State significant projects can affect people in many ways, both positively and negatively. Identifying and understanding social impacts helps to inform responses that aim to avoid, mitigate or reduce negative impacts and enhance positive impacts. Every State significant project is subject to a social impact assessment (SIA). The SIA should be targeted and proportionate to the likely project impacts, and to the project’s context. ‘Social impacts’ generally refer to the consequences that people experience when a new project brings change. For the purposes of the SIA, ‘people’ are classed as individuals, households, groups, communities, or organisations. The SIA aims to identify, predict and evaluate likely social impacts arising from a project and propose responses to the predicted impacts.