Equality Act 2010 Summary: Protected Characteristics, Duties and Claims

The Equality Act 2010 is the single UK statute that protects people in England, Scotland, and Wales from discrimination at work and in wider life. It bans unfair treatment linked to nine protected characteristics across employment, services, housing, education, and public functions, and it gives you enforceable rights against employers, businesses, landlords, schools, and public bodies.1GOV.UK. Equality Act 2010: Guidance What follows is a plain summary of what the Equality Act 2010 covers, what you can do about a breach, and how long you have to act.

The Nine Protected Characteristics

Every claim under the Act has to connect to one of nine characteristics listed in Section 4.2Legislation.gov.uk. Equality Act 2010 – Section 4 If the unfair treatment you experienced doesn’t relate to one of these, the Act won’t help.

  • Age, whether you are younger or older.
  • Disability, meaning a physical or mental impairment with a substantial and long-term negative effect on day-to-day activities. Long-term generally means lasting, or likely to last, at least 12 months.3Legislation.gov.uk. Equality Act 2010 – Section 6
  • Gender reassignment, covering anyone transitioning, planning to transition, or who has transitioned.
  • Marriage and civil partnership.
  • Pregnancy and maternity, including the period after birth and breastfeeding.
  • Race, including colour, nationality, and ethnic or national origins.
  • Religion or belief, covering organised religions, genuine philosophical beliefs, and lack of belief.
  • Sex.
  • Sexual orientation.

The Four Forms of Discrimination

The Act splits unlawful behaviour into four categories, and it matters which one fits your situation because the elements you have to show differ.

Direct Discrimination

You are treated worse than someone else is, or would be, because of a protected characteristic.4Legislation.gov.uk. Equality Act 2010 – Section 13 Refusing to hire someone because of their race is the textbook case. The rule also catches treatment based on your association with someone who has a characteristic, such as being a carer for a disabled relative, and treatment based on a mistaken assumption that you have one.5Legislation.gov.uk. Equality Act 2010 – Explanatory Notes – Section 13: Direct Discrimination

Indirect Discrimination

A rule or policy applies to everyone equally but puts people who share a protected characteristic at a particular disadvantage. Requiring all staff to work Sundays, for instance, could disadvantage practising Christians. The organisation has a defence if it can show the policy is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim.6Legislation.gov.uk. Equality Act 2010 – Section 19

Harassment

Unwanted behaviour related to a protected characteristic that violates your dignity or creates an intimidating, hostile, degrading, or humiliating environment.7Legislation.gov.uk. Equality Act 2010 – Section 26 The person’s intention doesn’t decide the point; what matters is the effect on you and whether it was reasonable for the behaviour to have that effect. Unwanted sexual conduct is covered, as is being treated badly for rejecting or submitting to it.

Victimisation

You are punished for enforcing rights under the Act, whether by bringing a complaint, supporting someone else’s, or giving evidence.8Legislation.gov.uk. Equality Act 2010 – Section 27 Without this protection, few people would risk speaking up, which is why it sits alongside the substantive discrimination rules.

Where the Act Applies

Protection reaches into most areas of daily life, not just work.

  • Employment covers the whole working relationship, from job adverts and interviews through pay, training, promotion, and dismissal. Employees, contractors, applicants, and former workers are all protected.9Acas. Discrimination and the Equality Act 2010
  • Services and public functions: shops, banks, restaurants, hospitals, transport, and government services must operate without discrimination.1GOV.UK. Equality Act 2010: Guidance
  • Premises: landlords and property managers cannot discriminate when selling, letting, or managing housing.
  • Education: schools, colleges, and universities in admissions, teaching, and facilities.
  • Associations with 25 or more members, though private clubs may offer age-based concessions on things like fees and may run age-restricted sporting competitions for safety or fair competition reasons.10GOV.UK. Equality Act 2010 Ban on Age Discrimination – A Guide for Private Clubs and Other Associations

Reasonable Adjustments for Disabled People

Employers, service providers, and educational institutions owe disabled people a specific duty to remove barriers. Section 20 sets out three types of adjustment:11Legislation.gov.uk. Equality Act 2010 – Section 20

What counts as reasonable turns on the size and resources of the organisation, the cost of the adjustment, and how effective it would be. A large employer will be expected to do more than a small one, and disputes often turn on this balancing exercise.

The Duty to Prevent Sexual Harassment

Since October 2024, employers have an active duty to prevent sexual harassment of their staff. Section 40A, inserted by the Worker Protection (Amendment of Equality Act 2010) Act 2023, requires every employer to take reasonable steps to prevent it happening in the first place.13Legislation.gov.uk. Equality Act 2010 – Section 40A A written policy filed away in a handbook is unlikely to be enough on its own.

The duty covers harassment by anyone in the workplace, including clients, customers, and other third parties. If a tribunal finds the duty has been breached, it can uplift the compensation awarded to the employee by up to 25%. The Equality and Human Rights Commission can also take enforcement action directly, without waiting for an individual claim. In practice this means risk assessments, regular training, and reporting channels that actually work.

The Public Sector Equality Duty

Public bodies carry an additional obligation on top of the ban on discrimination. Section 149 requires every public authority, from government departments and councils to NHS trusts and the police, to actively consider equality when carrying out their functions.14Legislation.gov.uk. Equality Act 2010 – Section 14915UK Parliament. The Equality Act 2010: The Impact on Disabled People The duty has three aims: eliminating unlawful conduct, advancing equality of opportunity, and fostering good relations between different groups.

This is proactive. A council cannot wait for someone to complain; it needs to think about equality impacts when designing policies, setting budgets, and making decisions. If it fails to do so, anyone affected can challenge the decision through judicial review. The court won’t substitute its own view on the policy, but it will strike down a decision where equality was clearly ignored in the process.

When Different Treatment Is Allowed

Not every distinction based on a protected characteristic breaks the Act.

Occupational requirements let an employer insist on a particular characteristic where it is genuinely essential to the role, not merely preferred, and where applying the requirement is proportionate.16Legislation.gov.uk. Equality Act 2010 – Schedule 917Legislation.gov.uk. Equality Act 2010 Explanatory Notes – Schedule 9 Part 1 A women’s refuge can lawfully require female support workers. A theatre casting a young Black man in a specific role can limit auditions accordingly. Separate, narrower rules apply to organised religions, which may set requirements on sex, sexual orientation, or marital status where these connect to doctrine or to the strongly held convictions of a significant number of followers.

Positive action lets organisations take voluntary steps to help groups that are disadvantaged or underrepresented. Under Section 158, an employer or service provider who reasonably believes this is the case can take proportionate action to help people overcome barriers or encourage participation, such as running a mentoring programme for women in a male-dominated industry.18Legislation.gov.uk. Equality Act 2010 – Chapter 2: Positive Action Section 159 goes further in recruitment and promotion: where two candidates are equally qualified, an employer may pick the one with an underrepresented characteristic, provided the decision is made case by case and not as an automatic policy. Hiring a less qualified candidate solely because of a protected characteristic remains unlawful.

Proving Discrimination and What You Can Recover

Discrimination is rarely announced openly, so the Act uses a two-stage approach to evidence. If you can establish facts from which a tribunal could conclude that discrimination occurred, the burden shifts to the other side to show that it did not. Once you raise a real question, your employer or service provider has to explain their actions, and if they cannot offer a convincing non-discriminatory reason, the tribunal must find discrimination happened.

Discrimination compensation, unlike unfair dismissal, has no statutory cap. Awards split into financial losses and a separate amount for injury to feelings. The injury-to-feelings figure follows the Vento bands, which are updated annually. For claims presented on or after 6 April 2026:19Judiciary.uk. Vento Bands Presidential Guidance – April 2026 Addendum

  • Lower band: £1,300 to £12,600, for less serious cases such as a one-off inappropriate comment.
  • Middle band: £12,600 to £37,700, for serious cases that fall short of the top.
  • Upper band: £37,700 to £62,900, for the most serious cases, such as a sustained campaign of harassment.

In truly exceptional cases a tribunal can go above £62,900 for injury to feelings alone. Financial losses sit on top of that, so total awards involving lost earnings can reach well into six figures. Every successful claim carries an injury-to-feelings amount, whether or not there was financial loss.20Equality and Human Rights Commission. How the Value of a Discrimination Claim Is Decided in England and Wales

Time Limits and How to Bring a Claim

Deadlines are short. For employment discrimination, you have three months less one day from the date of the discriminatory act to lodge a tribunal claim.21Acas. Employment Tribunal Time Limits If the discrimination was continuing, the clock runs from the last incident in the series. Miss the window and a tribunal will almost certainly refuse to hear the case unless you can show it was not reasonably practicable to file in time, which is a high bar. Armed forces complaints get six months.22Legislation.gov.uk. Equality Act 2010 – Explanatory Notes – Time Limits

Before you can file, you must notify ACAS that you intend to bring a claim.23GOV.UK. Make a Claim to an Employment Tribunal: Before You Make a Claim ACAS then offers early conciliation, a free process where a conciliator tries to broker a settlement without a hearing. Notifying ACAS pauses your time limit while conciliation runs, so do it as early as you can within your deadline.21Acas. Employment Tribunal Time Limits If it doesn’t resolve things, ACAS issues an early conciliation certificate. You need that certificate to submit your tribunal claim; without it, the tribunal will not accept your paperwork.

For discrimination outside employment, such as disputes about services or housing, the claim goes to a county court rather than a tribunal, and the time limit is typically six months from the act complained of.