Race is defined under the Race Relations Act 1976 and The Race Relations (Amendments) Act 2001 (RRA) as:
A group of people defined by race, colour, nationality and ethnic or national origins. Romany Gypsies, Jews and Sikhs have been explicitly recognised by the courts as constituting racial groups for the purposes of the Race Relations Act. Other examples include: Chinese, Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Black African, Black Caribbean, White, Irish, Welsh, Turkish, Greek Cypriot, mixed ethnic group, any other ethnic group/nationality.
Britain has always been a multi-cultural society. Besides long settled communities, such as South Asian and Caribbean people more recently Britain has seen an influx of migrants from Eastern Europe and refugees from all over the globe.
1 in 12 of the population in UK were born overseas. In the 2001 census, 6.7 million people in Great Britain (or 11.8% of the total population) were from ethnic minorities. Of these, 4.6 million (or 8.1% of the total population) were from non-White ethnic minorities. This represented an increase of 53% from just over 3 million (or roughly 5.5%) in 1991.
At the time of the Census 2001, Eastbourne’s population was 89,667 a rise of 8304 on the 1991 population figure. The main ethnicity was white British with a population of 82,914 assessing themselves to be in this category (92.47%). Of the remaining population 3051 (3.4%) assessed themselves to be from a Black or non white ethnic minority and 3702 (4.13%) from a white non-British ethnic minority. The largest non-white ethnic minority group living in Eastbourne is Chinese.
Information from the Census indicates the Black Minority Ethnic (BME) population of Eastbourne has grown from 1.84% in 1991 to 3.4% in 2001.
Data taken from the customer audit, based on 2631 usable returns in 2006, identifies;
Ethnic Backgound | Based on usable returns |
White British, White Irish, White Other | 2526 |
Asian, Asian Pakistani, Asian Indian, Asian Other | 30 |
Black African, Black Caribbean, Black Other, | 5 |
Mixed African, Mixed Asian, Mixed Caribbean, Mixed Other | 17 |
Chinese, Other | 15 |
Data indicates, 67 customers have a BME background and 26 customers do not speak any English and require information in alternative languages; Portuguese (6), Bengali (5), Farsi (2) Spanish (4), French (1), Mandarin(1), Tamil (1) and Russian (2), Kurdish (1), Gujurati (1), Italian(1), Polish(1)
We provide interpreting and translation services for customers with little or no English. This includes face to face interpreting and the availability of all documents translated into the language of choice.
Ethnicity and disability
Information from our customer audit also tells us how many of our customer’s state they have a longstanding illness, use a wheelchair or find steps and stairs a difficult (and therefore classified as disabled under the Disability Discrimination Act). The table below indicates by ethnicity how many customers state they have a disability.
Ethnic background, | Longstanding illness | Wheelchair user | Steps/stairs difficult |
Asian Indian | 1 | 0 | 1 |
Asian Bangladeshi | 0 | 0 | 2 |
Asian Other | 1 | 0 | 2 |
Asian Pakistani | 1 | 0 | 0 |
W&B Caribbean | 3 | 0 | 0 |
White & Asian | 0 | 0 | 1 |
Other | 1 | 1 | 3 |
White British | 418 | 57 | 619 |
White Other | 4 | 3 | 12 |
White Irish | 8 | 3 | 10 |
Chinese | 0 | 1 | 1 |
Black Caribbean | 0 | 0 | 3 |
For more information about culture and faith please follow the links on the left hand side of the page.
