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.
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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.
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?
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.
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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.
I’ve been involved in the replication of social enterprises and co-operatives since 1998: as a member of a worker co-op that was licensed from another successful original worker co-op (which led to my being asked by some to comment on the failure of the Whole food Planet franchise that was based loosely on it earlier this year); as a manager of one of the regions of the ill-fated Aspire: the first attempt at creating a formal franchised social enterprise in every region of the country; involvement in the national social franchising programmes that ran in the early 00’s; and in supporting groups to evaluate social franchise offers as well as developing their own.
In all these instances I’ve been struck by the baggage associated with the phrase 'franchise' – people seem to think that the only way to replicate a successful model is to do a McDonalds on it, but actually there are lots of ways that such enterprises can be replicated and duplicated elsewhere.
I recently participated in a 2-day residential on social enterprise replication run by Unltd Advantage – a welcome opportunity to reflect on my own knowledge and experience built up from firsthand experience and self-directed learning (especially as I’m currently writing a 5,000 word essay that will be critiquing current theories, models and tools for social franchising).
And while the formal content may not have offered much new that I hadn’t already educated myself in, including how we identify and recreate the ‘magic dust’ that makes our enterprises successful, the opportunity to spend some time exclusively immersed in the subject matter, and to share stories and ideas amongst the other participants did make me realise something.
Despite there being a multitude of models through which successful models of social enterprise can increase their impact in ways that they could never do if they remained as a single entity, the biggest threat to this being achieved is our egos.
People can be extremely precious about the enterprise model they’ve developed and aren’t always happy about the chance that in offering it ‘out there’ in some way for replication in ways other than in very formal command and control ways on their part, perhaps there’s a fear that they’ll lose control of it, that maybe others may be able to improve on it, and that it will mean less reward and kudos for them personally and individually.
But if, as social entrepreneurs, we’re motivated primarily by the needs we see in society, shouldn’t we welcome any and all opportunities to increase the impact in addressing those, even if that means copying someone else’s model or accepting that our own approaches can be improved on?
Measuring community cohesion is never going to be a straightforward task. People and their intricate circumstances are difficult to place into tidy tick boxes.
It is widely recognised among regeneration organisations and local authorities that there is a nervousness about sharing findings about cohesion. It seems that unless research results are wholly positive with crystal clear recommendations, we are reluctant to promote them and open ourselves up for attack or expose our neighbourhoods as anything less than harmonious.
But this cloak and dagger approach to cohesion could mean that valuable lessons are being lost and that shared issues that could give warning signs about vulnerable communities are going under the radar.
At the housing market renewal pathfinder in Oldham and Rochdale we’ve taken up the challenge to change the culture on the complex conundrum that is community cohesion.
Transparency is the name of the game. With matched funding from the Tenant Services Authority’s innovation and good practice fund, with contributions from our two local authorities, we commissioned seven different cohesions projects which will be independently researched and evaluated. The findings will be revealed at a special conference in Manchester this month where we will launch a best practice website. The aim is for other organisations to use the website to share their findings and start a peer community where we can openly discuss what works and importantly what doesn’t.
We don’t expect this to be a quick fix to the challenge of creating cohesive communities. It’s a start towards getting a better understanding of some of the issues that can make a difference whether it be around the design of a housing development, mediating a dispute within a community or a philosophy project that builds bridges between the young and old.
We know that there are risks. Some of the findings will no doubt confirm that certain projects have not worked as expected and may expose some harsh realities and others may show some positive surprises. If we knew the answers from the outset, we wouldn’t be scrutinising them.
Striving to find and share best practice is even more relevant in a time of falling public sector resources. And now that all local authorities are expected to measure the impact of their activity for the new comprehensive area assessments (CAA), we think the conference and website will be extremely informative for anyone working in this field. We are mirroring the questions used in the national Place Survey, so that we can clearly demonstrate if perceptions have improved around those issues such as sense of belonging and satisfaction with a local area as a place to live.
The timing couldn’t be more crucial. It is widely assumed that the fall-out from the recession will strike the hearts of poorer communities and it’s likely that from next year a lot of public sector support for these areas could also be withdrawn. There is a serious concern that this increased polarisation could have detrimental effects on cohesion, creating tensions between communities as the allocation of resources comes into sharper focus. The best practice learned from organisations around the country will hopefully help us all to get smarter about how we invest in and tackle those tensions.
To find out more about the Cohesion Counts conference on 25 March visit www.cih.org/events/conferences/CohesionCounts10.
I know participatory budgeting is, to many, a rather artificial, over-engineered and fashionable an approach to community development.
To a ruralist, like me, it might also appear to be exotically urban with its case studies and heritage from Porto Allegre, Berlin, Seville and closer to home in London, Newcastle and Southampton.
But last month I spent a few hours hearing how participatory budgeting is beginning to flourish in the perhaps unlikely hot house environment of parish and town councils.
In a small seminar hosted by the National Association of Local Councils and the Participatory Budgeting Unit I heard how parish councils in Norfolk, North Yorkshire, Cheshire and Herefordshire are exploring participatory budgeting. The results are leading to more interest and engagement from previously apathetic local residents. It is resulting in the novel situation (for some places) of local people actually talking to each other about local issues. Sometimes it is also bringing together the principal local authorities and the parish and town councils, together with their respective councillors, in more supportive relationships than before.
County Associations of Local Councils are finding participatory budgeting a great way of energising their member councils. And the more I hear of their experience, the more it makes sense. Parish and town councils are often the right scale to deploy participatory budgeting. They usually cover distinct geographical communities and their councillors know many local people and are able to mobilise them into participating, into deciding how public money should be spent locally. Whether this is local people’s own money (the parish precept added on to their Council Tax bills) or else some external pot of money.
Yes, there are still challenges aplenty. From suspicious councillors to dyed in the old wool parish clerks. But the results are starting to confound sceptics. In particular, participatory budgeting, when done well, leads to plenty of enthusiasm for projects and those projects being far more rooted in and owned by their local communities than would have been the case if they had been decided by public officials and by ‘the council’.
Some of us at the seminar began to explore whether this same approach to direct democracy could in future be applied to the Total Place initiative we keep hearing so much about. For example, using the structures of parish and town councils to pull local people together to help decide how public budgets should be spent locally. And ‘locally’ in this context should mean a defined geographical community such as a village or a town rather than a more distant local authority level.
Could directly involving local people in budget and allocation decisions, particularly during these tough times for public expenditure, be part of the answer to the democratic deficit evident in local representative democracy?
Further information on how participatory budgeting can and is working in rural England can be found in the recent report from the Commission for Rural Communities, ‘The experience of Participatory Budgeting in rural England’. This is downloadable from: http://www.ruralcommunities.gov.uk/events/participatorybudgeting
Lies, damn lies and statistics – the famous phrase popularised by Mark Twain popped into my head during a recent conference.
Not, I hasten to add, because I thought anyone involved was lying.
It was, in fact, as a result of the way one of the speakers at the Economist’s third annual sustainability conference used some statistics that, on first glance, looked really impressive, before going on to reveal the bigger picture.
Unilever chief executive Paul Polman told delegates how the super-brand, and home of everything from tea bags to toothpaste, had cut its direct environmental impacts. Since 1995, he said, Unilever had slashed CO2 emissions from energy by more than 40%, waste by nearly three quarters and water by 65%.
Pretty impressive figures. But put them in context, as he went on to do, and the rest of the story is revealed.
The company’s direct environmental impacts make up just 3% of Unilever’s total carbon footprint.
Around a quarter comes from Unilever’s raw materials and the supply chain. But the main chunk, some 70%, is generated by consumers using Unilever products to cook, wash their clothes and clean their homes – and then disposing of them.
That’s a big figure. And here’s an even bigger one - on Unilever’s website it states that ‘160 million times a day, someone, somewhere chooses a Unilever product.’
Hundreds of millions of products plus 70% of total carbon footprint is quite an alarming equation.
Mr Polman’s point was clear. They may have made inroads into cutting the carbon contribution of their facilities but it’s not just the environmental cost of sourcing, making and distributing these products – it’s we, the punters, using the detergent or heating and eating the soup and what we do with the packaging afterwards.
‘We know that consumers will not compromise on price, quality or convenience for “greenness,”’ Mr Polman claimed. ‘Sustainability has to be built in to the design of the product.’
So how do you do that? Both Mr Polman and fellow speaker, Julian Walker-Palin of fellow brand behemoth Asda/Wal-Mart, talked about ‘choice editing’ whereby companies or governments make the climate change choice for consumers, such as Australia phasing out the standard light bulb from the market in favour of energy efficient alternatives.
If an entire continent switches to energy-saving measures and 160 million people opt for the detergent with a third less packaging, therefore taking a third of trucks off the road, then those choices start to add up.
Or to put it another way, Mr Polman suggested a slightly more upbeat equation:
Consumer products X Small everyday actions X Billions of people = A big difference.
Which is the kind of ‘math’ we should all like.
More people and agencies in the field of regeneration are either recent converts to, or are now honing in on poverty and inequality more. Furthermore, as sluggish economic performance continues and public sector cuts loom, we are all beginning to fret about what this may mean for people, places and regeneration more generally. A cruel irony is developing. Just when demand for regeneration is going to increase and there is more concern - there is going to be less money to do anything!
However, I do really get irritated with some of the more recent converts to tackling inequality. Excuse me - but where were you when you had significant resources, power and policy influence in the good times? It’s a bit rich that you now are saying we must now do something. Come on! I think all of us in regeneration need to start having a good look at ourselves, get some real values, be more direct, and make some bold and distinct policy choices.
However, before I explore these choices, lets get a few things straight. Successive regeneration programmes such as City Challenge, SRB, Neighbourhood Renewal, New Deal for Communities etc did do a job. Also tax credits, and other national policy programmes, including the Future Jobs Fund continue to do good work. Without these interventions there is no doubt that things would be a lot worse.
However, these measures were mostly tackling the symptoms of inequality; policy pygmies working in the land of giant behemoths. Huge iniquities as regards the social and geographical aspects of economic growth (in terms of wealth creation and accumulation, as well as significant cultural, family and community issues) dwarfed these well intentioned policies.
Of course, many of these recent regeneration converts to poverty and inequality were working with policies which they genuinely thought were and would work. However, at the same time, many others were arguing with passion and had a value set which held true to the notion that more needed to be done. These others identified with the despair within a culture of unemployment, ill-health, family breakdown, and crime. They witnessed wealth generation for the few, passing many communities by. They recognised that renewal was often fleeting and short lived. They heard about empowerment but did not see any power shift. They hoped for the trickle down but found a drip.
They included local people, community groups, voluntary groups, businesses, enlightened consultancies, think tanks, academics, campaigners and many public officials. They had values fuelled by an anger and frustration with inequality, the culture of poverty and an abiding passion to do something about it.
These recent converts to tackling inequality need to get the right values, to match their conversion. They need a set of values, which drive what they do. Values which keep them focussed on the tackling inequality in the hard times ahead. This is not about following convention, the rules, or formula. Bankers followed the rules, as did MP’s with their expenses, but they both had an absence of values or proper principles with which to gauge right or wrong.
For those involved in tackling inequality we have a choice and there are sides to take. It’s a choice between on the one hand, a conventional detached approach which is imbued with managerialism, process, formulaic ways of doing things and limp compassion. On the other, its a choice of creating a new activism, with bespoke approaches which are direct and driven by a value set which identifies with inequality and the culture of poverty and is angry enough to keep on doing something about it, with enduring effect.
Which side are you on?
The start of 2010 brought with it the popular mantra of ‘business as usual’, with the very institutions responsible for the downturn leading the rallying cry.
In reality I don’t think it’s that easy, as consumers and citizens are sceptical about a quick return to the business status quo and are now looking for something different. They are demanding a new balance that puts community ownership, accountability and consideration of the wider social and environmental impacts of business choices ahead of profits generated at all costs.
This is as relevant in the ‘public service’ where, because of anticipated cuts in expenditure, there is already increased pressure on authorities to improve value for money through greater efficiency and cost-effectiveness, as well as by finding new and better ways of meeting local needs.
Difficult times in the past have often led to unplanned kneejerk responses by public bodies, slashing budgets and cutting levels of service. However, in my experience, social enterprise provides us with a great alternative to deliver these services. It gives the people who lead and work in them a way of bringing about positive change through enterprise. They offer democratic control and equitable ownership and enable beneficiaries to shape the way those products are delivered. They often empower local people to use their knowledge, experience and judgement to create new solutions to long-standing problems.
Social enterprises could be the key to the transformation of public services because of their focus on providing effective, tailored services within a managed cost base. One example is Halo Leisure, a charitable ‘leisure trust’, with a social enterprise structure. It was established in 2002 as a solution for sustainable, inclusive, high quality sports and leisure services at a time when Herefordshire Council was no longer able to prioritise funding for this area.
Eight years on and Halo is providing excellent services, generating cost efficiencies, operating sustainably, while running a community and customer-led business.
It has over 1.6 million customer visits each year, manages nine leisure centres for the council, boasts a turnover of £6.7m and employs almost 200 full time staff. All profits are used to improve provision with around £3.7m reinvested to date.
But a major barrier to extending this approach is public sector commissioning practice. This tends to favour large scale contracts and contractors, often covering extensive geographical areas. The logic is that larger contracts achieve greater economies of scale and cost less to manage than a multitude of smaller value contracts. But this misses the value of having services delivered by businesses that are close to communities. It also forfeits a major opportunity for the public sector to multiply the local economic impact of its spending.
Many public bodies continue to award contracts on the basis of unit cost calculations alone, ignoring the added value social enterprise providers can bring. The way forward must be for public bodies to award contracts against a wider set of criteria to include price, quality and community benefit.
I believe if we utilise the still considerable resources within the public sector to invest in and drive forward social enterprise, we can positively address the negative impact of the economic climate over the last two years.
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With a general election on the way, all parties are talking a great deal about public service reform. We all know that such reform is important, particularly in the current economic climate when the biggest challenge to public finances is to do more with less while continuing to provide high quality services. Whatever the outcome of the election, a new government will have to rise to this challenge.
London’s boroughs have long been making the case for devolution, and last month, London Councils launched its Manifesto for Londoners, setting out radical but practical steps on how to help local authorities deliver even more for their residents.
The manifesto calls for greater devolution of powers and some budgets from central government and quangos to local authorities across a number of different areas including housing, transport and policing.
Joining up public services in a local area can provide a multitude of benefits - not just in terms of better services tailored to the individual needs of local people but also, as importantly, delivering them at a lower cost. And nowhere is this principle more evident than in the fields of housing and climate change through retrofitting homes with energy efficient measures.
Climate change is a subject that has not been far from the political and social agenda of recent months. The climate change rhetoric has become more prevalent in parliament and in the media and has been transferred into the minds of local people.
Londoners are becoming much more engaged about ways in which they can help. Playing their part in reducing their own carbon footprint by using public transport or recycling more can have positive impacts on life in both the long and short term. Through this, ways of making homes more energy efficient and reducing emissions from residential buildings have also become more viable. Through retrofitting energy efficiency measures into homes, savings can be made both for the planet (in terms of carbon emissions) and people’s pockets (in terms of savings on energy bills).
Energy efficiency retrofitting is the process of reducing emissions and cutting energy bills through measures such as better insulation. It is also the biggest single way councils can work with residents to cut carbon emissions and reduce fuel bills. As well as improving insulation the process also includes installing radiator reflector panels, draft stoppers or energy efficient light bulbs.
The way in which national energy schemes have been implemented has often meant that London has not received its fair share of funding for efficiency programmes. It is more important than ever that through the manifesto - and working with the mayor of London - we have begun to develop a London-wide programme.
London boroughs and the mayor are working in partnership to create an integrated programme to carry out retrofitting across the capital. The system has been tested in three trial areas and is now being introduced into nine boroughs to find the best way to operate such an ambitious programme. In all, 10,000 homes will be improved prior to a wider roll out across the rest of the capital.
But we want to go even further. As proposed in our manifesto, we believe that London’s boroughs, working in partnership with the mayor, can deliver retrofitting to 1.8 million homes by 2015.
However, this can only be achieved if government devolves London’s regional share of relevant funding pots, along with its share of utility obligations, to local government in the capital.
We also propose that boroughs should be given an efficiency incentive by being allowed to keep a share of the savings that retrofitting homes would produce. This would mean that there are cyclical benefits to this scheme – with money being put back into a local area.
Energy efficiency retrofit programmes are just one of a number of ways that London is working to address the issue of climate change. What the Manifesto for Londoners shows is that every aspect of life, be it housing or health, is linked. Through making small changes to their home or to their lifestyle Londoners will begin working towards a greener future.
Working effectively, efficiently and most importantly collaboratively the picture across London can stand as an example to the rest of the country to show how devolution can improve the lives of all residents.
Ahead of last week’s Region of Sanctuary conference, Radio Leeds devoted a news slot to the City of Sanctuary movement, which aims to create a culture of hospitality towards asylum seekers and refugees.
In a later phone-in show on the radio station, a man pretending to be Craig Barnett, one of the City of Sanctuary founders, called in. The imposter told listeners that the movement was about flinging open the borders of Britain to all.
The incident highlights just what City of Sanctuary is up against. Media coverage of asylum issues is dominated by lies and misinformation, creating a culture of vitriol and venom towards those seeking refuge in this country.
Indeed there is so little information about current policy that most people believe asylum seekers are taking the jobs of local people, when in fact their right to work in this country was removed in 2002.
City of Sanctuary is, co-founder Inderjit Bhogal said, a movement of culture change, to ‘challenge hostile attitudes and provide another language in the asylum debate’. The notion of providing sanctuary to those whose lives are in danger is thousands of years old, he told an audience of delegates in Bradford.
Throughout the day’s conference, speakers returned again and again to the subject of rising destitution; 48% of asylum seekers, refused asylum seekers and refugees in this country were found to be destitute in a survey last year. Cuts to the allowance of asylum seekers and their inability to seek work are exacerbating the problem.
During a workshop about tackling destitution levels within our cities, a delegate from a local government office sounded off about the ‘political’ nature of the debate, warning delegates to steer clear of such talk if the movement wants to continue to receive support from local and regional government.
City of Sanctuary is a non-campaigning, non-political movement which has gained local support precisely because it steers clear of the political hot potato that is asylum and migration policy.
It is hoping that by appealing to people’s basic humanity it will create a cultural mind-shift in the treatment of those fleeing persecution.
As last week’s conference showed however, it is not easy to avoid being political in the face of government policy that has driven asylum seekers into destitution and a media in which few dare challenge the myths the issue has generated.
Sanctuary, as Mr Bhogal says, is a simple and ancient idea. In this country however it is now more associated with donkeys, while the simple act of helping those in need of refuge has turned into a complex political issue that few outside of the third sector are prepared to touch, let alone tackle.
As anticipated the Tory planning green paper is fundamentally an anti-development document, based on the premise that its power base in the rural areas and small town does not want housing growth.
It has no practical proposals for positive planning. To satisfy the nimbies it removes powers from the centre and places them in local communities. This sounds okay but in fact it is partisan.
There is no statement that more housing is urgently needed, nor any serious strategy or mechanisms to enable it to happen. The abolition of the regional planning tier makes this transparent. The financial incentive for local authorities to permit development is just too small to overcome the scale of local opposition in the countryside.
Some measures are welcomed such as the presumption in favour of sustainable development (if defined in a comprehensive way), reinstating the needs test for out of town retail, and abolishing the Infrastructure Planning Commission.
None of these measures will please the property lobby, but will they apply in the inner cities? The scenario the Tories were clearly thinking of is the Tory shires in the south east, not the homeless or the needs of Labour-controlled inner cities.
For example, one strongly suspects the third party right of appeal will not be encouraged in central and inner cities where the big commercial developers and landowners operate and where local people are often opposed to high value development gentrifying their neighbourhoods.
The Tories want to have it both ways on the third party right of appeal. If local authorities give in to financial incentives local people can still put the block on development. This might be regarded as a progressive measure if it not the for the fact that the Tories probably anticipate losing much of their local authority base over the next years and this gives their nimby allies a lever to block development.
What we really need is a positive approach based upon new models of housing delivery including wider use of community trusts and housing associations, and strong partnerships between local/regional and national government to meet housing and employment need in a sustainable and locally involved way.
Government budget cuts threaten the nine life-saving emergency refuge places for the 100,000 children under 16 who run away each year in the UK. 30,000 are 12 or younger.