Study finds NHS still lags 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 new Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) survey.

The study found that only 5% of NHS trusts have fully implemented racial equality action programmes, less 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 on equal opportunities issues. 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 a number of recommendations for improvements, including:

* equal opportunities responsibilities should be part of the chief executive's and all managers' job plans. Their performance should be measured against racial equality outcomes;

* equal opportunities should be an agenda item for all trust board meetings;

* it should become mandatory for all NHS employers to collect and analyse ethnic monitoring data in employment. The NHS Executive should make sure that all trusts get feedback on the monitoring data they provide on NHS employees, by region; and

* a similar national survey of all NHS trusts should be carried out, to assess their commitment to racial equality.