BY NEIL SHASHOUA

Race equality has really rocketed up the agenda of all public authorities in the UK. This article describes one authority’s approach to researching race issues, in Northumberland, an area where black & minority ethnic (bme)* communities comprise 5,860 people. (i.e. less than 2% of the population). It is not offered as an innovative approach, but simply one that has yielded results and influenced the implementation of policy.

Background

Since the race riots of the 1980s and 2001, the McPherson inquiry into the murder of Stephen Lawrence, and the subsequent change in the law that gave a statutory duty to all public authorities to promote race equality, race issues have been a standing item on local authority agendas across the land. And no bad thing too.

However, for those authorities with small bme communities, race issues can seem distant. It is all to easy to succumb to the “there’s no race problems here” view.

Like most authorities, Northumberland County Council drafted a Race Equality Scheme in 2002, but the document lacked a sense of the value that the Council should place on eliminating racism and promoting race equality. One reason was that staff and councillors lacked information on the bme population of the County. Alongside this was a lack of confidence in talking about issues affecting bme communities, such as racism.

We set out to address this deficiency in two ways, by commissioning both quantitative and qualitative research.

Quantitative Research

The County Council commissioned the Northumberland Information Network to interrogate the 2001 Census and develop a profile of bme communities in the County. Since we knew that other local public bodies also lacked this information, we found out what information would be useful to them and included it in the research brief.

Intended Outcomes

The intended outcomes of the research were to:

• Enable officers, councillors, other agencies and the very few local and regional bme organisations to discuss issues related to race and religion and identity, thereby becoming more comfortable and confident in dealing with these issues.
• Agree a set of common issues on which to work.
• Raise awareness of the diversity, numbers and socio-economic status of the bme population.
• Provide sound statistical information for planning and developing policies and services to better take account of the needs and interests of these communities.
• Compare the profile of our bme communities with those of other areas.
• Develop Northumberland’s policies and services based on local rather than national information. Since national policy on race is based on parts of the country with large urban bme populations, it is often difficult to apply to rural and semi-rural areas.

A report of the findings of this research, entitled Ethnicity, Identity and Religion in Northumberland - A review of the 2001 Census is available from the Northumberland Information Network at http://www.northumberlandinfonet.org.uk/InfoNet/ReportMenu_Y4.htm (see Working Paper 32).

This research was presented to audiences from local and regional organisations. It has also been used to help revise the County Council’s Race Equality Scheme as well as those of other public bodies in Northumberland.

Qualitative Research

To complement the quantitative research, we also commissioned a regional bme organisation, BECON, to undertake qualitative research among Northumberland’s bme residents, exploring their views of the County Council’s services.

BECON identified four bme community groups, and met with them firstly to inform them of the Council’s services (since there is no point in asking people’s opinions of your service if they are not clear what those services are), and then to ask their views. One of the reasons the research solicited such a good response within the short timescale (8 weeks from commissioning to final report) was due to the credibility of BECON’s researcher amongst local bme communities.

The report of this consultation has been presented to the Council’s senior councillors and managers who asked the Council’s Equalities Working Group to respond to its 58 recommendations. This will be a concrete way of developing our work to better meet the needs of our bme communities. A copy of the research report together with the Council’s response will be available at http://www.northumberland.gov.uk/cs_leaflet4.asp by the end of October.

Some of the issues raised about future engagement with bme communities included:

• The need to include a representative sample of the County’s bme communities in general surveys, as well as undertaking specific consultations with bme communities.
• The need to co-ordinate engagement by all local public bodies so that bme communities do not experience consultation overload.
• The representativeness of those with whom we consult.

Linking the Results of the Quantative and Qualitative Research

Following the completion of both pieces of research, we identified a number of links between the two:-

• The Census revealed that Northumberland has much higher rates of self-employment amongst many bme groups than in England as a whole. The qualitative research identified that bme communities felt they lacked business advice.
• BECON’s research gathered very few comments on the Council’s services for older people, compared with services for children. This was unsurprising given the Census analysis of the age profile of Northumberland’s bme communities.
• One of the interview groups raised the need for a mosque in the County. The Census analysis will help to identify possible locations.

Taken as a whole, both pieces of research have helped build a picture of possible specific needs amongst the bme communities in Northumberland, not apparent from national data.

For further information, contact Neil Shashoua, Policy Officer at Northumberland County Council at NShashoua@northumberland.gov.uk

* For the purpose of this article, I have defined black and minority ethnic as those ethnic groups that are not White British.

Return to top