Race and Ethnicity

Index

This topic area covers statistics and information relating to population estimates for people from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) backgrounds in Hull including local strategic need and service provision. Further information relating to health, wellbeing and lifestyle risk factors is given within our Adult BAME Health and Wellbeing Surveys within Tools and Resources. Where information is available which relates to people from different BAME backgrounds, it is given for specific topic areas within this Joint Strategic Needs Assessment. Information is included within Children with Special Education Needs or Disabilities, on specific diseases and medical conditions including COVID-19 under Health Factors under Adults, within Schools, Education and Qualifications, etc.

Headlines

In the 2021 Census, it was estimated that 91.8% of Hull’s residents were White with 83.9% being White British, 0.2% White Irish, 0.2% White Gypsy or Irish Traveller, 0.1% Roma and 7.4% Other White. There were 1.7% from ‘Mixed’ Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) groups, 2.8% Asian or British Asian, 1.9% Black or Black British, 0.5% Arabs and 1.3% from other ethnic groups.
Whilst the percentage of people from BAME backgrounds is relatively low compared to the England average, the percentages have increased in Hull over the last couple of decades.
In the 2001 Census, it was estimated that 2.3% of Hull’s population was non White and 3.6% were non White British, but this increased to 5.9% and 10.3% respectively in the 2011 Census and to 8.2% and 16.1% respectively in the 2021 Census. In 2021, it was estimated that 22,024 non White and 43,051 non White British residents lived in Hull.
Between 2011 and 2021, the largest increases in ethnicity occurred for Arab and other ethnic groups, Other White, Other Black, African and Bangladeshi.
The percentage of BAME population in Hull differs dramatically across Hull’s 21 electoral wards.
The percentage of children from BAME groups attending Hull schools has increased from 9.1% in 2010 to 21.5% in 2020 with around 8,805 children attending Hull schools from BAME groups.
From the January 2021 school census, 78.1% of pupils were White British, 9.8% from other White backgrounds, 4.0% from ‘Mixed’ BAME groups, 1.8% were Asian British or Asian, 2.0% were Black British or Black, 3.0% were other ethnic groups, and 1.4% were unclassified. A total of 9,246 pupils had non white British heritage (considerably lower than England 21.9% versus 35.1%).
Among state-funded mainstream schools in Hull for 2020/21, 16.9% of primary school, 13.6% of secondary school and 6.0% of special school pupils first language was not English (which was lower than England at 20.9%, 17.2% and 14.6% respectively). In the January 2021 school census, 83.6% had English as their first language, 16.0% had English as an additional language and 0.4% had their language unclassified. In total, 6,773 pupils had English has an additional language (a further 153 had their language unclassified).
There is significant evidence that those from BAME communities are at higher risk of serious illness should they contract COVD-19. Furthermore, some ethnic groups are disproportionately represented in occupations that are known to increase the likelihood of contracting the virus.
There is often a lack of information in relation to the health and wellbeing needs of people from BAME backgrounds, and some people from BAME backgrounds may experience language barriers and other barriers in relation to accessing services. Work is ongoing to address these issues.

The Population Affected – Why Is It Important?

Race is generally defined as a combination of physical, behavioural and cultural attributes, whereas ethnicity recognises differences between people on the basis of language and shared culture. Race is often perceived as something that is inherent in our biology, and therefore inherited across generations. Ethnicity is more something we acquire, or self-ascribe, based on factors such as where we live or the culture that we share with others. As a result, people can ascribe themselves to more than one ethnic group based on their ascribed racial identity, culture, ancestry and religion. Furthermore, there is a great deal of variation within different ‘groups’ of individuals regardless of how the groups are defined. Everybody is unique. Generally, the complexity of race and ethnicity are not captured when recording personal characteristics of people whether that is in the Census or among people using different services such as attending health appointments or using local services.

Nevertheless, based on averages, people from different racial and ethnic groups, people can have different health needs as they may have an increased risk of specific diseases due to different genetic risk factors or have different prevalence of lifestyle and behavioural risk factors and may have some problems accessing services due to barriers such as language or due to cultural differences. There may also be increased lack of knowledge around what services are available and how they can be accessed. It is vital that these potential factors are considered so that everybody has good healthcare and access to services.

The Macpherson Report of 1999 highlighted that sometimes services are not meeting the needs of an ethnically diverse population because of both unwitting and institutional racism, which was defined as: “The collective failure of an organisation to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture or ethnic origin. It can be seen or detected in processes, attitudes and behaviour which amount to discrimination through unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness and racial stereotyping.” This occurs because the majority population, usually white, set the rules and design the services without meaningful and fully listened to input from local diverse and usually minority communities. These representatives have the necessary understanding of their individual communities and the cultural, language and communication barriers, including how and where their communities gather information about services which may not always be the ‘mainstream’ channels. Meaningful involvement and representation from all BAME communities is therefore essential for understanding and meeting the needs of all our communities. This involvement must not be ignored, it must be positively welcomed and incorporated into the design of inclusive services.

In order to assess the different needs of people from different BAME backgrounds, it is essential to understand the health and wellbeing needs as well as understand any wider determinants of health (such as deprivation, housing, education, employment, etc) and differences in lifestyle and behaviour factors which may impact health in relation to the BAME community. However, this is not always easy. BAME status is not generally collected in a standard and comprehensive manner across different service areas with different organisations often collecting BAME data in different ways. This makes it more difficult to examine the health and wellbeing needs of the BAME community. Furthermore, the numbers of people accessing different services can be small for specific BAME groups, which makes the analysis of data difficult when dealing with small numbers as the data is not robust (see Small Numbers for more information).

The Hull Picture

Estimated Numbers from Different BAME Groups

From the 2021 Census, 91.8% of Hull residents were White, with 83.9% being White British. A further 1.7% were from ‘Mixed’ BAME groups, 2.8% were Asian or Asian British, 1.9% were Black or Black British, 0.5% were Arabs and 1.3% were from other ethnic groups.

Ethnicity in 2021 Census	Hull (%)	Hull (N)	England (%)
WHITE	91.8	244,989	81.0
White British	83.9	223,962	73.5
White Irish	0.2	455	0.9
White Gypsy or Irish Traveller	0.1	451	0.1
Roma	0.1	286	0.2
Any other White background	7.4	19,835	6.3
MIXED	1.7	4,513	3.0
White and Black Caribbean	0.4	948	0.4
White and Black African	0.4	1,144	0.9
White and Asian	0.4	1,172	0.8
Any other Mixed background	0.5	1,249	0.8
ASIAN OR BRITISH ASIAN	2.8	7,515	9.6
Indian	0.5	1,259	3.3
Pakistani	0.5	1,292	2.8
Bangladeshi	0.5	1,279	1.1
Chinese	0.5	1,234	0.8
Any other Asian background	0.9	2,451	1.7
BLACK OR BLACK BRITISH	1.9	5,065	4.2
Black Caribbean	0.1	232	2.6
Black African	1.6	4,292	1.1
Any other Black background	0.2	541	0.5
ANY OTHER ETHNIC GROUP	1.8	4,931	2.2
Arab	0.5	1,443	0.6
Any other ethnic group	1.3	3,488	1.6
TOTAL	100.0	267,013	100.0
Non White	8.2	22,024	19.0
BAME (non White British)	16.1	43,051	26.5

Ethnicity of Hull’s residents from 2021 Census

The percentage of Hull’s resident population from BAME backgrounds has increased over time. Between 2011 and 2021, the largest increases occurred for Arab and other ethnic groups (120% increase), Other White (82% increase), Other Black (80% increase), Africans (67% increase) and Bangladeshi (63% increase). The only BAME group where the percentage of residents decreased was for Chinese (44% decrease).

However, over the last 20 years, the largest increases have occurred for Other White, Arab and other ethnic groups, Other Black, African and Other Asians.

Ethnicity in the last three Censuses (%)	2001	2011	2021
WHITE	97.7	94.1	91.8
White British	96.4	89.7	83.9
White Irish	0.3	0.2	0.2
White Gypsy or Irish Traveller/Roma	*	0.1	0.2
Any other White background	1.0	4.1	7.4
MIXED	0.7	1.3	1.7
White and Black Caribbean	0.1	0.3	0.4
White and Black African	0.1	0.3	0.4
White and Asian	0.2	0.4	0.4
Any other Mixed background	0.2	0.3	0.5
ASIAN OR BRITISH ASIAN	1.1	2.5	2.8
Indian	0.3	0.4	0.5
Pakistani	0.2	0.3	0.5
Bangladeshi	0.2	0.3	0.5
Chinese	0.3	0.8	0.5
Any other Asian background	0.2	0.6	0.9
BLACK OR BLACK BRITISH	0.4	1.2	1.9
Black Caribbean	0.1	0.1	0.1
Black African	0.3	1.0	1.6
Any other Black background	0.0	0.1	0.2
ANY OTHER ETHNIC GROUP	0.2	0.8	1.8
Arab	*	0.4	0.5
Any other ethnic group	0.2	0.4	1.3
TOTAL	100.0	100.0	100.0
Non White	2.3	5.9	8.2
BAME (non White British)	3.6	10.3	16.1

Change in percentage from different BAME backgrounds among Hull’s residents between the 2001, 2011 and 2021 Censuses *Category not available in 2001 Census.

There were also large differences in percentage of people from BAME backgrounds across Hull’s 21 electoral wards.

The percentage of pupils from BAME backgrounds attending Hull schools has doubled in the last decade from 9.1% in 2010 (14.9% in 2014 and 17.3% in 2016) to 21.5% in 2020.

In the January 2021 school census, 21.9% were non White British ethnic heritage.

Ethnicity among school pupils	Hull (%)	Hull (N)	England (%)
WHITE	87.9	37,130	72.4
White British	78.1	32,998	64.9
Irish	0.1	28	0.3
Traveller of Irish heritage	0.0	11	0.1
Gypsy/Roma	0.3	133	0.3
Any other White background	9.4	3,960	6.8
MIXED	4.0	1,703	6.4
White and Black Caribbean	0.2	92	1.6
White and Black African	0.7	276	0.9
White and Asian	0.5	223	1.5
Any other Mixed background	2.6	1,112	2.4
ASIAN OR BRITISH ASIAN	1.8	727	12.0
Indian	0.3	129	3.3
Pakistani	0.5	195	4.5
Bangladeshi	0.5	210	1.8
Chinese	0.1	40	0.5
Any other Asian background	0.5	224	0.8
BLACK OR BLACK BRITISH	2.0	856	5.7
Black Caribbean	0.0	17	1.0
Black African	1.5	615	3.9
Any other Black background	0.5	224	0.8
ANY OTHER ETHNIC GROUP
Any other ethnic group	3.0	1,248	1.8
Unclassified	1.4	580	1.6
BAME (non White British)	21.9	9,246	35.1

Ethnicity of school pupils in Hull, January 2021

Among state-funded mainstream schools in Hull for 2020/21, 16.9% of primary school, 13.6% of secondary school and 6.0% of special school pupils first language was not English (which was lower than England at 20.9%, 17.2% and 14.6% respectively). In the January 2021 school census, there were 6,773 pupils attending Hull schools whose first language is not English (a range of around 120 languages other than English) and 35,313 with English as their first language (for a further 153 pupils their language was unclassified).

COVID-19

There is significant evidence that those from BAME communities are at higher risk of serious illness should they contract COVID-19.

Those with limited or no English language skills are less able to access information in an understandable format and this has been highlighted as an issue within the South East Asian community, particularly for older females. The vast majority of the general population are estimated to speak and understand English according to the Office for National Statistics (98.4%) and younger age groups across all ethnicities are far less likely to experience language barriers. This however will not be the case for newly arrived communities, for instance, asylum seekers and refugees.

Some ethnic groups are more likely to live in higher density housing environments than others. Some ethnic groups are disproportionately represented in occupations that are known to increase the likelihood of contracting the virus (care, health, public transport, food production etc).

Strategic Need and Service Provision

The relatively large increase in Hull’s BAME population between 2001 and 2011, and anticipated increase between 2011 and 2021, and wide diversity in Hull’s BAME population requires changes to ensure that the health needs of the population are taken in to consideration, and that there are no barriers to access to healthcare and other services. There should also be work to identify the most vulnerable citizens and work with them to address their specific needs so that all services, policies and strategies are the best they can be for all people regardless of who they are.

There is often a lack of data and information relating to the health and wellbeing for specific BAME groups, and collecting good quality consistent information relating to BAME status is essential so that the circumstances and needs of people from specific BAME groups can be examined in more detail. Despite the lack of data, there are many ways local services are involving BAME groups in the design of services, policies and strategies so that they meet the needs of specific BAME groups.

With the higher risk of contracting COVID-19 and the increased risk of serious illness, the impact of COVID-19 needs to be considered in relation to specific BAME communities to understand how changes can be made to services to improve health and wellbeing within the BAME communities.