Bosses of British town halls are 'hideously white'

Marc Wadsworth and Deborah Hobson

New research has revealed that the top tier of local government in Britain is “hideously white”.

A special investigation discloses that black and minority ethnic people have missed out on top jobs in town halls across the UK.

Staff in the highest paid council posts are overwhelmingly white and mostly male. Only a handful of Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) people feature in key positions where they have a real chance to influence policy, despite the local authorities we looked at covering an areas with a large BME population.

Figures released to The-Latest.Com, using Freedom of Information law, show that many authorities employ predominately white staff as top policy and decision makers – post that have big salaries. The late Black parliamentarian Bernie Grant called it the Guinness effect where white staff invariably rose to the top.

Of London’s 33 local authorities, including the City and Boris Johnson’s Greater London Authority, only one town hall – Lambeth – has an African Caribbean or Asian chief executive. Yet the capital has a population that is 31 per cent BME.

The chief executives of Newham and Brent are both white. An Asian woman is the sole BME representative on Brent’s nine-strong corporate management team. The populations of the two London boroughs are a majority BME.

The survey reveals that some councils come close to representing their ethnic minority population with the overall number of BME staff in their workforce. But the authorities fail miserably when looking at the number in top jobs.

Town halls covered were Manchester, Birmingham, Bradford, Leicester, Liverpool, Bristol and London, including Boris Johnson’s City Hall. Councils in London with a large BME population were part of the three-month investigation timed to coincide with Black History Month this October. 

Britain’s former race equality boss Lord Ouseley, 65, said he deplored the dire lack of black or minority ethnic bosses in town halls. Ouseley trail-blazed as Britain’s first black chief executive when he took control of staff at the Inner London Education Authority in the late 1980s. He left his job as boss of Lambeth Council to become chair of the Commission for Race Equality in 1993. 

Ouseley said: “One can look back to 20 years ago and say that there were black council leaders and local government executives whereas today there are very few. In some town halls it’s an all-white structure at the top.” 

He added: “It’s inexplicable why talented black and minority ethnic people are no longer in key decision-making positions.” 

In 2001 the director-general of the UK’s most famous public body described it as being "hideously white”.

Greg Dyke did not say the BBC was racist but acknowledged that, like the Metropolitan Police, it had a problem with race relations. He admitted the organisation's management structure was more than 98 per cent white. 

Race equality campaigners blame what they claim are institutionally racist local authority processes like selection procedures that have worked against well-qualified BME candidates going for top jobs at town halls.

Ouseley said: “The system benefits white executives who are very good at using networking processes that get their faces seen by the right people with the power to recruit them to plum jobs in local government.”

A Labour-hatched new equality law came into force this month and many people hoped the Harriet Harman-led legislation would improve things at town halls. But Ouseley, who fought to make it tougher, said it was “not worth the paper it is written on”.

He said New Labour had missed a golden opportunity “to deliver an equalities law with some teeth but failed because they should have brought it in five years earlier and not made so many concessions. The new law is feeble because enforcement arrangements are weak and resources to strengthen enforcement will not be available”.

London’s only black chief executive is Derrick Anderson, 53, who, according to the GMB trade union, earns £280,000 a year running Lambeth Council. He said: “Progress can be faster and more uniform but I’m an optimist. There are a number of black and minority ethnic people at director level at the moment and in five to 10 years a number of them will be chief executives.”

He added: “I have a beef where there is a local authority whose staff does not reflect its diverse community and therefore cannot deliver a credible and relevant service.”

Anderson, the son of a Jamaican builder and a Brixton resident, said that, after almost 30 years in local government, he believed: “Where you have black leadership then getting the authority to reflect its racial diversity is much easier.”

“If you are to properly serve a diverse community then the workforce of the local authority must be diverse.”

Anderson explained why there was a paucity of black chief executives: “Wherever there are talented black executives in local authorities they tend to get headhunted by the civil service and industry. Joe Montgomery (Director General of Regions and Communities) is an example of that.”

Ealing’s Asian chief executive Darra Singh left the job he had held for four years to become the boss of Jobcentre Plus in August last year, a post that put him on the same grade as a civil service permanent secretary and in charge of 74,000 staff. Before working at Ealing, he was chief executive of Luton Borough Council.

There are about 400 local authorities in the UK. Most are district councils with annual budgets of £10-20m but 100 are unitary authorities like the 33 London boroughs, with a £1bn turnover.

Transport for London’s former director of equalities says he applied for six or seven chief executive post with unitary authorities, including some in London, without success. Sushel Ohri, 59, was critical of the racially-biased way “the headhunters do their job”.

* Below is a snapshot of top black staff in the town halls of the big cities that have the largest black and minority ethnic (BME) populations. Also surveyed were London boroughs with large BME populations. We used Freedom of Information requests followed up by emails and phone calls over a three month period to gleans the information – and some authorities were less co-operative than others. According to the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000, the data should have been collected by local authorities and acted on where it revealed inequality. 

GREATER LONDON AUTHORITY

Management board: 6. No BME

BME staff: 25%

BME population: 31%

NEWHAM

Management board: Would only state 16% BME.

BME staff: 47%

BME population: 61%

BRENT

Management board: 9. One BME (Director of children and families)

BME staff: 61%

BME population: 55%

SOUTHWARK 

Management board: 8. No BME

BME staff: 48%

BME population: 40%

LAMBETH

Management Board: 5. Two BME (Chief executive and Interim head of regeneration).

Number of BME – 59% - 1996 employees

BME population: 38%

CROYDON 

Management Board: 10. Two BME (Director of strategy and communications and director of human resources).

BME staff: 37%

BME population: 29%

NEWHAM

Management board: Would only state 16% BME.

BME staff: 47%

BME population: 61%

GREENWICH 

Management Board: 12. One BME (Assistant Chief Executive).

BME staff: 30%

BME population: 30%

LEWISHAM 

Management Board: 5. One BME (Executive director for resources).

BME staff: 18

BME population: 34%

CAMDEN

Management Board: 7. None BME.

BME staff 35 %

BME population: 27%

TOWER HAMLETS

Management Board: 7. BME 1 (Corporate Director for Development and Renewal)

BME staff: 56%

BME population: 49%

Management board: No BME. 

BME staff: 29%

BME population: 22%

HACKNEY

Board of management: 8. Two BME (Neighbourhood regeneration and Legal and Democratic Services).

BME staff: 54%

BME population: 51%

WALTHAM FOREST

Management board: 7. None BME.

BME staff: 

BME population: 36%

EALING

Management board: 4. Three white and one would not say.

BME staff: 40%

BME population: 41%

ENFIELD

Management board: 7. None BME.

BME staff: 28%

BME population: 28%

SHEFFIELD

Management board: 6. None BME.

BME staff: 8.6%

BME population: 16%

LEICESTER

Management board: 9. None BME.

BME staff: 27%

BME population: 36%

NOTTINGHAM

Management board: 5. None BME.

BME staff: 13%

BME population: 19%

LEEDS

Management board: 10. None BME

BME staff: 10%

BME population: 11%

BRISTOL

Management board: 8. None BME.

BME staff: 6%

BME population: 10%

BRADFORD

Management board: 8. None BME.

BME staff: 21%

BME population: 29%

MANCHESTER

Management board: 9. None BME

BME staff: 17%

BME population: 19%

LIVERPOOL

Management board: No Chief Executive and 1 permanent director. None BME.

BME staff: 7%

BME population: 8%

Management board: 10. One BME (Chief legal officer).

BME staff: 28%

BME population: 30%

WOLVERHAMPTON

Management board: 8. None BME

BME staff: 15%

BME population: 27%