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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’.