Corporate Race Equality Scheme, Summary of Findings

A. The top actions that people viewed as important for this Council to carry out before 31st March 2009 were as follows, in priority order of votes received.  The first three had the most number of votes as being of highest importance to people overall.

• Find out how local communities want to be engaged with our service development and delivery
• Build up our understanding of community and voluntary networks so that we have a map of which communities live in the area and who supports them at the moment
• Produce a diversity booklet of information about what we know about communities and the challenges they face, to improve service delivery
• Publicise what the council does in the community places people go to
• Monitor contractors performance in promoting equalities when delivering services on behalf of the Council and act if this is below standard
• Privide short paragraph on printed information translated into local community languages explaining how to get full version in different formats or languages
  Encourage voter takeup through use of campaign material in local community languages
• Celebrate ceremonies and festivals that are important to communities to help people to better understand views, beliefs and cultures of all communities
• Full details are on the attached summary form showing all responses and comments
   

B. Groups and communities consulted were as follows:

• Fast food/takeaway establishments on the Council's Environmental Health database
• Local churches and places of worship
• Local businesses, from the Council's Economic Development database
• Residential and nursing care homes in the area
• Doctors surgeries
• Town and Parish councils
• Voluntary and community sector organisations, through the North Shropshire Voluntary Action Newsletter.
• Website users, through a special section on the website at www.northshropshiredc.gov.uk

C. Responses were received from:

• ABP as employer and employees
• Depicton Ltd
• Ellesmere Town Council
• Maelor Nurseries
• Moreton Saye Parish Council
• RAF Shawbury
• Star Kebab Whitchurch
• Welsh End Methodist Church

D. Nationalities who commented were:

• Any other black background
• Bulgarian
• Chinese
• Indian
• Polish
• Portuguese
• Welsh
• White British

(note:  the standard national census ethnicity categories were used)

E. Languages identified by consultees as local community languages were:

• Bulgarian
• Chinese (Cantonese and Mandarin)
• English
• Polish
• Portuguese
• Welsh

F. Total number of replies

• 18 completed forms were returned by the formal closing date of 22nd September 2008.
   

G.  Methodology for the consultation was as follows:

• Consultation was via introductory cover letter plus survey form and explanatory notes
• Five survey forms were sent to local businesses, churches and care homes, to encourage numbers of responses.
• A single individual survey form was sent to fast food establishments and to Town and Parish councils
• The online consultation was publicised via  a highlighted section on the website home page with details of how to access further information.  This was held on the pages of the website that contain main equality and community cohesion policies and plans.
• The North Shropshire Voluntary Action newsletter was used to publicise the consultation to local voluntary and community sector organisations and groups.

Related Links

Corporate Race Equality Scheme Public Consultation page