Councils are told to drop personal questionnaires. Is this the start of the shake up in establishing an inclusive community?

The government is telling councils to stop asking questions about people's sexuality, race and health in surveys. Which makes sense given that this information is collated via the National Census.

Communities Secretary Eric Pickles is issuing guidelines for councils about asking for personal information. These remove the requirement for local authorities to conduct "intrusive lifestyle and diversity" surveys.

The move follows a series of high-profile cases where councils demanded personal information from individuals who signed up for services. These included libraries in Islington, north London, asking people registering to borrow books if they had cancer, HIV, or diabetes and whether they were transgender.

Often councils ask this sensitive information in order to target its services to meet specific cultural or personal needs.

However, if we are to produce an all inclusive society, then offering specifically targeted cultural services appear to accentuate the difference and not increase the inclusiveness.

I sincerely hope that what this measure leads to is a full stop to the local authorities need to pander to ethnic communities and disproportionately spend dwindling budgets in providing and translating their service and welfare benefits documents into 38 different languages.

In these cash strapped economic times I am always amazed that councils can easily find the money to support ethnic cultural initiatives.

Is it not unreasonable to enforce a measure where if people chose to reside longterm in this country, then the need to learn the language of the country of their choice is a minimum basic requirement?

It seems a total waste of money to provide these people with job seekers allowance when they are ill-eqipped to gain work within the country of residence. Also supporting their cultural differences through the benefits system ghettoises and isolates them further.

What are the thoughts of others?