It's been 18 months since UK Sport and home nations sports councils published the findings and recommendations following a review of racism and racial inequality in sport - this is our third update on progress.
In the six months since our last update on progress and actions in response to the Tackling Racism and Racial Inequality in Sport (TRARIIS) review, continued incidents of racism in sport have continue to remind us of the importance of the work we're doing.
After speaking out about the racism that he said was rife in the RFU, former England rugby union player Luther Burrell was inundated with messages from parents confirming that their children were also the victims of racism at age-group level.
In front of the Department for Culture Media and Sport Committee in December, Lord Patel - who has since announced his resignation as Chair of Yorkshire County Cricket Club - detailed the racist abuse he had received since taking charge in the wake of the Azeem Rafiq racism scandal.
These incidents - and many others that occur and go unreported - not only highlight the scale of abuse and discrimination faced by individuals within sport, but they also serve as a constant reminder of the importance and urgency of tackling racism and addressing the findings of the TRARIIS review.
As the five Sports Councils responsible for funding sport and physical activity across the United Kingdom, we're unwavering in our stance that racism has no place in sport and that we will do all in our power to stamp out racial discrimination, abuse and prejudice.
Key themes
Following the publication of the TRARIIS review in June 2021, the five Sports Councils committed to regularly reporting publicly on progress.
In our last update in July, we reported on our collective focus on gathering more comprehensive and consistent EDI across the sporting system in order to ensure that we have a clear and coherent baseline upon which we can monitor and measure progress.
Our own data is improving, but still has a way to go. Through a process of engagement with our funded partners we're gaining a clearer understanding of the difficulties in collating and analysing data, including gaps in capacity or expertise, GDPR concerns and inadequate tools, databases and reporting mechanisms.
As the five Sports Councils, we've provided and will continue to provide practical support and, where necessary, extra funding in order to help our partners understand and address the barriers to improved representation of athletes, staff, volunteers and supporters.
Progress includes:
- A new approach to procurement at UK Sport, with EDI (and sustainability) requirements embedded into procurement processes to improve supplier diversity.
- The embedding of race equality best practice in Sport England's new operating model, ensuring an anti-racist lens is applied to the implementation of their organisational activities.
- Sport Wales's changes to its recruitment practices to guarantee interviews for ethnically diverse candidates who meet the essential criteria for a role, and recruitment of an EDI Manager for the organisation
- sportscotland's new partnership with UK-wide race discrimination charity Sporting Equals as part of an ongoing commitment to tackling race inequality. The partnership will develop an inclusive leadership programme and the sport workforce, and drive forward progress across organisations.
- Sport Northern Ireland's review of 31 funded governing bodies' equality, diversity and inclusion policies, identifying areas to improve policies, supporting governing bodies in publicly demonstrating their commitment to improving equality, diversity and inclusion and promoting best practice across sports.
What each sports council is doing
We set out below what each sports council is doing in this respect. Details of our other activity can be found at the bottom of this page.
Sport England
Structures and Systems
We're committed to embedding best practice in race equality and creating a culture where all colleagues can champion race inclusion through their everyday operations and through corporate planning, strategy implementation and investments.
This means we're placing an anti-racist lens on the implementation of our organisation activities through our new operating model. We've created a set of principles which we will help determine the right equality measures are agreed for our emerging service offers and investments. This can be as simple as measuring engagement with culturally diverse communities, agreeing to invest intentionally in specific delivery, or agreeing the relevant insight required to ensure we are clear on why and how we engage with black and brown communities.
Working collaboratively with the stakeholder group, alongside UK Sport, we have engaged our strategic commitment leads representing partnerships, strategy, place, HR, health, workforce, digital marketing and comms, investment management and the black staff network lead, to work with our external consultants on finalising our TRARIIS race equality framework.
People and representation
Our Diversity Inclusion Action Plan is the focus for measuring our internal progress on our equality targets and commitments. It sets out key actions for improving representation from across all protected characteristics, within our workforce. The progress on our actions is updated quarterly; reporting to our internal Equality Diversity and Inclusion Working Group (chaired by the CEO) and also to Board.
Alongside that, we are preparing the executive/senior leadership team to undertake a Race Equality code diagnostic assessment which will comprise of:
- Pre-assessment Race Survey for senior leadership team
- a pre-diagnostic document desk top review
- comprehensive race assessment
- a final report and a Race Action Plan.
The agreed Race Action Plan (RAP) will become a primary tool for change and will support the creation of realistic and timebound objectives for us to identify what is needed to comply with the emerging principles of the TRARIIS Framework.
These actions will also include specific and agreed responsibilities for key personnel across the organisation and progress on delivery will be reported back through Executive Leadership Team and to Board.
Insights
Informed equality impact assessments are key to how we can improve the way we invest: without bias and with the confidence that we will reach the very communities who often feel distanced and excluded from our investment.
To move this forward we've sampled some of our own equality impact assessments from investments made in the last two years that have sought to positively impact different communities including culturally diverse people.
We'll share the findings to demonstrate the value that a good equality impact assessment can add in supporting fairer decisions and providing confidence that we're maximising the impact and reach of our investments on black and brown communities.
To support this and other actions, we are developing an internal resource hub where colleagues can access and utilise a range of products to help increase confidence in their own abilities in order to have the necessary and ongoing conversations with our partners as we identify and bring onboard new allies.
Investments
We continue to invest in organisations that align to our strategic objectives, that are led by culturally diverse community leaders and have good reach and engagement with culturally diverse communities.
We'll include our data and insight commitment to ensure that we can effectively measure the impact of our investments on diverse communities and share our learning externally with our partners.
The number of these investments will increase over the next 12 months as we finalise our investment plans and explore new partnerships from different and new equality partners and organisations.
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Uk Sport
A full update from UK Sport can be found below.
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Sport Wales
A full update from Sport Wales can be found below.
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sportscotland
A full update from sportscotland can be found below.
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Sport Northern Ireland
A full update from Sport Northern Ireland can be found below.
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Stakeholder reaction
One of the lessons from TRARIIS was the need to co-create solutions with those communities who have experienced racism, discrimination, abuse and exclusion when engaging with, or participating in sport.
We therefore hugely value the ongoing close collaboration with the TRARIIS stakeholder group, compromised of some of the individuals who shared their lived experience in the original #TellYourStory survey.
We invited them to comment on the work undertaken to date.
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Audrey Livingston, coach, mentor and technical official at British Triathlon
"There is the old saying - you have to see it to be it. I like to think that by being involved with TRARIIS that the reverse of this statement is true: 'you have to be it so others can see it'.
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Nana Badu, CEO of BADU Sports
TRARIIS has been integral in supporting the sports councils to develop a long- term approach that systemically supports black communities within sports and physical activity, to build a more equitable playing field for all.
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What's next?
The five Sports Councils will continue to be transparent and open about the work we are doing and the progress we are making, so that we can be held to account for delivering and achieving change.
This includes plans to host a symposium later this year to mark two years since the publication of the TRARIIS review. Further details will be shared in due course, alongside the publication of the next progress report in summer 2023.
Whilst we acknowledge the scale of change that is required and share a concern at the pace of progress, we are also encouraged by evidence of raised awareness and action against racism across our funded partners.
As a collective, we remain steadfastly determined to continue to drive transformational change to tackle racism and racial inequality in sport across the UK.
Find out more
Click the link below to find out more about the Tackling Racism and Racial Inequality in Sport Review (TRARIIS).