Steadfast Trust EHRC Grant Application

Submitted by: Steadfast news correspondent, 23rd Jan 10

EHRC Funding - Refused

On the 22nd June 2009 the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) launched a Strategic Funding Programme available to organisations offering legal advice as well as projects to promote awareness and understanding of equality and human rights laws – with particular reference to the proposed Equality Bill being pushed through parliament.

The legal funding involved £10.2 million of taxpayers money and aimed to provide three-year project-based funding of up to £450,000 (£150,000 per year) for community and voluntary sector organisations.

The Equality Bill covers a wide range of areas of discrimination and applicants were encouraged to specify which area they were interested in focusing on such as gender, age or race.


On the 21st July 2009 the Steadfast Trust applied for a one-off grant (within the conditions of the scheme) for £49,000, with additional financial assistance from the Steadfast Trust, to be used...

“...to advertise, organise and hold two legal seminars with expert speakers, discussing recent legislation in the law, specifically regarding RRA, HER as well as the proposed Equality Bill, and how it applies to the ethnic English.”

This would include brochures, website and places for up to 500 people to attend.

It was felt by the Steadfast Trust applicant of this grant that members of the ethnic English were skeptical of the Equality Bill as highlighted in some various newspaper articles.

To quote an EHRC article on the 1st December 2009

Equality Bill may give option to recruit under-represented people
Commission holds positive action seminar
“The forthcoming Equality Bill includes important provisions on positive action which should help employers recruit a more representative range of people to their staff…give employers the voluntary ability to choose between two equally qualified candidates if they need to recruit people who are currently under-represented in their organisation.”

Such statements could imply that the ethnic English may be prevented from gaining employment due to being a member of the largest ethnic group. A number of such actions have taken place effecting their wellbeing and conditions of life.

English girl barred from Government job...because she is wrong kind of white

The registered charitable objectives of the Steadfast Trust commit us to work as best we can towards relieving the poverty and improving the conditions of life of the ethnic English.

Having submitted the extensive application form alongside an organization structure, job descriptions, copy of proof of charity status, copy of recent signed and approved accounts and a copy of the public liability insurance policy the Steadfast Trust was understandably disappointed by a letter dated the 20th Oct 2009 from the EHRC Legal Projects Dept that we were unsuccessful.

On the 11th Nov 2009 the applicant on behalf of the Steadfast Trust dispatched an email to the department as followed...

Dear (EHRC)

Thank you for the letter dated 20th Oct 2009, referring to the Steadfast Trust EHRC 2009/11 Strategic Funding for Legal Projects - Ref L003/09.

It is with great disappointment that we were informed that our application was unsuccessful. While we fully understand and appreciate that the Commission Legal and Grants Committees' decisions in this matter are final, we would like to know the specific reasons that led to this decision.

It is hoped that a detailed response from you will assist us in improving any future applications we submit for the purpose of benefiting the welfare and education of the ethnic English of England.

We eagerly await your response.

Yours sincerely
(Steadfast Trust)


This email was resent at a later date but sadly no response was forthcoming and so on the 8th Dec 2009 an official complaint was made to the EHRC.

We eventually received a response to the complaint on the 11th Jan 2010 informing us that only “limited funds” were available and that upon the assessment against eight criteria the commission felt that the application did not adequately meet them all.

It is hoped that our cautious tones towards the Equality Bill (in particular the ‘positive action’ proposals) did not work against our application since the EHRC has expressed that...
“The Commission strongly welcomes the Equality Bill”

The EHRC will be asked again to specify specific concerns with our application since they have still not been forthcoming, but naturally we do respect their decision and hope to be met with greater cooperation in the future.

The Steadfast Trust would like to stress in the strongest terms that positive action is not the same as positive discrimination, which will remain unlawful. Positive discrimination means that applicants from some groups receive preferential treatment in the recruitment process. So, for example deselecting candidates before interview or choosing between unequally qualified candidates on the basis of race, gender, age religion or belief or sexual orientation will remain illegal.

However any form of positive action that disenfranchises and impoverishes the ethnic English opposes the charitable objectives of the Steadfast Trust and we would protest against this.


The purpose of this news item is to communicate to the charities supporters that the volunteers of the charity are trying to gain additional funding from governmental bodies in order to advance the charitable objectives.

As a charity we are a registered body with public liability insurance enabling us to obtain such funding, and while we have at times been met with a wall of silence this won’t stop us from applying for more grants in the future.

If you have experience in applying for grants or know of grant schemes that the charity may be interested in, then please email us at grants@steadfasttrust.org.uk

While the existence of many ethnic specific charities is dependent upon governmental grants, the Steadfast Trust relies totally on your support and for just £2 per month you can allow us to carry on our work on behalf of the English community.
Steadfast Trust Trustee
Mark Taylor