Promoting Racial Equality 2005 - 2006

Tower Hamlets is one of the UK’s most culturally vibrant and diverse areas. Densely populated, with over 200,000 people living within its 8 square miles at the heart of London’s East End, the borough has for centuries been home for many immigrants to Britain. Today, some 49% of residents are from Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) communities. 33% are of Bangladeshi heritage, and there are also sizable Somali, Caribbean, Chinese, Vietnamese, Indian and Pakistani communities.

Deprivation and poverty is widespread in the area, providing a stark contrast to the wealth and prosperity that has grown around Canary Wharf and the City fringes that also lie within the borough.

In an area of such cultural and economic diversity, the potential for tension between communities is inevitably high. However, local people are proud of their history of tolerance and mutual respect, friction is always short-lived, and the borough is regarded nationally as a beacon for community cohesion.

Achievements

The inclusive vision of Tower Hamlets’ Local Strategic Partnership is to improve the quality of life for all who live and work here. Equalities are core to the shared community strategy, and are fully integrated into service planning and delivery across all services. The following examples illustrate this approach:

Making Tower Hamlets a Better Place for Living Safely

• The council - in partnership with police, schools and community leaders – created a Rapid Response Team, to resolve community tensions, before they can escalate.
• Nine additional reporting sites – including the East London Mosque – have been established to encourage reporting of racial incidents.

Case Study: Feeling Safer (Pdf 315kb)

Making Tower Hamlets a Better Place for Living Well

• Healthy lifestyle initiatives are tailored to health and cultural issues within specific communities, to address health inequalities. Examples include a Bangladeshi men’s smoking cessation and a diabetes support programme (diabetes disproportionately affects the Asian community).
• A targeted drive for trainee social workers recruited 86% of entrants from local Bangladeshi and Somali communities.

Case Study: Sonali Gardens (Pdf 263kb)

Making Tower Hamlets a Better Place for Creating and Sharing Prosperity

• The council was a key partner in the creation of the London Muslim Centre, which offers a host of initiatives to encourage and support the local economy.
• The council’s workforce is increasingly drawn from, and reflects the local community: 36% of staff are from BME communities.

Case Study: London Muslim Centre (Pdf 268kb)
Tower Hamlets Community Recycling Consortium (Pdf 291kb)

Making Tower Hamlets a Better Place for Learning Achievement and Leisure

• Around 25% of Tower Hamlets' teachers and 50% of teaching assistants are from BME backgrounds.
• Educational attainment has improved significantly for all local communities; Bangladeshi pupils perform better at 16 in Tower Hamlets than in any other local education authority.

Case Study: Raising Racism Awareness in Schools (Pdf 287kb)

Making Tower Hamlets a Better Place for Excellent Public Services

• The council has reached Level 4 of the National Equalities Standard and aims to achieve level 5 in 2005.
• The Council’s weekly newspaper, East End Life, contains pages written in Bengali and Somali. It is read by 79% of residents.
• Around 30% of customer contact staff are bilingual.

Case Study: East End Life (Pdf 424kb)
Workforce to Reflect the Community (Pdf 331kb)

Key messages

Provide strong leadership to ensure that an inclusive vision underpins the work of all partner organisations. Encourage all partners to take ownership of equality values and embed race equality into all strategic, service and team planning.

• Have high aspirations for the entire community. Local social and economic context is important in planning service delivery, but diversity or deprivation should not be accepted as an excuse for delivering poor services. Harmony within the community is linked to the economic, social and environmental well-being of the area as a whole. Good quality core services lay the foundations on which to develop racial equality, by instilling local pride and confidence. All services need to be clearly focused on improving the quality of life for all communities.
• Services and outcomes can be improved by having a workforce which reflects the community: this can be achieved with committed and innovative recruitment strategies.
• Ensure that differences between communities are widely and clearly understood. Celebrate the richness of diversity, but be realistic and open about the tensions that can arise between communities.
• Work with the voluntary and community sector and directly with local residents to develop more effective engagement with local people. Build the capacity of local residents to contribute to the design and delivery of their services.
• Ongoing, two-way communication with all communities is vital to ensure that no single group within the borough feels disengaged, to build better understanding and trust and to ensure that services are delivered in a culturally sensitive way.