West Yorkshire Police are failing to hit a Government target for employing black and minority ethnic people.

A report found limited resources to target candidates and inadequate promotion of benefits of working for the force.

The "best value review of re-cruitment" report to the police authority recom-mends a strategy to attract a high quality, representative workforce.

It found the force was not meeting its target that nine per cent of the workforce should be from black and minority ethnic (BME) groups by 2009 and is currently achieving just 3.88 per cent among officers.

It also says limited promotional work is being done in relevant communities, particularly in liaison with police divisions.

There are also limited re-sources for targeting candidates and research to enable under-represented groups to be targeted is not fully exploited. Limited work is also being done to target high-calibre candidates to become student officers.

The benefits of working for West Yorkshire Police are not adequately promoted and recruitment on the force website needs development.

Assistant Chief Constable Steve Smith admitted West Yorkshire Police still had some barriers to break down.

"There are still negative perceptions of the police service in minority ethnic communities, but we spend a lot of time and energy in trying to recruit proportionately, and the significant increase in recent years is the cause for optimism," he said.

"Our message is to come and look at West Yorkshire Police as an employer. Talk to minority ethnic officers and staff and find out their experiences of West Yorkshire Police are positive."

The force has 5,768 officers, of which 209 are black or minority ethnic people. Civilian staff number 3,838. Of those, 124 are BME, or 3.23 per cent. But 12 per cent of Special Constables are from the BME community. Between April and September last year the force recruited a net 18 white and three BME officers.

Councillor Clive Richardson, deputy chairman and a Brad-ford member of the police authority, said Government targets were unrealistic. "It is accepted it will take a long time to reach the target and they are in the process of being revised," he said.

"The Government has ac-knowledged that where there are high staff numbers you are not going to achieve the targets, but you are going to do your best and that is what we are doing."

Anita Patel, chairman of the West Yorkshire Black Police Association, said the force was in a similar situation to most of a similar size.

"As yet, there is not proportional representation of black and minority ethnic personnel within the force," she said. "The Black Police Association is working hard with the recruitment department to further develop initiatives to encourage more BME applicants and retain the good people we've already got."

The report was to be considered by the authority's best value sub committee today.