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Statutory Equality Duties
Section 75 of the Northern Ireland Act 1998 requires a public authority in carrying out all its functions, powers and duties to have due regard to the need to:
promote Equality of Opportunity:
- between persons of different religious belief, political opinion, racial group, age, marital status or sexual orientation;
- between men and women generally;
- between persons with a disability and persons without; and
- between persons with dependants and persons without.
and to promote Good Relations:
- between persons of different religious belief;
- political opinion; or
- racial group.
While housing associations perform a valuable public service they are not public authorities however, in April 2004 they were designated as such, for the purposes of Section 75.
For full details of the statutory duties check out the Equality Commission's website.
As part of this process, each Association produced an Equality Scheme explaining how these duties would be implemented. By end December 2005 all Registered Housing Associations had received full approval for their Equality Scheme from the Commissioners.
If you wish to obtain a hard copy of a particular scheme you should contact the Association directly. A disc containing all of the designated housing associations' Equality Schemes is available upon request from NIFHA. Email equality@nifha.org or telephone 028 9023 0446.
These schemes can also be made available in a range of alternative formats on request from each individual association. Formats include hard copy, large print, minority languages (for those not fluent in English), Braille or on an audio cassette.
Contact details for all the Housing Associations can be found in the members’ page of this website.
