Lancashire Police have exceeded targets for the number of ethnic minority and female staff they have recruited.

But figures also show that the force has difficulty in getting people from ethnic minorities to apply for jobs.

A police authority report says the county constabulary aimed to recruit six per cent of staff from black and ethnic minority ethnic groups, but in fact recruited 6.5 per cent.

And the target of recruiting 40 per cent female staff was exceeded as 40.5 per cent joined over the same period.

But although 20.8 per cent of application packs were sent out to black and ethnic minority individuals, only 12.2 per cent of the packs were returned.

County councillor Tony Jones said in the report: “The difficulty is getting black and ethnic minority candidates to apply.

“Once they do apply they tend to do rather well comp-ared to other groups.

“We have a disappointing level of black and ethnic minority police community support officers in the constabulary, with only three per cent, and the Minorities Recruitment Team is taking active steps to address the issue.”

The number of black and ethnic minority constables has risen from 88 in 2007-08 to 97 in 2008-09.

Meanwhile the number of sergeants remained constant at 13 and the number of inspectors rose from five to six.

There is still only one black or ethnic minority chief inspector.

Ashley Judd, the constabulary’s human res-ources head, said: “We are really pleased with the progress we are making to recruit a workforce that is representative of the comm-unities we serve.”