Bolton Council is not meeting its target for recruiting ethnic minorities and disabled people for its workforce.

Nor does it have enough women managers.

At the start of 2001 the council set a goal to recruit by 2005 at least five per cent of its employees from ethnic minorities and a further five per cent of staff who are disabled.

It also wanted to ensure that by 2010 half of all senior managers earning £30,000 a year or more were women.

The targets meant more than doubling the number of people employed by the council from these sections of the community within five years.

But a quarterly report which looks solely at the council's commercial services department shows that it is struggling to meet the objective.

The new figures for all town hall employees have not yet been released.

The council set its goals for the structure of the workforce based on the 1991 census which showed that around five per cent of the local population are disabled and 10pc are from ethnic minority backgrounds.

But in 2000/2001 just 1.9pc of council staff were disabled and 2.4pc were from ethnic minorities. And despite half the population being female, only 23pc of council employees were women earning more than £30,000 a year.

The commercial services department, which provides services such as cleaning, catering, waste management and buildings and grounds maintenance, employs more than 2,000 people. But in a quarterly report to councillors its latest figures revealed just 3.58pc of staff, which is just over 70, come from black or Asian minorities and only two out of 16 senior staff are women.

And the department now has fewer disabled employees than in 2001/2002 with them making up just 2.59pc of the workforce, which is around 60 people.

Alan Fisher, Bolton Council's director of commercial services admits that although recruitment of minorities is improving it is still "extremely difficult" to attract applicants from those groups. A fairness group has been set up to try to improve the situation. Job vacancies are advertised in publications read by them, links have been established with schools which have high number of pupils from ethnic minorities and jobs fairs have been organised. All disabled applicants are guaranteed an interview.

"We want people who are capable of doing the job and while we can't positively discriminate we can target the jobs," said Mr Fisher.

"We are genuinely trying to improve the figures."

He says he believes the 2005 target figures are "still achievable", but that depends upon how high the staff turn over is and persuading more people from disadvantaged groups to apply for posts.

Cllr Rosa Kay, executive member for human resources and diversity said: "We are attempting to meet these targets. Commercial services is perhaps one of those areas which does not attract as well as other departments."

She said that the figures may not be the same council wide, as she said other departments may have exceeded targets.