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- Complying with the general duty
- Complying with the specific duties
- Assessing compliance
- Enforcing the race equality duties
- Monitoring for compliance
- How will the inspectorates be involved?
- How do you judge whether race equality schemes are any good, and are fit for purpose?
Related pages
Downloads
CRE assessment template for race equality schemes (DOC 89.0 KB) Download time approx. 0m 26s at 28 Kbps Download time approx. 0m 13s at 56 Kbps Download time approx. 0m 6s at 128 Kbps Download time approx. 0m 1s at 512 Kbps
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This page was last updated on 13 April 2005
The race equality duty is a statutory duty and therefore failure to comply can result in legal enforcement action.
Complying with the general duty
If a public authority does not meet the general duty, its actions (or failure to act) can be challenged in a High Court (or Court of Session in Scotland) for judicial review. A claim for judicial review can be made by one or more people with an interest in the matter, or the CRE. The CRE can also use its powers of formal investigation to enforce the general duty. If the CRE has sufficient information and belief that unlawful discrimination is taking place, it can mount a formal investigation into the relevant actions of a named body. At the end of the formal investigation process, a finding of discrimination can be made and the CRE can serve a non-discrimination notice on the named body.
Complying with the specific duties
If a public authority does not meet any of its specific duties it could face enforcement action by the CRE under section 71D of the amended Race Relations Act.
See Enforcing the race equality duties below for more information about the CRE's enforcement role.
Assessing compliance
The Commission for Racial Equality has produced an assessment template for race equality schemes and race equality policies (RESs/REPs).
This is available from the Downlaods section of this page.
We encourage public authorities to use this template to assess their own schemes and to make improvements as required. Bodies with a performance management role, such as strategic health authorities or inspectorates, will also find this a useful tool for assessing the schemes of the authorities for which they are responsible.
Further details of the CRE’s statutory legal powers, including applications for judicial review and formal investigations can be found here:
Enforcing the race equality duties
The CRE is committed to working in partnership with public authorities to help them their legal responsibilities under the Race Relations Act. We are also committed to using the full range of our enforcement powers appropriately. The CRE is the only body that has powers to enforce the specific duties to promote race equality.
If we are satisfied a public authority has failed (or is failing) to meet its specific duties it can serve a compliance notice. Where the CRE has information that that public authority may be failing to meet its specific duties, we will contact the authority to alert them that we may be ‘minded’ to issue a compliance notice. If the public authority fails to adequately respond to this warning, then we can issue the notice.
The CRE has initiated compliance proceedings with over 150 public authorities across each of the sectors including local and central government, health, education and criminal justice. In the majority of cases, to date, this has resulted in positive outcomes – those authorities having compliant schemes and policies, and we have not had to issue a compliance notice.
Monitoring for compliance with the race equality duties
The CRE pro-actively monitors public authorities to ensure that they are complying with the requirements of the race equality duty. The CRE also works with other key partners to monitor how and if public bodies are complying the race equality duty.
Compliance of both general and specific duties is monitored:
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through examining samples of published information and reports required by race equality schemes;
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through the work of inspection and audit bodies (for more about these, click on the following link);
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through evidence of possible failure to comply brought to the CRE’s attention by individuals, groups, trade unions and various interested voluntary sector (and other public sector) groups; and
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through particular pieces of research conducted by or commissioned by the CRE
How will the inspectorates be involved?
The CRE is working with Inspectorate bodies across the public sector, and they are expected to make the Race Equality Duties an integral part of their work. They will continue to incorporate performance indicators and measures on race equality into their inspection frameworks, methodologies and thematic reviews.
The inspectorates are themselves subject to the Race Equality Duties, and are required, therefore, to show due regard for meeting the three strands of the General Duty in carrying out their relevant functions and policies. This is highly likely to include their audit or inspection procedures.
How do you judge whether race equality schemes are any good, and are fit for purpose?
Race equality schemes are public documents; anyone can check them. Public authorities are also required to publish the results of consultations, assessments, and monitoring, so anyone can see how well the authority is achieving what it set out to do.
The CRE has produced assessment templates which outline what we would expect to see in a race equality scheme or policy. These templates are publicly available (from the Downloads section of this page) and can be used as an assessment tool to judge the quality of a scheme or policy.
