West Midlands crime chief hits out at diversity criticism

Nationally less than five per cent of staff at PCC's offices fall into the BME category – far less than the general UK workforce, where the figure is 12 per cent.

But the West Midlands PCC says his office employs a higher proportion of BME staff than the average for the West Midlands.

A total of 30.8 per cent of Mr Jamieson's 26 staff are from BME backgrounds. This is slightly higher than the number of people from black, Asian and minority backgrounds in the region, which stands at 29.9 per cent.

West Midlands Police has recently come under fire after it emerged that only 13 per cent of recruits last year were non-white.

Mr Jamieson said: "It is important that issues like this are raised and it is only right that publicly-elected figures like myself receive this level of scrutiny.

"It's important that leaders do as they say. I have twice called on West Midlands Police to improve in relation to the number of BME officers it recruits to make sure the force looks like the communities it serves while remaining to only recruit the best people for he job.

"My office looks like the community it serves and each member of staff was recruited via a competitive process and because they were the best candidate for the role.

"Going forward, it is important that police commissioners across the country take this on board and ensure that as well as having police forces that look like the communities they serve, we have police and crime commissioners that do too."

Bernard Rix, who monitors the work of police and crime commissioners, said: "Police forces themselves are criticised for the low proportion of ethnic minority staff that they have.

"Police and Crime Commissioners and their offices have an even worse record on this front, and that is an area where they should have done much better over the last three years."