The national Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) population increased by a third to  9% in the ten years to 2001. In Plymouth, over the same period, the BME population doubled (albeit from a lower base) with 96.53% identifying themselves as white British.

It has always been hard to calculate the number of BME people living in our City, but the census has been regarded as one of the more reliable data sources.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) mid-term estimates now include the ethnic population by local authority area. These show that locally the white British population would have fallen to 95.44% in 2003, with a broadly comparable projection in growth of non-white groups and visible minorities. Projecting a constant rate of growth since 2003 suggests Plymouth now has over 14,000 people who do not identify themselves as white British and of whom nearly 10,000 would be from visible minorities. The BME population that doubled from 1991 to 2001, will have more than doubled again in the five years to 2006.

Between October 2005 and March 2006, the 10 most commonly used languages with Translate Plymouth were: Arabic, Chinese, Czech, Farsi, French, Kurdish, Polish, Portuguese, Russian and Turkish. A study of the previous year’s most requested languages shows a significantly different pattern – with Polish and Kurdish very much coming to the fore.

'Proud Parents' of Plymouths Annual Respect Festival - 2007 10th Anniversary

www.plymouthrespectfestival.co.uk