sector respondents referenced toilet or changing room facilities in their responses. However, most references were in the context of policies or other changes, rather than in relation to having to make physical changes.

Training required

For both the upper and lower bound this is assumed to be the same proportion as for facility changes. This is due to the assumption that training will mainly be required in organisations that are needing to make physical changes to their premises.

Policy changes required

For the lower bound we are using EHRC evidence based on the call for input on single-sex spaces and services which found that 19 out of 404 responding organisations had “concerning” policies that needed to be reviewed. This suggests that potentially 4.7% of organisations currently have policies that would need to change to meet the requirements of the law reflected in the Code. We have assumed a lower bound of 5%.

For the upper bound we have assumed 100% of in-scope organisations will be impacted. While it is unlikely that all organisations would have to change their policies, in the absence of data to suggest otherwise we are being cautious by assuming all would have to make a change for the upper bound.

Given the significant range of the upper and lower bound here, we are assuming a 50% middle estimate. This acts as a middle ground while the upper and lower bounds will show the range that the cost could fall between.

Data collection

For the lower bound, it is assumed that only organisations with 10 or more employees (small, medium, and large organisations) will have to make changes, as these are the organisations most likely to have formal data collection processes in place. To make this assumption, we have used the DBT’s business population estimates as a proxy. This finds that of the 1.38 million employers in Great Britain 260,000 have 10 or more employees, making our lower bound estimate 20% (18.9%).

For the upper bound, we are assuming that all in-scope organisations will have to update the data collection processes that have. This is likely to be an overestimate as some organisations will already be aligned with the requirements of the law reflected in the Code or not be collecting data on gender identity, however this would represent a worst-case scenario.

Optimism bias

Optimism bias (OB) is used in economic analysis to account for the fact that often costs are underestimated. An OB is applied as an uplift to the costs to ensure higher confidence in the estimates by accounting for this underestimation. 

General HMT Green Book guidance suggests that an OB ranging from 10% to 42% should be applied to costs depending on how much confidence we have that the analysis is accurate. Below shows the levels of OB that have been applied to the analysis in the cost assessment, along with a brief explanation of why it has been chosen. 

In general, we feel a middle ground level of OB is appropriate given the lack of cost evidence is this area, as well as uncertainties around how many businesses will be affected, balanced against confidence in the fact that ranges have been used to account for the uncertainty, and that we believe we have overestimated rather than underestimated in cases where there is a lack of data (for example, the number of businesses in scope (see above for detail)):

	Familiarisation costs	Policy changes	Training costs	Data collection	Facility costs
Level of OB applied	20%	25%	25%	25%	30%
Rationale	There is little uncertainty around the cost of familiarisation, so a lower amount of OB has been applied. The cost comes from the time it will take to read the Code and for which we are using well established assumptions for reading time. We have assumed all in-scope businesses will have to be familiar with the changes.	The main area of uncertainty relating to policy changes is the number of in-scope organisations that will be required to make changes. Ranges have been used to mitigate this. In practice we believe that the number of organisations who will be impacted by this to be minimal, so our ranges are likely overestimates.	There are 2 areas of uncertainty with training costs, the first is in the number of organisations that are likely to have to run new training for their staff, this has been mitigated using ranges. The second is in assumptions around the number of staff that would be involved in the training. Consultation responses suggested this would mainly affect front desk staff – which is what our assumptions are based on.	This would likely be a small change for organisations to make in how they collect individuals’ data. The main uncertainty is how many organisations will need to make this change. The range that we have used is generous, with the upper bound assuming 100% of businesses would need to change, however, it would only be where questions relating to gender identity are asked which would likely be a smaller proportion of organisations.	We have applied the highest level of OB to facility costs. There are large uncertainties around the number of businesses that will be impacted by this, and we are being cautious by applying a higher level of OB. The reason it is not higher is due to a likely overestimate of the cleaning costs, in which some businesses may absorb this into their existing cleaning costs.