“Change has got to happen”, that’s the message from the chair of the city’s new mayoral Race Equality Taskforce
LIVERPOOL City Council has appointed its first chair of a taskforce aimed at improving race relations across the region.
Tracey Gore, director of the city’s Steve Biko Housing Association, will lead the city’s new mayoral Race Equality Taskforce. Her first job will be to work with Mayor Joe Anderson on inviting representatives from across the city’s BAME communities to join the taskforce.
Mayor Anderson said: “I know this will be challenging, but we must have these honest conversations with ourselves about how we can become a city that is able to support everyone who lives here to their fullest potential.
“I am very pleased that Tracey, with her exceptional strengths, is willing to lead this taskforce, engage with the city and identify the positive actions we must follow to ensure our city can celebrate and honour our diversity.”
Tracey said: “I’m really pleased and really excited to be appointed chair of the Race Equality Taskforce. It’s a tough challenge but the work needs to be done and I want to see a timeframe with deadlines for implementing the actions we decide.
“I commend Joe on setting up the taskforce. He recognised that there needs to be change and recognised that there are hard truths to be faced. There’s no need to state the case for this work. It’s now a matter of gathering what the barriers are and working out how institutions will bring those barriers down.
“I have got a lot of confidence that in the great city of Liverpool we can effect this change and embrace it.”
Tracey has worked in the city’s social housing sector since 1978, and was appointed as Riverside Housing Association’s first black housing manager at the age of 27.
After leaving Riverside Housing Association, Tracey worked at Liverpool City Council from 1998 until 2003, in the Regeneration directorate on many projects including the New Deal for Communities Programme.
She then joined Steve Biko Housing Association in March 2003 as director which is one of only two Black and Racial Minority housing associations on Merseyside.
She is also a board member of Granby Community Land Trust, a member of the CitySafe Partnership, chairs Liverpool’s Strategic Hate Crime Group, is an advisory member to both Liverpool City Council’s Employment and Skills Select Committee and Liverpool City Region’s Fairness and Social Justice Board.
Tracey was also a founding board member of Amadudu Women’s Refuge and was chair of the Kuumba Imani Millennium Centre. She now also campaigns to rid the Toxteth community of guns and knives.
The taskforce will meet about every six weeks until next May and will also be working with the Mayor’s Slavery Street Names Advisory Panel.
