Large Northern housing association replaces term ‘BAME’ after residents call for change

“We welcome Together Housing making the effort to ask us how we feel about the term ‘BAME’ instead of accepting it as our label and leaving it as that,” said Sarish, a member of the Culturally Diverse Resident Group.

“Using a phrase that we want makes people feel included. We picked ‘culturally diverse’ because it’s more inclusive and it didn’t feel like we were being put in categories.”

Edwina, another member of the group, said: “‘Culturally diverse’ is the right phrase to use. It’s what we’ve chosen as a group and this group is about empowering residents and listening to what matters to us the most. We’re all different, we are culturally diverse, which is brilliant.”

The 38,000-home landlord, which operates predominantly in Yorkshire and Lancashire, said it is going to implement the same change at all levels of the organisation.

“It’s important we make meaningful changes following conversations with residents, which is why we’re eager to work towards replacing the term ‘BAME’ with ‘culturally diverse’,” added Kasira Ahmed, diversity and inclusion business partner at Together Housing.

In 2021, a report from the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities found that “aggregate” terms such as ‘BAME’ should be dropped in favour of understanding differences between specific ethnic groups.

The government set out an action plan to tackle disparities in 2022, which included a commitment to stop using ‘BAME’.