Cantle report: Recommendations (From Lancashire Telegraph)

Cantle report: Recommendations

9:00am Friday 8th May 2009 in Blackburn

SCHOOLS

• Undertake a pro-active campaign with parents and communities to promote the positive benefits of diverse schools
• Further develop school linking projects, including joint teaching, and extend these to parent groups and the wider community
• Ensure all schools are open to wider use and for different communities, for example for adult learning programmes
• Challenge faith schools to reconsider their admissions policies in the light of the impact on cohesion and maximise the potential for the Building Schools for the Future programme to create more diverse schools.

HOUSING

• The council should recognise separate communities is a problem and seek ways to reduce it. This should be expressed as a shared and positive vision of a mixed community
• Integration implications of all new housing developments should be addressed and planning policies reinforce mixed housing
• Private landlords, builders and developers should play a role by being encourage to create mixed housing
• Modest but realistic targets should be set to, say, extend the mixed community boundary, perhaps by a matter of a number of yards per annum
• Efforts to help Asian families feel safer and more welcome moving in to predominantly white areas should be promoted and supported.

REDUCING SEGREGATION

• The council and its partners should decide whether to be bolder in promoting community cohesion, produce a strategy on the issue and consider launching a major new campaign
• Employers should be asked to review recruitment policies to encourage more mixed workforces
• Efforts need to be redoubled to provide and promote opportunities for different communities to meet
• New initiatives to bring groups together should be set up, such as 'meet your neighbours' which are interesting and fun
• More public spaces should be created where different groups feel safe and comfortable
• There needs to be a systematic analysis and understanding of the structures and cultures of the Muslim communities
• New community leaders who wish to work as 'gateways' rather than 'gatekeepers' and challenge those who do not should be found
• Women and young people should be supported to play more active roles DEPRIVATION
  
  
• The council should continue to emphasise the importance of tackling deprivation, reducing academic underachievement and promoting aspiration.

NEIGHBOURHOODS

• The new neighbourhood boards should have a specific remit for promoting cohesion. This should include understanding local perceptions and realities, anticipating dissatisfactions and tensions through local networks and funding and supporting organisations which promote cohesion