‘Human-focused’ community pilot takes off nationally
A community programme is to be rolled out across the country after independent research found the pilot scheme empowered citizens and contributed to public service reform.
The Community Contracts pilot - run by the National Association for Neighbourhood Management (NANM) on behalf of DCLG - will now act as a springboard for similar schemes throughout England after it was shown to enable local people and help councils fine-tune provision.
Communities secretary John Denham this week called for more councils to adopt community contracts following the publication of the research by the University of Manchester.
He said: ‘Community contracts are an important way for local people to tell councils and agencies about what matters to them and to get action taken on the issues that matter most to them.’
The NANM said it believed the contacts - piloted in 11 communities across England - demonstrated how concepts such as ‘citizen empowerment’ and ‘co-delivery’ could be turned into ‘real actions in real places with real people’.
Success stories include the Eastern Road Neighbourhood Management Team, which promoted healthy living in Brighton. The council committed to supporting local exercise classes and investing in better marketing via local newspapers and community noticeboards. In return, local people agreed to help the council’s healthy living team generate new ideas for activities and notify them if they encountered problems taking part in or getting to classes.
Other themes tackled by the various pilot programme contracts include community safety, the local environment, services for social housing tenants and activities for young people.
NANM trustee Ben Lee said: ‘The evaluation findings and the success of the pilots highlight again how neighbourhood approaches are essential in transforming public services from being top-down to be more human-focused.
‘We were also struck by the impact on middle and senior managers - when they got out of their town hall offices and spent time with neighbourhood teams thrashing out these agreements with local people they found it rewarding to go from saying what could not be done, to searching for things which could be done.’
Community contracts - often called ‘neighbourhood agreements’ or ‘charters’ - are now being adopted by local authorities which have received government funding to tackle anti-social behaviour, as well as those taking part in the Connecting Communities initiative.
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