News

The Department of Health has published equal opportunity recruitment goals for primary care trusts, health authorities and NHS trusts.

The DoH has set targets for the end of 2004 of 50 per cent of appointments to be women, 43 per cent of chairpersons to be women, at least 10 per cent of all appointments to come from an ethnic minority background, and 4 per cent to have disabilities.

But the targets vary little - and in some cases represent a fall - from the situation in March this year, where 49.8 per cent of appointments and 39.8 per cent of chairpersons were women, 12.3 per cent came from an ethnic minority and 3.1 per cent had disabilities.

In April the NHS Appointments Commission took over responsibility for recruitment to the 164 PCTs, 99 health authorities and 354 NHS trusts, which account for more than 4,000 public appointments.