RSPB chief insists organisation is striving to improve ethnic diversity of workforce

Beccy Speight - working hard to remove barriers

THE RSPB's Chief Executive, Beccy Speight, insist the charity is "working hard to remove barriers for marginalised communities including  people of colour".

Her comments come in the wake of statistics showing that just 3.7 per cent of the workforce are non-white. This compares with 2.9 per cent the previous year

According to insiders,  the RSPB now has no fewer than 10 "equality, diversion and inclusion officers" - more than its team of ecologists - working to improve the racial balance.

Continues Ms Speight: "Together with our fellow environmental organisations, we recognise the role we have to play in creating an inclusive and equitable sector. 

"Progress and transparency if we are to achieve our vision of a shared world where wildlife, wild places and all people thrive."

Across the whole environmental sector, non-white staff form just 4.5 per cent of the workforce compared with 16 per cent in other spheres of employment.

The Wryneck says: It would indeed be more socially healthy if there were to be greater diversity within the workplace at all environmental organisations. But the RSPB’s approach seems heavy-handed, not to say downright patronising to ‘people of colour’. What it is more, the charity continues  to pursue - unsuccessfully - a recruitment policy of reverse discrimination which seeks to bestow advantage on non-white applicants. The RSPB should stop dabbling in social engineering and get back to the core purpose of its existence - protecting birds.