City of York Council to 'make savings elsewhere' in order to improve ethnic diversity of workforce

A plan of action for the City of York Council’s response to the five-year anti-racism and inclusion strategy was approved by its executive team on Thursday, December 14.

It included plans to investigate the reasons behind the proportion of ethnic minority employees in the council, which is 6.3 per cent, and take steps to actively increase diversity in the workforce.

For the first time, the plan includes Roma, Traveller, and Gypsy groups.

However, implementing the plan “will require compensatory savings to be identified elsewhere across the council.”

The City of York Council forecasts to overspend by more than £11m this year and needs to make at least £10m in savings each year to keep afloat.

Haddy Njie, chair of the campaign group Inclusive Equal Rights UK (IERUK), said: “We appreciate the financial difficulty the council is facing, however, this challenge should never be an excuse to delay the implementation of the anti-racist action plan.

“Any delay to this important and well over-due work sends a message to people affected by discrimination and racism that we do not matter.”

The leader of the City of York Council, Coun Claire Douglas, said the plan will help the council “move to a point where our employment base better represents statistics that show us how many groups actually make up the population of York.”

According to the 2021 Census, 92.8 per cent of people in York identified their ethnic group within the “White” category, compared with 94.3 per cent in 2011.

3.8 per cent identified their ethnic group within the “Asian, Asian British or Asian Welsh” category, compared with 3.4 per cent in the previous decade.

Coun Katie Lomas, whose portfolio covers equality, said she was “really proud” of the anti-racism strategy but that “no organisation is immune to structural and systemic racism and it’s really important that we can openly discuss these issues.”

Research conducted by the IERUK found that 6.3 per cent of the City of York Council’s 2,600 workforce are from ethnic minorities, which has increased from 5.0 per cent in 2019.

This is compared with 10.1 per cent across the national public sector.

Of the nine members of the City of York Council’s senior management team, one identified as someone as BAME (Black Asian and Minorised Ethnicity), while its executive portfolio is entirely white.

“It is and should be a concern for us that the councillors here to represent the city do not, in fact, represent the city,” Coun Lomas said.

“We have work to do on the lack of representation throughout the organisation.”

Ms Njie is “encouraged and hopeful” that the plan can make a difference to diversity in York.

She said: “We believe the adopted action plan is the beginning of creating a culture that fosters accountability, fairness and equality for everyone regardless of race, background or creed.

Ms Njie added: “The make-up of the council’s decision-making leadership does not represent the people and communities they serve and therefore has the potential of creating inadvertently biased policies that do not take into consideration communities and groups of people whose cultures and backgrounds they do not fully understand.”