HARROW will play host to a major conference this Friday designed to encourage women from ethnic backgrounds to become councilors under the campaign banner: Your council needs you!

The skills of being an effective councillor and how to be an effective community champion will be just one of the agenda items at the session taking place at Harrow Civic Centre.

The meeting is being chaired by Baroness Uddin, who heads the government's black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) taskforce and who was the first Bengali woman to become a local councilor and the first woman Muslim member of the House of Lords. The taskforce has the specific task of encouraging more women from ethnic backgrounds into public life.

Earlier this year, the government appointed Councillor Lurline Champagnie, the first black woman to be appointed as borough mayor, to be a London representative of the taskforce.

Cllr Champagnie - who will be giving an A-Z on how local government is structured - said: "I want to highlight the fact that we are living in a cosmopolitan England and that all people regardless of their background should be judged on merit.

"We need to see people rise due to their abilities, and I will be looking to help the BAME community do that."

Other councillors speaking at the cross-party session include Mimi Harker from Chiltern District Council and Nana Asante from Harrow Council.

At present, only two women MPs come from minority ethnic communities and BAME women account for less than one per cent of England's 20,000 local councillors while they make up more than five per cent of the population.