How Can We Help? - About Racism - The Race Act

The Race Relations Acts are lengthy Documents so we are directing you to the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) web site where you can view and download the documents.

Where do I find information on the Law?

There are some important pieces of legislation that relate to issues of racism.

They are:

• Race Relations Act 1976 (www.cre.gov.uk/legaladv/law)
• Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000 (www.cre.gov.uk/legaladv/law)
• Race Regulations Act 2003

Information on these can be found, with further help, advice and guidance at the Commission for Racial Equality Website

• www.cre.gov.uk

Alternatively all of the above information can be found on the Home Office website

 

The duty to promote race equality

The following extract is from the Commission for Racial Equality: -

The amended Race Relations Act places a general statutory duty on over 300 public authorities listed in schedule 1A to the Act. These authorities include government departments, the Scottish Administration, the National Assembly of Wales, the Armed Forces, the NHS, local authorities, governing bodies of publicly funded schools and colleges, the Housing Corporation, Scottish Homes, and police authorities.

The duty means that, in everything they do, these listed authorities must have 'due regard' to the need to:

• eliminate unlawful racial discrimination
• promote equality of opportunity
• promote good relations between people of different racial groups

To meet the duty, the listed authorities should take whatever steps are needed to make sure that their policies and practice do not disadvantage people from particular racial groups. They will need to ask whether their policies have (or are likely to have) an impact on race equality.

If a listed public authority has a contract or other arrangement with a private company or a voluntary organisation to carry out any of its functions, and the duty applies to those functions, the authority is responsible for meeting the duty concerning those functions. Private or voluntary organisations do not have this obligation. Listed public authorities working in partnership with other organisations are still responsible for meeting the general duty and any specific duties.

From Monday 3 December 2001, some of the listed public authorities will also be bound by specific duties aimed at helping them to meet their general duty. These include ethnic monitoring of employment practice and preparing and publishing a Race Equality Scheme, which explains how the authority is planning to meet its general duty. The specific duties came into effect on 31 May 2002.

More details are available from the Commission for Racial Equality.

• www.cre.gov.uk