Public authorities in Britain spend billions every year on contracts with private and voluntary organisations for goods, works, and services. It is vital, therefore, that they take full account of all the implications - both economic and social - of their investment. They must also ensure that this investment is consistent with their race equality obligations.

The duty to promote race equality applies to procurement itself. Where a public authority’s function is carried out by an external supplier on its behalf, the local authority remains responsible for meeting the duty.

If procurement of goods, services or facilities is one of the functions of your authority it should have been assessed to see if it is relevant to the general duty. The CRE would expect procurement to have been categorised as one of your relevant functions or policies and you should have taken steps to monitor the implementation of this function to see if it results in any adverse impact.

Contractors themselves must not discriminate, but they do not have the same legal obligation to promote equality of opportunity. So public authorities must build relevant race equality considerations into the procurement process to ensure that all of their functions meet the requirements of the Race Relations Act, regardless of who is carrying them out.

So, to comply with their duty under the Act, local authorities should make sure that public money is not spent on practices that lead to unlawful racial discrimination, but is used instead to support and encourage equality of opportunity and good community relations.

In addition, contractors (and potential contractors) need to be aware of the legal duty on local authorities, since it has implications for them.

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Detailed guidance

We have produced two guides - one for local government and one for all other public authorities - which expand and develop the guidance in our code of practice and accompanying guides, in relation to procurement. They set out in more detail what local authorities can do to meet their responsibilities under the duty. 

There are also two accompanying leaflets - which summarise the main steps required to incorporate race equality into procurement, and the key outcomes authorities should seek to achieve - and a separate briefing for suppliers (which was produced jointly with the CBI).

All of these publications are available from the Downloads section of this page. Printed copies, and Welsh language versions of the local governemnt and public authority guides, are also available from the Publications section of this website.

• Publications - the race equality duty

For procurement issues in the health sector, you may find it useful to refer to the guidance published as part of the NHS's MOSAIC project. See the Links section of this page.

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