Mark Carroll

Committing to cohesionMark CarrollDirector of Race, Faith and Cohesion : Committing to cohesion Mark Carroll Director of Race, Faith and Cohesion


Slide2 : Sympathies with extremist ideology: Increase in public expression of and susceptibility to far-right and radical extremist Muslim sentiments Three key challenges Vision Broad direction of future strategy Impact of rapid change: Some communities find it difficult to deal with growing diversity and migration in the UK Differences in life-chances: Inequality of opportunity by race, faith, place, class and gender A cohesive country where citizens share a set of common values and have a sense of belonging to both their communities and to the country Building cohesion locally to promote communities that are close, vibrant and support each other The community cohesion agenda has moved on from 2001, when the focus was on “parallel lives”


Slide3 : Emphasis on the local and on building partnerships Joining up on equalities and with work to include Gypsy and Traveller communities Joining up on preventing extremism and the debate around shared values Opportunities to mainstream cohesion across key policies including Housing and Planning … and the move to Communities and Local Government brings with it real opportunities


Slide4 : Deprivation correlates with poor cohesion – with people in deprived areas feeling more negative about their neighbourhood and whether people of different backgrounds get on And it is poor White deprived people who feel the worst about cohesion – perhaps because they live in poorer neighbourhoods and because they are more likely to live in social housing The Citizenship Survey shows that Housing is the only public service where white people feel more discriminated against than BME households There is a significant level of Far Right campaigning on housing issues using grievances about housing - be it growth or social housing allocation … Housing has become a focus of a lot of the worries people have about cohesion …


Slide5 : While ethnic minorities centre mainly around London and the North West2… The UK has high levels of “clustering” of BME groups, but the A8 migrants are changing this …A8 migration has spread to rural and previously homogeneous areas3 Simpson’s Diversity Index shows that in general, every area of the UK is becoming more diverse. Important to realise that BME households, as well as white households, moving out of urban areas to suburban and rural looking for better prospects … but although data on residential segregation is hotly debated, it doesn’t point to ghettoisation There is some segregation – concentrated in the North, but diversity is actually increasing


Slide6 : Residential / neighbourhoods – challenge of designing places and promoting participation Education – duty on schools, plus work with FE colleges and universities Employment – representative workforces, but wider social responsibilities and contribution to neighbourhoods Leisure / arts / cultural – reinforcing the role of sport and culture to promote interaction The real issue is instances of compound segregation across 4 spheres …


Slide7 : How important is interaction? – should Government ever be worried about friendships and social time? What do we make of the public focus on immigration and immigrants (18%) rather than race relations (4%)? If the answer is local, does that mean that there can’t be a particular “type” of area, or that there can’t be regional and national solutions? But there are some real questions as we prepare for the Commission’s report