THE body in charge of spending £3.4 billion on the 2012 Olympics will give bonuses to contractors that increase their total of black and Asian employees.

The Olympic Delivery Authority will monitor how many ethnic minority staff are employed by each firm working on London’s Olympic sites.

Companies that manage to employ a pre-arranged percentage of black and ethnic minority workers will be paid a “financial reward” for meeting those targets.

The move follows concerns voiced by ministers and race bodies that firms working on Olympic projects should reflect the ethnic make-up of London.

The main Olympic site in Stratford, East London, stands in one of the most ethnically diverse areas in Britain, where nearly half the local population is black or Asian.

An ODA spokesman said: “We are still working on the details of our contracts, but where appropriate we will incentivise our contracts so that we will reward those who meet targets by improving the diversity of their staff.”

The decision follows a meeting between Trevor Phillips, the head of the Commission for Racial Equality, and Jack Lemley and David Higgins, the ODA’s chairman and chief executive, at a dinner last month.

It is understood that Mr Phillips asked that the ethnicity of a company’s owners and staff should be monitored by the ODA and should be a factor when deciding which organisation wins a contract.

Worries about the employment of ethnic minority staff in the run-up to the Olympics were raised this year at a meeting of the Ethnic Minority Employment Task Force, a body that brings together seven government departments with trade unions and business people.

Iqbal Wahhab, a member of the task force, said that the meeting discussed concerns that the local community, particularly the black and Asian population, may be overlooked. “Rather than threaten big business, we want to encourage more ethnic minority home businesses to apply for contracts within the Olympics, and explore ways of bringing these opportunities to these communities,” he said.

The Times disclosed yesterday that the task force has drawn up plans to question companies competing for government contracts about their attitudes to race before choosing which to employ.

Companies will be asked to provide figures showing the numbers of their black and Asian employees. These figures will be compared with the proportion of ethnic minorities living near the company’s offices and will be a factor when deciding the winning bid.

Three pilot schemes have been authorised by the task force so far, with the support of Downing Street — in Jobcentre Plus offices, the Identity and Passport Agency, and the Department for Education and Skills.

If successful, the schemes will be extended to cover a large proportion of the Government’s £100 billion-a-year expenditure on public projects.

However, the British Chambers of Commerce, which represents businesses, said that imposing quotas would do nothing to solve the imbalance.

Sally Low, its director of policy and external affairs, said: “The way to address high unemployment in some ethnic communities is not race quotas but by equipping workers with the skills businesses need.

“Individuals should be employed on no other criteria than their ability to do the job and whether they have significant merit compared to all other applicants.

“Firms will not welcome more bureaucracy to wade through in the process of tendering for public contracts where it is already very difficult, particularly for smaller businesses, to break through and get government work,” she said.