The leader of Bradford Council has said he is “acutely aware” all its senior directors are white.

Councillor David Green’s comments came after Bradford Council was criticised for not employing people from ethnic minorities in top executive roles.

He said the Council was looking at ways of tackling the under-representation of ethnic minorities among senior management.

Respect Party councillors had called on the Council to make its top team more representative of the wider community. They said while ethnic minorities were well represented among elected councillors, the same could not be said among its unelected executives.

Councillor Mohammad Shabbir (Respect, Heaton) said: “I think the organisation needs to be committed to employing people from diverse communities at different levels, obviously based on merit. Its recruitment process must be robust enough to recruit people from all communities.”

His Respect colleague, Councillor Faisal Khan (Bradford Moor) raised the issue at a meeting of the full council on Tuesday of last week.

In a question to Coun Green, he said: “Has the leader considered consulting with the vast number of councillors in his own party that are from the largest ethnic minority community in Bradford on why their community is not represented at senior management level in the Council, in order to try and establish the underlying reasons for this fact?

“And why, if they are good enough to be political leaders, why the same community are not good enough to be senior executives in the Council?”

After the meeting, Coun Green (Lab) said: “We are acutely aware that the ethnic composition of Bradford Council’s senior management is not fully representative of the population that we serve.

“The number of senior managers at Bradford Council has been reduced drastically over the last few years as part of the severe financial constraints imposed upon us and the desire to protect frontline services.

“For senior management posts that do become vacant, we will encourage applications from candidates from all parts of the community, including people from ethnic minority backgrounds.”