Promoting Race Equality In South Ayrshire

In November 2005 South Ayrshire Council published a new Race Equality Scheme. In the Scheme, the Council sets out the actions it intends to take to promote race equality in South Ayrshire over the next three years.

Why Promote Race Equality in South Ayrshire?

Although Ayrshire has a very small ethnic minority population - less than 1% of the total population - it has a duty in law to promote race equality. The Council needs to be sure that the services it provides are accessible to all and that it promotes equality through its work. The Scheme sets out how we intend to do this.

What is in the Scheme?

The content of the scheme reflects both the requirements of the Race Relations Act and local circumstances. As South Ayrshire has a small ethnic minority population the issues we face are not be the same as in cities or larger urban areas.

We have reviewed the work that has happened over the past three years, including feedback from the Commission for Racial Equality and the results of an Ayrshire wide survey of the needs of ethnic minority communities. The survey was carried out by the Ayrshire Race Equality Partnership and presents a picture of the issues and challenges involved in promoting race quality in Ayrshire.

Following this review we have drawn up a list of those council functions that we believe are most important for race equality - this is called the list of "relevant functions". For each relevant function we have identified the actions we will take over the next three years in different departments of the Council.

The review showed that communication and engagement with minority communities was the most important challenges facing the Council. Therefore we will try to establish better communication with different ethnic minority groups across South Ayrshire so that we can get a better understanding of the needs of different communities and make any changes to services that may be needed to meet those needs. The Council's community development team will lead this work.