NHS slow to act on race equality

The country's largest employer, the NHS, still has a long way to go before it can claim to be delivering on racial equality, according to a Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) survey.

The study found that only 5% of NHS trusts have fully implemented racial equality action programmes, fewer than half had written procedures for dealing with racial harassment and only 11% had set themselves employment targets.

The survey, Racial equality and NHS trusts, covers 128 trusts in the London, South West, South East and Eastern regions of the NHS in England. The majority reported that they did have written policies. However, the survey found: "Policies tended to be written without reference to trade unions or staff and many employees were unaware of the trust's policy. In many there was a disturbing gap between equal opportunities policy and practice."

The CRE has made recommendations for improvements, including making equal opportunities responsibilities a part of the job plans of all chief executives and managers and making it mandatory for all NHS employers to collect and analyse ethnic monitoring data in employment.