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Commission for Racial Equality (CRE)
The
Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) was brought into being
by the Race Relations Act 1976.
The CRE’s
duties were to eliminate racial discrimination, promote
equality of opportunity and good race relations and keep
race relations legislation under review. The CRE replaced
the Race Relations Board and the Community Relations
Commission. It was given the power to approach the courts
to enforce the law, to conduct formal investigations of
organisations it had reason to believe were discriminating,
and to issue legally-enforceable non discrimination notices.
Section 44
of the Race Relations Act 1976 allowed the CRE, with the
approval of the Secretary of State at the Home Office, to
give financial and other assistance to voluntary
organisations with the like objective of promoting race
equality. From 2002-03 to Sept 2007, the CRE funded race
equality organisations, including Rights and Equality West
Midlands, under a system of grant aid known as Getting
Results. For this and other obvious strategic reasons,
the CRE played a significant role in the development and
maintenance of the national network of voluntary sector race
equality organisations.
The
Equality Act 2006 provided the legislative framework to
bring into being the Equality and Human Rights Commission,
subsuming the duties of the CRE, the Equal Opportunities
Commission and the Disability rights Commission, and taking
on responsibility for promoting human rights and equality in
relation to sexual orientation, religion or belief, and
age. The CRE finally closed its doors on 30 September 2007,
with the EHRC taking over responsibility for administering
the CRE’s Getting Results grants programme in the
interim before new funding arrangements were put into place.
We hope to
work as closely, particularly at regional level, with
the Equality and Human Rights
Commission as we did with the CRE..
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