Public opinion: Your blogs

Our fringe estates need new solutions

Aspley in Nottingham is typical of hundreds of other housing estates – run-down, disconnected, deprived and depressed. Years of regeneration programmes have produced some gains, but it still represents over a quarter of all Nottingham’s benefit dependent households and one tenth of all lone parent income support claimants, while being home to just 6% of its overall population.

What sets Aspley apart from many deprived estates is its size and location. Almost 16,000 people – more than a third of them under 18 – live on two inter-connected estates (Broxtowe and Aspley) some three and a half miles from Nottingham city centre.

Large, outer city estates are different from inner city estates. Often with poor transport links, they are more cut off from the employment and other opportunities offered by the city. And their size makes them more akin to small towns. Take, for example, Hexham and Otley, both with smaller populations, which have their own town councils. But Aspley is treated as a fraction of Nottingham Council, represented by just three ward councillors, who have to clamour for attention with 57 others across the city.

The problem for outer estate towns like Aspley is that their only claim to fame is how badly they do in the deprivation league table. So, despite all the talk about empowerment, engagement and active citizens, the reality is that residents in such disadvantaged areas are stigmatised, defined as deficient and thought incapable of taking charge of their own destiny.

This is the disabling paradox at the heart of regeneration policy, whichever government has been in power. Regeneration policy and practice talks liabilities and needs but not assets: rarely does it look at the skills, knowledge and resources of local people. Every bid for funding requires a litany of calamity with no questions about the capacity for self-transformation and what local people can bring to the table. No wonder local residents are rarely seen as equal partners in transformation.

With public spending cuts and steadily rising unemployment, the situation is set to worsen. The recent National Equality Panel report confirmed our worst fears – the richest 10% of the population are 100 times wealthier than the poorest 10%. Having failed to eradicate inequality or these concentrations of poverty when the going was good, the government now faces an even grimmer challenge – and people living on these outer city estates an even grimmer prospect.

The risk now with long-term unemployment set to grow is that a significant section of our urban population, especially the younger generation, will be cast adrift. Community tensions will rise, engagement with traditional systems of politics and redress will fall. All the priority cross-cutting socio-economic problems such as alcohol misuse and antisocial behaviour will intensify. People who might otherwise make a contribution to society will come to be seen as a drag on development, making their presence felt through their call on the NHS and the criminal justice system.

But it seems that government finds itself in a quandary. The close targeting of new deal for communities (NDC) and the neighbourhood renewal fund has given way to the working neighbourhoods fund and the future jobs fund with their broader local authority wide focus. The government has taken a step backwards away from integrated, early intervention on small areas, and instead is concentrating on efficiency savings at a local authority-wide level.

But it doesn’t have to be like this. With a bit more imagination, less centralised control freakery and more political will, solutions could be developed. The seeds are already there in current national policy trends. The new national priority of Total Place could enable a focus on outer city estates as places needing the full panoply of holistic solutions. Residents could negotiate their own local area agreement, with all the local service providers, concretised in one of the new annual community contracts.

The cross-party consensus on community engagement might encourage efforts to unleash the potential of local residents to turn these estates round. They could elect their own town council or even a new type local strategic partnership or local development agency – emulating the most effective NDC programmes – to be accountable for all local services. Participatory budgeting might enable residents to articulate their needs and preferences and to make the key decisions on how to improve their estates. New businesses and social enterprises could focus on retaining locally more of the considerable total spend by residents and service agencies.

And by starting afresh to look at how best to make their estates local sustainable places, residents could develop solutions based on moving towards low carbon local communities – a local green new deal.

This is not pie in the sky. After all, previous ‘traditional’ top-down approaches have all failed. Sometimes moments of extreme crisis force us to think differently. If the outer city estates are not to spiral into further decline, with all the accompanying socio-economic and environmental problems, it is essential that we engage with their residents to come up with radically different solutions.

Inequalities of motivation

There are times when you read something, or hear somebody talk about inequality and wonder why you bother. Listening to Professor John Hills, Professor Kate Pickett and Frances O’Grady at the Smith Institute talk about ‘A New Deal for a fairer society’ was very nearly one of those times.

As they listed off the problems (see here for a good summary of the event) and described the few positives - primarily that government and policy action can, and has be shown to, do something to reduce inequality (John Hills, in describing the period 1997-2004, said of policy initiatives that “a lot of things were tried and most of them worked”) – I was left with the feeling that inequality is too big, too structural and too macro to worry about for people who work in neighbourhoods. You start dwelling on the fact that, whatever is done, the housing market and the employment market are forces that work way above your spatial level. It can all, quite frankly, feel a bit fruitless.

So I asked that question (badly – is it just me or is anybody else completely incapable of framing the question they want in these sorts of events?) and pretty much got the answer I was expecting – that yes it is structural, but that one of the main ways to generate structural, macro change is through local working that inspires people to be more interested in inequality. Once people are involved in sorting out local problems, and they start coming up against bigger forces, then they want to sort those out too. That’s the plan anyway...

It did make me think about some of the debates going on at the moment in terms of the future of regeneration. I worry that some of them will talk about the local without aiming for the macro. I blogged recently on the ‘original idea’ of regeneration. Well my original idea is inequality; that’s the goal. So even when we’re working in neighbourhoods to deal with issues that feel a long way from sorting out these sorts of inequalities, let’s keep our eyes on the prize and not get lost along the way. Even if some of those diversions can seem very important at the time.

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What’s the point of Yorkshire Forward?

Tom Riordan, the chief executive of Yorkshire Forward, delivered a predictably enthusiastic defence of his organisation in the face of serious threats to its future existence after the general election (New Start, February 2010). But it is a deeply flawed one that raises more questions than answers about Yorkshire Forward’s effectiveness, funding priorities and future relevance in the face of immense economic and environmental challenges from climate change and resource depletion.

What would have been the state of the regional economy if Yorkshire Forward had never existed? When the RDAs were established in 1999, their remit was to provide a strategic and coordinating role to promote economic development and, in Yorkshire Forward’s case, to narrow the gap with the most prosperous regions in the south of England while also improving opportunities for people in inner-city areas facing the most serious issues of deprivation.

Riordan points to various targets for employment, business support and inward investment that have all been met or surpassed. Yet, for an average expenditure of £300m a year over ten years, the outputs are small compared to the size of the regional economy. According to the evaluation carried out by PriceWaterhouseCoopers, over the five-year period from 2002/03 to 2006/07, 13,747 jobs and 297 businesses were either created or safeguarded in an economy with 2.6 million employees and 300,000 businesses. It is also highly questionable to ascribe inward investment to the efforts of the RDA when many other factors influence decisions.

In fact, the relative position of the region has not changed over the decade and, if anything, the recession has increased the gap in terms of regional GVA and skills levels. The most deprived areas are actually experiencing a widening in income gaps and quality of life indicators. Of course, these reflect long-standing weaknesses in the regional economy, but they also expose the limited role Yorkshire Forward has played.

Perhaps this vulnerability to criticism over its effectiveness has led to the second major failing, the desperate attempts to justify its future existence by tying the region to a series of high profile, but extremely dubious investments. Under the banner of sustainable growth (that most wonderful of oxymorons) both nuclear power and so-called ‘clean coal’ technologies have become flagship programmes.

According to Yorkshire Forward, these are ‘world-class’ industries that will provide both highly skilled work and added economic value, while contributing to a ‘low-carbon’ future. But these are highly contested claims that serve to highlight the role of the RDA – not as a democratically accountable body, but as a quango whose policies are orchestrated through central government directives.

Any consideration of nuclear power must take into account the full production cycle to reflect the full carbon costs. Estimates for decommissioning of the UK’s nuclear power stations now stand at £70bn, with no satisfactory solution to the problem of waste storage. Other countries, like Germany, have rejected the nuclear option because of these issues and have invested in a much stronger renewable energy sector employing hundreds of thousands of workers. Scotland, with a similar population to Yorkshire, but having the benefit of a democratically elected government, is also forging a strategy based on renewable energy.

The future of ‘clean coal’ and carbon capture is also highly problematic. Even if successful, the industrial facilities required will be energy-intensive, resembling more a chemical processing plant than a traditional power station. Then it will take at least 20 years to have a fully operational system when action must be taken within the next five to ten years on carbon emissions if we are not to face the possibility of irreversible climate change.

Yorkshire Forward’s involvement raises the issue of opportunity costs for scarce public resources. Why provide funding of £10m to Rolls Royce, the lead company for the Nuclear Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre, near Sheffield, when it already has central government funding and is a global corporation? Yorkshire Forward will point to the employment and economic benefits but these are highly capital-intensive industries with relatively few jobs created. It is clear from many studies that support for renewable energy and energy saving industries will generate far more employment for a similar level of public investment.

This critique could be extended to Yorkshire Forward’s longer-term support for the aviation industry, one of the major contributors to carbon emissions. Over the last few years, £1m has been invested in facilities at Leeds/Bradford airport and £13m for the National Aviation Academy at Robin Hood Airport, Doncaster, run by BAE Systems, another multi-billion pound, global corporation.

But these investments do serve an important PR function. Soundbites about ‘world-class industries’ and high-technology ‘clusters’ seem to go down well with an uncritical, regional media; although, in the case of nuclear power, the ‘cluster’ now seems to have miraculously expanded into a ‘corridor of nuclear excellence’, from the northwest coast where nuclear submarines are constructed, through research facilities in Manchester and now to the manufacturing centre in South Yorkshire. It may not generate the same media-friendly publicity but, in the spirit of geographical and technical accuracy, perhaps they should rename it the ‘banana of radioactivity’.

The rhetoric of world-class industries, and high-tech clusters, masks the damage Yorkshire Forward has done by endorsing an industrial and technological future based on old and discredited industries that generate more technological problems than they resolve. This is the business-as-usual wolf dressed up in the green cloak of environmental respectability – regurgitation of central government directives rather than regeneration based on local need.

No doubt there will be a continued PR drive in the run-up to the general election, including announcements on big capital projects for city centre developments (hopefully they will be a bit more successful than the large hole Yorkshire Forward has funded in the middle of my home city of Bradford that is still awaiting redevelopment after five years). But if closed, its funds could be transferred directly to democratically accountable local authorities to help restore their in-house capacity for economic development. Instead of passive administrators of central government programmes, they could be proactive partners to new local businesses for a range of skilled work in micro-energy systems, combined heat and power, local food production and distribution etc, that not only generated long-term employment but made a significant contribution to tackling climate change through a commitment to zero-carbon emissions.

No, there won’t be the media events and glossy brochures but, without the dead weight of Yorkshire Forward, just some good, honest, solid, economic development support by local people, for local people.


 

Hands up, who wants to take responsibility for co-delivery?

Hands up, who wants to take responsibility for co-delivery?

I've been reading a recent, welcome but slightly underwhelming paper on co-production from ippr, Capable communities. It includes this statistic: eighty-two per cent of respondents agreed or strongly agreed with the following statement:

'Individuals and communities should do more to help the police cut anti-social behaviour and crime.'

I can't be expected to resist making a comment about the wording of the survey question, because it reflects the language used throughout the report: what can it mean, 'communities should do more to help the police'? This is new Labour reification of 'community,' implying incontestable agency to batches of local people who may have no grounds whatsoever for reaching consensus on local issues. I was quoting the excellent Jeremy Brent on this just a few weeks ago.

It is when you see such uses of the C word to imply policy knowledge put forward by a think-tank that you realise how ineffectual the community development field has been in challenging shallow communitarian rhetoric.

Anyway, I was struck by the question because in presentations for several years I've been referring to policing as an early example of the co-production (or co-delivery) principle - an example which probably dates back to the 1980s in the UK. Someone somewhere pointed out that the police do not have sole responsibility for producing safety on our streets; and that single insight probably gave rise to a significant transformation in the delivery of local policing. The fact that the process required public investment in several new branches in 'the family of policing' - community support officers, neighbourhood wardens and so on - is often conveniently overlooked.

So successfully have the police and media combined in building up this theme that while the police are more heavily funded than ever before, 82% of us agree that we should all be playing more of a role in reducing anti-social behaviour and crime. I'm surprised at the figure, with only 3% disagreeing.

A couple of concluding thoughts -

(i) Until people in policy-land stop implying that there are things called communities which can be called on to voice an opinion and take uncontested collective action that will be acceptable to the state, we're going to see neither genuine empowerment nor meaningful co-delivery.

(ii) The survey asked four questions about attitudes to responsibility for services. As the paper acknowledges, a substantial proportion of people responded 'neither agree nor disagree' or 'don't know' (between 14% and 39%). This suggests that many people may not have thought about any model of delivery of public services other than the one they currently pay for, if that. And yet still we have an education system from which many people emerge with no idea how public services are funded or on what basis they are provided. Policy wonks either can't grasp this, or they're comfortable with it as a form of systematised disempowerment from the processes of democracy.

Phoenix from the flames: the rebirth of Rhyl

It is my sad duty to report the closure of the West Rhyl Community Company (WRCC) due to financial difficulties and lack of funding.

WRCC has, for the past eight years, worked very positively for the community of Wales’s most deprived ward, providing the local community with a voice, a voice that may otherwise have gone unheard. The company has taken on all issues of concern ranging from livability issues to environmental concerns. The work they have done has been outstanding.

In a ward where child poverty is currently 80% it has provided a children’s activity project, a parent and toddler project and activities for children during the school holidays. It has provided computer access to all members of the community at their premises. Its neighbourhood workers project, that has been active for the past three years, has provided the community with a link to the authorities as well as other local and national organisations and during this time carried out an in depth survey of the needs and desires of the local community.

Indeed, the project appeared on the Channel 4 programme The Secret Millionaire and its neighbourhood workers were honoured as community champions by the prime minister at 10 Downing Street in 2009.

Having been employed by WRCC for almost four years as a neighbourhood worker, I would like to say a big thank you to my partner in crime Tony Cheetham, our company secretary Julie Simmonds and a very special thank you to Lynne Hudson our managing director. Lynne has put in hundreds of unpaid volunteer hours and has been the mainstay of the company from day one. I sincerely hope she will continue to be involved in community work. We cannot afford to lose her expertise.

Self-sustainability has always been a major problem for third sector organisations and much larger ones than WRCC have failed due to lack of funding.

Rhyl has seen a great many changes during its relatively brief lifetime. From the halcyon days as a Victorian seaside resort to the ‘cheap and cheerful’ boom in domestic holidays during the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s. Sadly, the current situation of poor quality accommodation, a high proportion of Houses in Multiple Occupation, absent landlords, poor facilities and high levels of poverty all add to a bleak landscape with poor street lighting and litter strewn alleys.

A once thriving area, it now defines perfectly the term Dickensian. Housing, accommodation and the visual appearance of the neighbourhood now make us a poor relation to other seaside resorts along the North Wales coast.

However, all is not lost. The Welsh Assembly Government is injecting millions of pounds into its Strategic Regeneration Area and Rhyl is a priority. Poor housing is being bought up and either demolished or retro fitted and new green spaces developed. At the same time a new community company called West Rhyl First is being formed, of which I am proud to be one of the founders.

I look forward to writing about the rebirth of a seaside town and I hope you will follow the story as it unfolds.

The March issue of New Start magazine reported on Rhyl in its feature Revisiting the poorest.