Workforce diversity still fails to reflect ethnic makeup of local areas

Kick It Out makes 'moral case for change' as it finds lack of transparency over club staffs

- Matt Hughes

Premier League and EFL clubs were required this year to report details of their workforce diversity data for the first time under a new Football Association regulation. This was aimed at promoting greater equality of opportunities, but even people working in football are hard-pressed to find the numbers.

The clubs published the results of their internal surveys on 1 June, other than Manchester United owing to a website glitch corrected a few days later, but the silence from the sport regarding the findings has been deafening. None of the FA, Premier League or EFL commented on the data or published a summary of the findings, indicating that the drive for greater transparency has its limits.

In one sense, the silence is unsurprising. Analysis of the data conducted by Kick It Out paints a depressing picture of a sport sorely lacking in diversity, with the staff at most clubs not reflecting the ethnic makeup of their local communities.

In the Premier League, 78% of clubs' workforces are white compared with an average of 66% among the local populations and although there is 13% ethnic diversity in the coaching staff, only two topflight clubs reported having Black, Asian and minority ethnic coaches in senior roles. Staff at EFL clubs appear more representative, with 87% of their workforce white compared with an average of 80.8% locally, although clubs in the lower divisions were not required to provide detailed breakdowns of staff roles so the figures for coaches are unclear.