Top rating to be held back from councils failing on race equality

Councils that score badly on race equality may in the future be
prevented from gaining an ‘excellent’ rating in their
comprehensive performance assessment, writes Sally
Gillen.

Speaking at a conference on implement of the Race Relations
(Amendment) Act 2000 the deputy chairperson of the Commission for
Racial Equality Sarah Spencer said that the Audit Commission was
working to improve the inclusion of race in the cpa.

Ten of the best value performance indicators measured by the
Audit Commission focus on race, and the watchdog looks set to
introduce five ratings on local authority race equality
schemes.

Under the act councils and other public bodies such as local
education authorities and primary caretrusts were required to
publish a race equality scheme in May last year. In it they were
supposed to show how they would promote race equality within
service provision, but also within their workforce.

But research commissioned by the CRE unveiled at the conference
showed that 7 per cent of councils had failed to produce a race
equality scheme.

The five ratings will be ‘resisting’,
‘intending’, ‘starting’,
‘developing’, and ‘consolidating’.