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Bureaucratic inertia is undermining local authorities' attempts to tackle racist practices, writes trainer Helen Best.

Local authorities' failure to meet deadlines set by the Race Relations Amendment Act 2000 comes as no surprise.

Racism is a massive problem within local government because it is institutionalised at every level. Councils are essentially oppressive institutions that neither welcome change nor celebrate difference. They encourage racism by replicating the same practices. They tend to compete with neighbouring councils, rather than work with them to tackle important issues. Within councils there is a culture of resistance to change and a refusal to learn. This makes them fail to address inequalities.

Councils continue to have poor recruitment policies and are still inclined to select from their existing workforce when vacancies arise rather than from the outside. By doing this they miss opportunities to attract people who could bring in fresh ideas and their workforces lack a representative number of black staff. Consequently their services often fail to offer black people adequate choices.

The failure to include "outsiders" works against equality and reinforces bad practice. In turn, lack of equality and pressure to conform to oppressive practices put off many who are committed to fighting racism from working for local authorities.

Councils create bureaucracies behind which to hide their inadequacies and through which to control and coerce. The failure to comply with the law is a reflection of a wider problem within local government. This problem is the inertia that is fed by the bureaucracy that blocks initiatives aimed at bringing about change.

Until both local and central government start recognising that it is racism that is the problem and not black people, little progress will ever be made. Local government and central government need to recognise that racism is not something that occurs just on a personal level but that it is also created at an institutional level. But how much longer will we need to keep telling them this? The law has recognised institutionalised racism since the Race Relations Act 1976 came into force. Fighting racism is not about making tokenistic gestures, it is about understanding its roots and tackling its causes as well as its symptoms.

When the offending councils eventually produce their written anti-racist policies they will have to do a great deal to prove that their commitments are real and worth more than the paper they are written on.

Helen Best is a freelance trainer