Mayday: Significant Disparities and Lost Ground for Race Equality Revealed in Last Month’s National Reporting

A series of reports published in May paints a damning picture of progress on race equality in the UK over the previous four decades. Publicly funded organisations are not delivering equity to persons of colour, whether they are staff or service users.

The latest findings in the Social Care Workforce Race Equality Standard (SC-WRES) report show that persons of colour working as social care staff continue to face worse outcomes than their white colleagues in English councils across most indicators:

• 37% more likely to have entered a formal disciplinary process in the previous 12 months
• 21% more likely to have left their role in the previous 12 months
• 45% less likely to be in senior manager roles

To contextualise these results, a wider national analysis of public systems and institutions shared last month was conducted by The Guardian and revealed that only a third of the recommendations from major reports and reviews commissioned to tackle endemic racism in the UK over the past 40 years have actually been implemented.

Reviewing nearly 600 recommendations from 12 reports into racial inequalities commissioned by various ministers since 1981, including the murder of Stephen Lawrence and the disproportionate deaths of black men in custody, analysis reveals that where recommendations were initiated, progress has been eroded or reversed by austerity policies.

The abject impact of continual failures to address structural racism on persons of colour is significant. According to the Trades Union Congress (TUC), in May 2025, the unemployment rate for women of colour looking for work is at 5.4% in comparison to an overall rate of 4.1% for women.

Referring back to the figures in the Social Care Workforce Race Equality Standard report gives some context to the pressures women of colour face in the workplace and the challenges experienced to get back into employment when they feel forced out of a job they are qualified and committed to do.

These reports paint a clear picture that the progress that should have been made over the previous decades to make public services and systems accessible and equitable for persons of colour to work and to receive support as citizens has never received commitment from ministers or leaders.

How at odds this reality is with the incessant headlines of ‘woke gone too far’ as a standard media response to any DEI models being championed over the past few years. DEI itself is now a weaponised word in right-leaning media and politics; pledges to cause its demise are viewed as vote-winners for political parties.

Earlier this month the Chancellor of the Exchequer addressed a redistribution of investment into areas of need, as she announced commitments to increased budgets for national systems in the spending review; ‘We are renewing Britain. But I know that too many people in too many parts of our country are yet to feel it.’

How apt a statement in light of the racial inequalities being experienced by persons of colour. As budgets increase for the NHS, prisons and infrastructure projects, how do the government propose enabling marginalised groups to ‘feel it’?

The outcomes where initiatives and recommendations are being actioned for racial justice give hope that real change can occur. NHS England’s framework, Patient and Carer Race Equality Framework (PCREF), is designed to improve equitable access, experience, and outcomes for people from diverse ethnic communities within mental health services.

The main pillars of PCREF are the three overarching elements of service; leadership and governance, national organisational competencies and patient and carer voice. In my work with SIG in South London, I come into contact with professionals, service users and carers of local NHS Trusts who refer back to PCREF in conversations about why equity matters and how to create this in service settings.

PCREF’s success ought to attributed to the multifaceted approach in addressing policy, practice and patients, because these combine to enable patient centred care. Upholding rights, delivering efficient and tailored support based on the needs and aspirations of patients, is what residents of SIG’s services state as crucial to recovery, with dignity and wellbeing. Embedding equity takes commitment and consistency and we urge this approach across all statutory organisations.

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