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The Aim

We have called this site BeUTD because we want to create a fair society, united by the common values that we believe people hold regardless of their race or ethnicity.

The government’s Citizenship Survey tells us that

  • People from BAME group are more likely than most to feel that they can influence decisions in their local area and nationally[1];
  • Many BAME groups are more likely than White people to feel that they belong strongly to their neighbourhood, including Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Indian and Caribbean groups.

The government wants to create a society based on opportunity for everyone, where talent and effort decide how well you do, not race, sex, class or having a disability. The Department for Communities and Local Government – the Government department responsible for race equality is currently asking people for their views on our future strategic approach to achieving race equality.

Since 2005, this work has been driven by the Government Race Strategy – Improving Opportunity, Strengthening Society. The original strategy contained over a hundred commitments from across government, aimed at addressing the different experiences and results in the key areas of Education, Employment, Health, Housing and Criminal Justice.

When we published the strategy we announced that we would report annually for three years.The third and final report of the strategy was published on the 24 February 2009 and showed excellent progress, particularly in areas such as GCSE attainment, employment rates, decent housing and improving care for people with mental health problems. Despite this, there are significant challenges remaining – in criminal justice and despite good progress, employment, where the gap in employment rates between people from BAME groups and the overall population is still almost 13 percentage points

We are now revising and refreshing our strategy to reflect the progress made so far, the changes to the way that equalities are dealt with by government since 2005 for instance in 2007, the independent commissions which ensured that government and other organisations obey the law on race, gender and disability merged to form the new Equality and Human Rights Commission. Government is also passing a new Equalities Bill through Parliament.

We want to get people’s views on the direction this strategy should take. On the 24 February we published Tackling race inequalities: A discussion document which will inform the debate we are having on our future approach.

We are also holding a series of listening events across the nine English regions which where we will be listening to stakeholders from the public, private and third sectors. We want to use this site to get views and opinions from people with an interest in this area. We have asked a series of questions and you are welcome to answer one, some or all of them.
[1] Citizenship Survey (CLG) 2008