Community cohesion takes place at grass roots

Nasr Emam, originally from Egypt, has lived in North Yorkshire for more than 20 years and now works as a community cohesion officer for the county council, based in Scarborough.

"I have a team of workers and volunteers who provide services on behalf of North Yorkshire County Council to explain to people the benefits to the community of this diversity," he said.

"It's about ensuring people live together from different faiths, different beliefs, classes, ages, sexualities – all these different diversity strands. We're here to make sure we're all living together in harmony, and that we understand each other."

Mr Emam's job can involve working with bodies such as the local police to improve their understanding of the minority groups they have to deal with, but also ensuring immigrants understand the culture and the rules of the society they have arrived in . Such work will be increasingly important as the county becomes ever more diverse in the future.

Mr Emam said: "Our job is to challenge the perceptions about the Western world of the ethnic minority people coming here from abroad, and often the perceptions of the indigenous people about people from other countries.

"How can we make sure that someone like myself, who has been here for 23 years, feels that this is my home, this is my community – that my home is not where my father comes from but here, where I live and where my children are growing up?

"We provide people with an understanding of the community they are living in and help them share and engage with that community."

He also stresses the importance of local authorities planning their services

carefully with an increasingly-diverse community in mind, suggesting as examples the potential need for a Muslim cemetery in Scarborough

or a Kashmiri cemetery in Skipton.