Adrian Jones bemoans lack of progress in collecting and using data on ethnicity in housing services

Despite forty years of guidance on collecting and using ethnic monitoring data, social housing providers are still not making enough use of their data to improve services for black and minority ethnic tenants and residents. In a recently published Better Housing briefing paper published by the Race Equality Foundation, Jones brings together evidence of shortcomings in provider approaches, that can perpetuate existing ethnic inequalities. For example, by not analyzing its data and linking it to the impact of its lettings policy or reports of racial harassment, or the number of black and minority ethnic staff in senior management positions.
Several examples of good practice are given, covering housing associations and local authorities. For example, he praises Birmingham City Council for analyzing allocations by ethnicity and comparing this to national census and allocations data. The authority also examines waiting list time, choice of area, quality of lettings and refusal rates. This information is then used to directly improve the service. Jones cautions against losing focus on ‘race’ and ethnicity with the need to collect and use data on other equalities aspects such as age, faith and sexual orientation. The paper contains useful resources and references. You can view Monitoring the ethnicity of housing service users: forty years of progress? by Adrian Jones at:
http://www.raceequalityfoundation.org.uk/housing/files/housing-brief13.pdf