Renaisi Blog

Planning - the missing debate

2011-09-09T15:24:00.003+01:00

By Kirby Swales

Whilst land use planning decisions often make local news, debates on planning policy rarely do, nor do those debates often make national headlines. This changed last weekend as the debate on the proposed presumption in favour of sustainable development came to the fore, and has intensified since. Greg Clark, George Osborne and Eric Pickles have all had to defend the policy in the face of opposition of National Trust, CPRE and others.

It is interesting to watch the terms of the debate – it is presented as housebuilders versus the protection of greenbelt land and about economic growth and meeting housing need. What seems to be missing from the debate are voices/organisations to represent cities and other urban areas, and discussions about quality.

The new simplified regime and presumption in favour of sustainable development could have equally large impacts on urban areas as on the countryside. Left to their own devices, developers and housebuilders could do great damage to the urban fabric in their pursuit of profit. In theory, the protections would remain through the adoption of local plans but in practice these could start to be whittled away without the back-up from other Planning Policy Statements. For example, a clear danger would be significant further employment land lost to residential schemes which in turn could hamper prospects for future economic growth (thereby defeating the proposed intentions of the changes). Equally, some Town Centre provision could be lost in an unmanaged way.

Neighbourhood planning may also be presented as a protection but this is still an uncertain area and they could take a long time to get adopted. Also, this is where higher level plans could present problems – what if a local neighbourhood decides it wants a different tenure balance to encourage a more mixed community? Most local plans in London contain blanket rule on requirements for affordable housing and, within that, the balance between social rent and shared ownership. Could neighbourhoods really override the density standards to get genuine family housing? The conformity requirements suggest not.

The other key issue is quality – national planning policy statements point to the need to deliver well designed buildings but it is left to local plans to provide the detail. Many do this but I wonder how successful the implementation is when many of the affordable housing developments in London seem to me to be poorly sited or poorly designed. This is in fact one of the dangers that Peter Hall warned about in his famous footnote of abstention in the Urban Task Force report

The other culprit is school building projects – often huge new investments and buildings not properly linked to their physical surroundings or effectively interacting with the local housing patterns.

CABE used to regularly assess new housing developments in the country and the majority were rated as average or poor. See here for a Northern example. The recent series Secret Life of Buildings was also a powerful argument in favour of raising the awareness and importance of design quality and putting users/residents at the heart of the planning and design process.

Others have written more eloquently about the current debate, such as Chris Brown and George Monbiot. The government has also issued a mythbuster to counteract some of the criticisms.

It is good to see more debate about the land use planning system, but what we really need is debate about what our cities and neighbourhoods should look like, and also how people can best be engaged in the process of creating them. I’d particularly like to hear more voices representing those who live and work in our urban neighbourhoods and social housing estates.

Why does it always seem to take a riot?

2011-08-11T17:06:00.003+01:00

A friend of mine said to me on Wednesday night: ‘You work in regeneration, you must be so saddened by this’.

My first thought was: ‘I’m a human being, I must be so saddened by this’. But I took her point. And I realised that I hadn’t yet thought about it in those terms.

I live about 2 miles from Tottenham High Road. The primary school that I’m a governor of is in South Tottenham and about a mile from the High Road. I don’t claim to be a member of the Tottenham community - that sort of distance in London means that it’s a bit too far away to get involved in and know well. But I have friends in Tottenham and so my first reaction was one of shock, and then concern on Saturday night. I was kept awake by a combination of sirens, helicopters and scanning my twitter feed until about 4 on Sunday morning. The pictures of the old Co-op building were particularly powerful and saddening. A feeling of emptiness is the most thoughtful thing I can claim at that point.

That night was followed by a succession of other feelings and emotions as I watched events unfold in London and across the country. Shock, and more shock. Anger – lots of that. Surprise at the speed of it all. Frustration at people so quick to overlay their existing views onto events that were far too fluid to pin down, let alone analyse. If journalism is the first draft of history, I have no idea what to call some of those instant responses that I saw on social media and 24 hour news.

And also not a little pride and joy to see my adopted city respond in the way it did. From riot clean ups to the generosity of people towards those made homeless in Tottenham (information on how to donate here). I was constantly touched by the small and simple reactions. I have heard some critical responses to things such as the riot clean up – that it is only one group of society or that it may be an attempt to get back to a normality that benefitted them. But I hold no truck with people who reject our desire for community, safety and cooperation at times of uncertainty and fear.

And with comment of normality and community, I suppose we’re getting to how I have responded as somebody who works in regeneration. Well, for a start, I’ve stopped thinking of myself as somebody who works in regeneration. I suppose that is part of a broader debate for another day, but perhaps illustrates the challenges that a well intentioned sector got itself into. But I have a number of thoughts as somebody who works for a social enterprise that it about protecting, improving and empowering our most deprived neighbourhoods.

Safety is the starting point. In EC1, South Islington, (admittedly with the great advantages of the New Deal for Communities funding), our success in improving that neighbourhood came from starting with safety in terms of housing, with estate security programmes, increased neighbourhood policing and increased support to local youth groups to run extended hours, detached youth work and positive youth work. This was then followed by improvements to the public realm which considered safety and the community, and also other activities that could only work when people felt safe in their area. The final years of the programme did not need to focus on safety in the same way as fear of crime was so much lower; but it took time to get to that point.
‘Normality isn’t good enough. Normality is the problem’. This quote came from comments in a blog by Toby Blume. I don’t mean that we should not try to return to a feeling of safety, as highlighted above, but it is clear that if there is no attempt to do anything about root causes, then we are walking into a recurrence of the same problems. Some of the answers will probably be uncomfortable for many of us, but the question of why this happened needs to be asked.
Responsibility. Responsibility is a word that has been used a lot in the last few days. This needs to be applied to more than just parents and looters. What are the responsibilities of the state, of businesses, of individuals, of local and national government, of civil society of schools...? The phrase social contract is a good one – if somewhat burdened by a lot of history. It implies a level of reciprocity. I know from experience in interviewing individuals on a variety of research projects how quickly trust and respect breaks down when people do not feel that the contract is honoured. And I’m not talking about a welfare dependency in this instance, but a feeling that responsibility for many of our public, private or voluntary sector services can mean a responsibility to protect an institution rather than the aims of that institution. Whether it is a charity or a business, people spot that and feel let down. If you chase the profit motive alone, they lose respect and chase the product from you and not the transaction. If you protect the local council or the service alone, then they also lose that trust in you being there for their needs. So really, when I say responsibility, I mean a broader integrity.
Regeneration came from the wrong place. My favourite, if that is the right word, diagram I have seen from the department for Communities and Local Government was one that highlighted the levels of support and the number of public interventions that were supporting ‘deprived neighbourhoods.’ I can’t find it online and am not sure it was ever published. The single most revealing thing about that diagram was that all arrows pointed from the support into the community. It looked like a target under attack. Not a single arrow came out, suggesting autonomy, determinism and power for that community. Things will only get better if we turn some of those arrows around in the way in which we help places. Not all of them, as there are places in this country which need support from the state so that they can get to a point where they might attract other forms of investment. But ‘doing to’ has been pushed as far as it can go.

These aren’t new ideas. Probably not very meaningful ones either. They are early thoughts based on a bit of experience and the collection of emotions I described at the start. They also don’t get into the broader debate about our values that has been broached in other places.

But as I write this I was reminded of a post I wrote in February 2010 about the future of regeneration. It contained the Philippe Starck quote – ‘You’ve got to keep the violence of the original idea’. That might seem inappropriate given recent events, but for me it gets a bit closer to understanding why people have become frustrated by our leaders (whether political or otherwise). We find ourselves as a society in a position that we, collectively, are not sure how we reached. It was nobody’s desire to get to the scenes of this week, yet here we are. For me, the initial desire for change and improvement has been lost along the way. And so we are left standing in the rubble of what has just burnt down, crying out for a new idea so that we can get on with the messy business of creating it. We need some inspiration.

Risk, reward and responsibility?

2011-07-14T09:24:00.004+01:00

I went to the launch of a new pamphlet yesterday – Can Housing Work for Workers? It was published by the TUC as part of their Touchstone work, and written by James Gregory of the Fabian Society. You can read a piece about it here, if you can’t face the whole report.

The launch involved a discussion between James, Brendan Barber of the TUC, Caroline Flint MP (Shadow Communities and Local Government Secretary), and Andrew Sissons of the Work Foundation. It was a lively and interesting debate about the links between housing, employment and community.

I’ve been interested in James’ work for a while – particularly since he worked with Tim Horton on the publication of the Solidarity Society, which looked at the role of universal public services, and how it was their very universality that allowed for their success.

Something he said during the debate really struck a chord with me about how our public service landscape is changing to respond to changes to society, and that was about the transfer of risk around our society. The speed of societal change, and the impacts of those on our public services have been well described and considered by the Public Services 2020 Trust, but I haven’t thought about how those changes are impacting upon risk. Many of these societal changes have been with us for some time (deindustrialisation, for example), but they are really becoming felt in the public service environment. James talked about it in terms of employment, but I was left wondering how it applied to welfare too:

Employment risk. As our economy is becoming more and more structured around knowledge-based industries, the form of work is changing and flexibility is affecting how we consider employment, work and what we want work to look like. For many people that means that they don’t want a job for life, and so their careers look different and they are employed in different ways. This can be, and has been for many, a very positive change. Essentially though, risk is being transferred more from the employer to the employee: previously, the employer was more used to providing employee services (career development, social functions etc) in an environment where they could take people on for 30 years. This change works fine for those with higher skills and mobility, but our economy has not necessarily worked out how to look after those with low skills (and middle range skilled work is becoming less prevalent within the economy). Andrew Sissons from the Work Foundation talked about this with much more knowledge than I can, but that increased risk on employees means lower pay, reduced terms and conditions and very few of the benefits of the knowledge economy for those on the bottom rungs.
Debt risk. The changes to our public finances as a result of a whole range of factors over the last few years have seen some of the debt burden be transferred from the state to the household. This means that costs of services, such as education and pensions, are being pushed more explicitly onto individuals. This is driven by the demographics and the changing economy – the delivery of this, however, is obviously deeply political.
Welfare risk. Linked to the debt point and the cost, is also the role of the welfare state. The risks of providing welfare are being pushed away from government and the state to families, communities and companies. So through the DEL:AME switch and the Work Programme, the idea is that risk and reward for getting people into work lies with companies and not the state. The Big Society is about many things, but part of it is about civic society taking on more of a role and more of a responsibility. At Renaisi we’re seeing this changing model of risk and reward for the delivery of services in the partnerships we are trying to build, with the voluntary sector expected to do ‘more for less’.

As my colleague rightly points out to me, there are counter arguments to all of these being about better services and environments through increased flexibility. I’m not trying to argue that these changes are good or bad, but rather that they are happening and have implications.

What does this shift in risk mean? Essentially all of these risk movements have placed more on the individual and the family. When everything is going to plan in your life, you can manage this risk relatively easily and perhaps benefit from some of the freedoms and choices it gives you.

When something goes wrong, the risks can quite often spiral, combine and multiply. If you’re in a low paid job with few career prospects given the broader economic changes, the debt risks suddenly seem too much to consider. And so you don’t borrow for education, you don’t save for your pension and you don’t save to buy a house. You can’t afford to. This means you may well end up living in a more deprived neighbourhood, which may well not have the civic institutions, such as strong and active community groups, or local trusts to take on the welfare risks in your area – leading to problems around care, civic involvement and mutual support.

These are big, national and international changes that need to be responded to at that level.

At the community and neighbourhood level I think there are also responses to support these transfers of risk, and many councils and areas are starting to look at this. Resilience and wellbeing are talked about a lot, and are often quite nebulous phrases. The Young Foundation and CLES have both tried to address these in their work. What they demonstrate though, is that with changes to risk, come changes to responsibility and reward as well.

So resilience is often about building capacity to deal with these risks, but I also see this perhaps being about ‘time out’ and local rather than national safety nets. Some things that might need addressing include:

A community investment fund to provide time out from having to pay your student loan, your pension and your rent all at the same time when you’ve just lost your job. This could be linked to having stronger credit unions in areas which provide responsible credit and savings. They should also have some kind of investment option within this for new businesses/ enterprises in an area.
'In-between’ and ‘connecting’ services that join the dots between both the services in an area, but also the social and community networks and links in an area. Public services often claim they do this, but very few do. This could be timebanking, or it could be neighbourhood or community organisers. It can also mean that other local roles, such as children’s centre managers or librarians have to spend more time on building and supporting local knowledge and connections. (See the Power Lines report from the RSA on the importance of these connections).
A break from the caring roles that many people do for each other – and the need for this will increase, under the current system, if you care for somebody who doesn’t have a problem that might elicit a kind of ‘reward’ for companies trying to build a business model around the DEL:AME switch

Neighbourhood services, like the rest of society, are going to have to change to meet the risks and changes that our economy is creating for all of us. It’s partly about spreading the risk, and ensuring that those in the greatest need are not left holding all the negative implications of these shifts.

A big set of issues for the new, Big Local Trust to get to grips with?

Caring and optimism

2011-07-08T14:07:00.005+01:00

A colleague and I have just finished two weeks of fieldwork for an evaluation that we’re working on for the Princess Royal Trust for Carers. We’re looking at how a whole family approach can improve outcomes for young carers in two pilot areas. This post is a quick description of some initial thoughts that have been coming back to me all week.

It is obviously too early to talk about results – although my head is full of thoughts and initial ideas about the project – but doing the work has really forced me to think hard about the caring role in our communities. Before this project we did another piece of work trying to understand how to support female carers back into work in a ward in Barking and Dagenham. A few weeks ago was national Carers Week. And this week saw the publication of the report of the Dilnot Commission. Now seems like a good time to be thinking about this.

Renaisi is an organisation that is interested first and foremost in the neighbourhood. This means we often do a broad range of things – from economic development to working with libraries, from getting people into work to supporting the need for parks and play – but what binds our work is that we look at it through the lens of the neighbourhood.

The reason why carers and caring are of great importance to deprived neighbourhoods is because the role of caring can often mean people leave the labour market – and therefore can only afford housing costs in cheaper areas. In other instances, the other issues that keep families out of the labour market, such as low skills or drug and alcohol abuse, can put added pressures on a family and increase the need for somebody within that family to take on a much greater supportive role.

I suppose the thing that has stayed with me over the fieldwork for both pieces of work is the paradox of how little confidence so many carers have in themselves, and how much so many of them do for their family. I'm in danger of sounding overly sentimental about the carers role (I've heard too many inspiring stories these last two weeks), but also of falling into the well warn blog post routine of talking about the hidden potential and capacity in neighbourhoods.

Instead, therefore, I want to consider what it means for services. So many times in our research on both projects, we have found that the soft bodies of carers and their families bash up against the hard edges of services that don’t really seem to work very well for them. What gets them through that sharp service landscape is often a single individual or project who helps them navigate the service world. They befriend them, build trust, and then walk with them and their families. This is often exactly what public servants are told not to do - don't get too involved, stay professional, provide the service. But when this other approach works, it seems to really work. I’ve seen staggering changes in attitude and confidence and outlook: people getting jobs, starting to volunteer or coming off drugs. They start engaging with their families and neighbours more. It's also not just caring that this matters for - Help on Your Doorstep is a brilliant charity in Islington that came out of the NDC programme that we ran there. It plays exactly that supportive and personal role for many people.

This matters greatly to the people that services are supposed to help, and I am optimistic that this way of working is changing how we think about public services. Agendas like personalisation and co-production appear in reality when excellent staff start to do it naturally, when we see public services that are closer to people, are built on bonds and understanding, and are delivering better outcomes. This approach, and our research would support that it is an approach that is valued greatly by service users, does not fit neatly into service management plans or traditional models of delivery. Services start to worry about the risk of getting too involved, and of not knowing when to stop working with families. These are risks, but they shouldn’t be risks which prevent a shift in service culture for families and carers that need it most. The job is to find new ways to manage and deliver this way of working, and not say that this way of working doesn't fit our current service structures

Does size matter? Which way for community assets?

2011-07-01T14:57:00.000+01:00

Yesterday, Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the Institute for Voluntary Action Research released an excellent piece of new research on community assets. This was the first systematic attempt to map the whole sector, and explore key questions such as impact and support needs.

One of the most significant findings is that the biggest single group of asset owning organisations are volunteer-led organisations without any paid staff (think village and community hall committee with a part-time cleaner or care-taker). This is a contrast to the multi-purpose ‘community anchor’ that has perhaps become associated with the field. To distinguish the two categories, the researchers have come up with the labels ‘stewards’ for the former and ‘community developers/entrepeneurs’ for the latter. The research findings were launched at the impressive new Coin Street Community Centre on London’s Southbank – a perfect example of the second category.

For practitioners, this raises the question: What should an asset-building strategy be at local level? This reminds me of some of the discussions (and often debates) that were had during the delivery of the New Deal for Communities (NDC) programmes. For some NDCs, the focus was on the creation of large asset-owning organisations to become ‘successor vehicles’, whereas others had a more distributed model, with a range of voluntary groups owning or operating a range of smaller assets.

I am interested in the policy question of the relative advantages and disadvantages of each in terms of achieving community and social benefit.

Small is beautiful?

Sylvia Brown of ACRE made a case for the ‘small is beautiful’ approach – showing how many village halls are well used and run for under £9,000 a year, and can continue to do so with occasional advice and a means of funding cyclical maintenance costs. Assuming a typical ‘community developer’ costs £500,000 per year to run, you could fund 50 smaller, voluntary groups for the same money, which looks like a pretty good social return on the investment.

Big is best?

On the other hand, smaller asset-owning groups are unlikely to be able to produce major change in communities, nor provide a vehicle of capturing economic value from uplift (in the way that Coin Street has done so effectively). Large groups also have the resilience and capacity which many smaller groups do not, and the latter tend to become too dependent on the (over-) committed volunteer (though not always – as shown by the unfortunate fact that O’Regen in Waltham Forest has gone into administration, which I also found out yesterday).

A way forward?

Clearly, both types of asset-organisation can co-exist but practitioners and funders still face difficult choices on strategy. Perhaps one way forward is to apply the principles: ‘use’, ‘mutual support’ and ‘staged growth’ to these decisions.

The first and over-riding principle from a community point of view is whether an asset is well-used, not who owns or manages it. The aim should be to maximise the potential of assets - organisations should be challenged if they are not achieving that.

The second is that competition posed by a large organisation in a confined area could be unhealthy and damaging for smaller community organisations, but both could have their place if the larger can provide support for the smaller, for example by providing essential back office support.

Thirdly, ‘stewards’ can become ‘community developers’, but that growth should be organic and driven by the community. This was a key message of the seminar, with the most successful organisations developing in this way.

Everyone agreed for a consistent and ongoing evidence base in this area, including further surveys. That commitment, alongside more sharing and dissemination of knowledge, should help cast more light on these questions.

By Kirby Swales

Renaisi

1 July 2011

Is adult and community learning one of the bedrocks of neigbourhood improvement?

2011-06-03T11:16:00.006+01:00

Many of the regeneration and renewal efforts over the last decade have struggled to significantly change the socio-economic prospects of residents despite major investment and attention from all levels of government.

In the EC1 New Deal for Communities programme, which Renaisi managed, we concluded that skills development was the missing link in tackling many of the remaining problems in the area.

I think one of our best achievements in EC1 was the location of a new Adult and Community Learning Centre in the area in a high-quality, bespoke building. In the first year, over 400 local residents attended courses such as ESOL, literacy and maths. Together with grants funding for individuals to buy higher level training, I believe we starting to create a skills ‘ hotspot’ in the area, as one manager put it. It was frustrating that it only opened in the last year of the programme, so we weren’t able to develop it further and see the impact.

The more we worked with the skills sector, the more I wondered why it was not more central to the official Neighbourhood Renewal strategy. Looking back, a Basic Skills strategy was of course part of the plan, as was the concept of neighbourhood learning and on-line centres.

However, it was one of a set of linear policy themes rather than seen as an essential early stage of a more complex cycle of neighbourhood and individual improvement. Where there was limited attention on skills, it tended to focus on the formal end of the spectrum, on accredited qualifications, the role of mainstream providers and basic skills.

‘Informal learning’ needs to go hand-in-glove with formal learning, and this is where neighbourhood based strategies could really work, by harnessing the role of community facilities and groups of all types. Informal Learning already makes up a lot of what is going on – think of community gardening groups, arts and crafts classes, cookery clubs, reading groups in libraries - they simply don’t give it that title, and it doesn’t tend to be co-ordinated or planned from an educational perspective.

With a small amount of steady funding and some strategic support, it could make a significant contribution to drawing more disadvantaged people into the formal skills system (ACL, FE, HE etc). It also has other impacts, for example there is a lot of overlap with the ‘Well-Being’ agenda, where one of the main delivery mechanisms is small scale informal learning activity. There is evidence that this type of activity has a positive impact on well-being. However, to be sustainable, I wonder if a stronger case probably needs to be made –about the most effective types of learning and how to create pathways to formal learning and, through that, to better employment prospects.

A new fund for informal learning has been launched recently which offers the opportunity of doing just that. This builds on a previous fund called the Transformation Fund – which has a very useful website of resources.

However, at £2.25m this represents roughly 10% of the previous fund and 1% of the mainstream Skills Funding Agency resources for Adult Learning. Unless there is a good deal more partnership working and political will, that level of resource is unlikely to realise the ambitions of the Moser report – “Unless community–based provision is enormously expanded, we will not be able to reach hundreds of thousands of people who have real needs but don’t want to go to a college.”

Work Programme – losing the neighbourhood element?

2011-05-26T11:15:00.012+01:00

By Kirby Swales, Director of Research, Renaisi

As the Work Programme moves closer to reality, people are becoming increasingly interested in how it will work in practice. There are a growing number of research studies and commentary emerging, such as those by CLES, IPPR and IES.

The underlying question for me is whether the overall programme design will encourage providers to innovate in a way that produces the best results for clients. DWP and other commissioners are effectively delegating this task to providers, whereas previously they took the lead, either through JC+ delivery, contract specifications and/or their research and policy work. There is a risk that the system will be fragmented, and won’t create the necessary conditions for an effective worklessness ‘system’.

There are a whole range of issues for the new Work Programme, including: the nature of employer engagement and specialist support for those seeking work, links with local neighbourhoods and community groups; and the relationship with Local Authorities, Local Enterprise Partnerships and Training providers. I would like to examine one of these in a bit more detail: the role of the neighbourhood.

Over the last decade, there have been a number of programmes that have enabled employment services to be designed to work better at the neighbourhood level. This was partly based on an understanding that peoples journey to work is heavily affected by a range of non-employment issues, and that some people need extra encouragement and support to take up the help available. It was also because of the obvious concentrations of workless people in particular geographical places, and the need to join-up services more effectively.

Much of this innovation was funded by the Working Neighbourhoods Fund, Neighbourhood Renewal Fund and New Deal for Communities programmes and pilot funding streams such as the City Strategy Pathfinders. This funding produced many examples of innovative practice, such as partnerships with social landlords, integrated skills and employment centres and organisations, provision for specific sectors or under-represented groups, small grants and bursaries, Time Banks, childcare solutions and community enterprise schemes, and so on.

A recent study of WNF found that it especially added value atparticular stages of the ‘customer journey’, notably in the early stages, including outreach and providing volunteering opportunities. A recent review of the NDC programme by Professor Paul Lawless of Sheffield Hallam University argued that worklessness services should remain a feature of neighbourhood delivery structures.

It is arguable that neighbourhood-level working can best help create supportive social networks, co-locate and integrate services in a way that makes sense locally, and is the best level to make effective partnerships with housing, childcare, education and other providers. There is also good evidence from the US that linking employment services with neighbour-to-neighbour support has positive effects.

Much of these interventions are likely to pay off in the longer-term and help prevent future problems. However, will it be possible to reconcile this approach with the financial and measurement framework of the Work Programme? If it is to happen, it will require a role for Local Authorities, and the providers and funders of training. As the Houghton Review argued, there is a need for flexibility at the local level, and it is not easy to reach out to the most disadvantaged people and neighbourhoods: “to engage them; raise aspirations; and to join up employment and skills provision with other support services to meet their needs. Maximum flexibility is required by local authorities and their partners to identify and spend funds in a way that will have the most impact.”

However, I would argue delivery and funding needs be organised at the sub-local authority level, in neighbourhoods or small clusters of neighbourhoods. Of course, these need to be within a framework of services operating on wider geographical scales, to provide economies of scale and the right specialist provision. It needs a very fine-grained understanding of a neighbourhood, and strong links between people and community organisations/ associations, to help tackle the isolation, depression and poor health that stop many people looking for work.

It is only by incorporating some of the best practice from previous neighbourhood and partnership working, that the Work Programme will truly succeed.

Community ‘Institutions’ and the service/ outcome divide

2011-05-26T09:49:00.007+01:00

We’ve all been in them. They’re nice. Friendly. Warm. You can feel it when you walk in. Maybe it’s your child’s primary school, or the local library. A great community centre has it too. It probably has friendly and helpful reception staff, and the other people in there will invariably seem relaxed and happy. They might smile at you – even in London.

With apologies to Justice Potter Stewart, a great community institution is a bit like pornography. You know it when you see it.

But what does it do to be that? Some of the positives are about being good at what it does. It’s an excellent school or an excellent library. The management has a good relationship with the staff, sets a clear and exciting vision for the service and thinks creatively about its partnerships. The front line staff know their pupils or users well, and have brilliant relationships with them. The students get good results and the users have a positive and relevant experience. But the best institutions in a community seem to have something else too. They’re about more than just service excellence – even though excellence is what they strive for.

Some recent work we did in libraries with the Big Lottery and the MLA suggests that another factor might be how well that institution works with and engages their community and local people. In the initial baseline work that was commissioned to try and understand what a library that ‘did’ community engagement would look like, the line ‘busier and buzzier’ was used. I liked that, and it was possible to see during our fieldwork for the research we did. The libraries that had gone furthest with engaging their community did feel ‘busier and buzzier’, and that made them nice places to be in.

So in practice, what did community engagement mean? Our report found several things that mattered, but a lot of it was about understanding the community (and that’s the whole local and user community, not just the typical users) and actively going out of your way to get them into the building. Them being there and doing something – even if it had nothing to do with books – was a real positive, and it often led to them doing something else. So in Toxteth, Liverpool, the library worked with Refugee Action to run weekly walks around the area for newly arrived asylum seekers. This introduced people to their new area, and the tour also finished in the library. People tended to stay and use other services and engage in the service landscape and community positively. We found that every library that was part of our research sample had an increased usage as a result of their work – and that usage increase was much greater than the increase in book loans (explained by the fact that new groups wanted to use the library for non-traditional reasons).

Often there would be new staff or individuals that would help the libraries change their approach to become more outward facing and engaging with the local community. It would work better in some places than others. Many places found it hard – how do you engage people in service design and delivery over a sustained period of time? We found that the biggest changes seemed to be around attitude and power. The killer line that one library manager used to describe the change from service led to community led was: “It’s not our library anymore, it’s theirs”. Those that embraced this change seem to be very successful – and on top of that we found that positive, stable involvement in the services was creating further impacts.

We were seeing health and wellbeing outcomes, learning and skills outcomes and community outcomes that were seen as qualitatively and quantitatively different by stakeholders and users as a result of that involvement. One project in Sandwell, Make Friends With a Book, was seen by users, the PCT and the local MIND has having incredibly positive impacts on the mental health and happiness of the participants. It was creating and sustaining bonds between individuals, and it was creating opportunities for people to talk openly in a relaxed setting. We used an SROI analysis for that project, and found a large range of outcomes and value that the project was creating for the users. People also talked about how their involvement in the library felt like they were giving back to the community as well as the service. They saw great value in the added extras that libraries were delivering as a result of the community engagement approach. Involving people in the running and activity of the library, therefore, meant for a better library service – but it also delivered a range of outcomes that are of interest to a range of services and commissioners, and also were of very little direct interest to the library service. All this hard work may actually result in big wins for mental health outcomes, and not the library service. Essentially we found libraries that were producing much greater amounts of value for their community as a result of this approach, but they weren’t necessarily cheaper.

So, a great community institution is excellent at what it does – but it also involves the people who use it, in what it does, and finally it cares about outcomes that matter more to the community than the service.

Matthew Taylor refers to this in his recent post, and we’ve been finding it in a whole range of projects recently. That engagement process which the libraries undertook required a lot of upheaval and change, and some admit they would have given up had it not been the pressure from the funder, and gone back to focussing on service excellence alone. But it was worth it.

It was worth it because of the virtuous circle that involvement created (click to enlarge):

Where, however, is the pressure coming from now to do this?

My proposal is this. Service excellence should still be the domain of individual services. Community engagement should be something all frontline services and institutions have an interest in. But not everyone can do it well, so they need help – hopefully Locality and others will support this with their work. But it also requires another institution to focus on the outcomes. This is firstly the job of the local authority or another part of the state: they should care about and track ‘learning outcomes’ in an area, rather than running a really great learning service. But many of the services that are seeing the cuts are the intermediary roles, so as to protect the frontline services the state provides. Who will make sure that the great library, which runs a wonderful mental health project, is tapped into all the networks of an area, and that it is not overlapping with the equally positive class that is run at the community centre? As budgets recede, and more organisations fight for their chunk of what’s left so as to continue to provide their excellent services – who will be pushing the engagement in all services and who will be focussing on outcomes? I have a feeling it won’t just be the state in the future, and that opens up some very big questions about self-interest, governance and accountability, to make sure that we get busy and buzzy places, rather than those just fighting for their survival and compromising value as a result.

Indices of Multiple Deprivation 2010 - couple of quick thoughts

2011-03-30T17:02:00.003+01:00

The 2010 Indices of Multiple Deprivation were released last week. As has already been pointed out by a few others, the lack of mainstream media interest in these is probably linked to the fact that the budget was out the day before, a huge protest took place in Central London two days later, and – if we’re honest – ‘Indices of Multiple Deprivation 2010’ is not a press release to make an editor swoon.

Jamie Carpenter at Regeneration and Renewal and Centre for Cities have both started to have a look at what the figures say, and are both worth a read.

As anybody who works in or with government will know, this series of data from 2004 and 2007 have become incredibly important in understanding small areas and justifying evidence of need in a way that is consistent across England. Whilst the release of an update does not a thrilling headline make; it is incredibly important for how resources will be allocated in the future.

Here at Renaisi we’re going to do a bit more digging into the data for London as a whole, but have started with a very quick look at one area in particular – the south of Islington (EC1). We know that part of the city fringe incredibly well after working there for 10 years on the delivery of one of the last government’s New Deal for Communities programme (it finishes on Thursday). I personally have more data about the area than is possible to use. Given some of the findings of our recent evaluation work, I thought it would be worth seeing whether an update of the IMD data nuanced that story at all.

Deprivation in EC1

The short answer is no, not really. In looking at the 9 LSOAs that the NDC patch covered, the story is one that we knew already, one of falling relative deprivation. Whilst the data sets between 2004 and 2007 are not technically comparable, the changing ranks show an improving trend that is broadly reliable. In 2004 the average rank for the EC1 area was 4,911 (or about equivalent to the bottom 15% nationally). In 2007 this improved to 6,412 (bottom 19%) and by 2010 the average rank is 8,620 (the bottom 26%).

This positive trend is obviously part of a broader positive trend for the city fringe, and we hope it’s also connected to some of the work we have done with the EC1 Partnership.

This doesn’t tell the whole story though. The index that was always the ‘weakest’ for the EC1 area was income deprivation. The large number of social housing blocks, and EC1’s place in a borough with high demand for social housing, meant that those individuals with the highest needs have always been top of the allocation list, and they tend to be individuals with very low incomes. Our household survey of 2008 – around the time that most of the data for these indices is from – highlighted that about a third of households in the area had an income of under £200 per week.

Income deprivation has reduced for the area, and it now sits around the bottom 20% of relative income deprivation for England. Not the top 20%, but it could be worse. The problem is the two ‘sub-indexes’ – income deprivation affecting children and income deprivation affecting older people. In terms of income deprivation affecting children the EC1 area is in the bottom 5% nationally. One of the LSOAs in the area remains in the bottom 1%. At the same time, income deprivation affecting older people has, unlike other trends, started to get worse in the area.

This trend is almost completely down to the nature of the housing market in the EC1 area. Rising land values and development have created an element of (but not as much as some assume) gentrification in the area - there’s an excellent NDC National Evaluation report on the issue of gentrification in NDC areas. The number of social housing blocks ensure that this is balanced by an ongoing need for subsidised housing in the area. The focus of NDC programmes on the traditional neighbourhood renewal themes has both underlined the importance on housing, education and employment, but in other ways missed just how important those three markets are for an area, and how little the neighbourhood scale can do about them.

Pitfalls of the IMD

So, as EC1 has shown, but also as the work we do for other London boroughs on their local economic assessments continue to show us, IMD is useful, but you’ve got to dig into it to understand the types and drivers of deprivation in an area. EC1 has changed significantly over the last ten years, but a move up the IMD ranking does not mean that child poverty has gone away.

These statistics also continue to focus on the problems of an area. And whilst it’s important to understand them, they tell no story about the improvements to the social and physical infrastructure of an area which has seen investment in community centres, new charities founded and residents becoming more involved in the decision making and governance of their local area.

At a time of fewer public sector resources, the question then remains - how can the excesses of the housing, education and employment markets in an area with high land values, be mitigated for the people who do not succeed in those markets?

2011-02-08T10:50:00.001Z

How many neighbourhoods? How many plans? I'm one of the anoraks who've plowed through the CLG impact assessments of the Localism Bill and there are some eye-watering statistics on neighbourhood plans!

By Michael Toyer, Principal Consultant, Renaisi

To the civil servants' credit they've quite clearly admitted that figures are estimates based on little or no evidence (yes, it's true). Anyway, here's a flavour:

- The number of neighbourhoods in England is approximately 7,618. (based on the number of wards)

- 380 neighbourhood plans will be created each year following the bill’s delivery. (based on 5% of neighbourhoods producing a plan each year)

- 1,910 neighbourhood plans in place in the five years after implementation of the Localism Bill (erm, remember the predictions about LDF Core Strategies)

- the cost of producing a plan will in 75% of cases range between £17,000 and £63,000

I won't go on but there's a lot more about planning applications, reductions in planning appeals, etc etc

I wonder why the civil servants bothered with quite so much detail though when this is such an unknown, by their own admission.

At my workplace, Renaisi, we’ve been trying to assess how many, or the kind of, neighbourhoods that would be interested/willing/able to produce these plans. I'm not sure I can build a business model around what CLG have kindly made available, perhaps some of you are!

My thoughts so far is that there are many variables but the key one is that it's all about development potential in the area (the community may be for or against it), especially if the costs of producing these plans is likely to be partly covered by developers as suggested in the impact assessment.

Anyone any thoughts on this? I think it will be interesting to see the different perspectives from residents, planners and developers. So, shout out!

Is this the future of regeneration?

2011-02-03T17:16:00.010Z

By Kirby Swales, Renaisi Director and Chief Executive of EC1 New Deal for Communities

The Government has produced a statement called ‘Regeneration to enable growth: what the government is doing in support of community-led regeneration'. Despite its cautious welcome by the new BURA, I predict most experienced practitioners will be fairly sceptical or even outright critical. For example, one has said:

“All in all, it’s neither a guide to regeneration nor a strategy for the future. Without analysis, without methodology, without goals and without evaluation, it’s not so much a vision as an abdication of responsibility"

The use of ‘growth’ and ‘community-led’ in the title perfectly captures the tension that runs throughout the paper. The mention of Decent Homes, High Speed Rail 2 and Olympic Park projects further illustrate this, as you could not think of projects that are less linked to community-regeneration than these. This is not to say that large-scale infrastructure is not important but what is missing is strategies to link disadvantaged local people and areas to this growth.

To be fair, the one area which does look promising is to ensure local people benefit more from housing and office development in their areas. However, there are worries as indicated by the RTPI that this won’t work in practice.

Clearly, it doesn’t offer much hope for those areas who won’t receive development and I would expect more spatial stratification to occur as a result.

The key theme of the paper is the devolution of responsibility to local councils (and communities!) but what is to ensure that councils will look after the most disadvantaged areas, particularly as they tend to have a weak voice. There is nothing here to support dedicated local authority officers in ensuring all areas get a fair deal regardless of the political make-up of the Council. Furthermore, there is none of the sophistication of the previous national framework which attempted to establish what problems should be tackled at different spatial scales. I have suggested the ‘bones’ of a framework for neighbourhood-level action in an earlier blog.

Finally, unless Councils are confident and forward-looking, there are also practical delivery issues. The arms-length regeneration bodies (UDCs, NDCs, SRBs etc) set up under previous frameworks has the ability to be focused, dynamic and partnership-orientated…words that don’t always spring to mind with Local Authorities.

The overall political strategy is a clever one though. If local communities and local authorities work well together to deliver change that will be held up as a vindication of the policy. If they don't, there will be plenty of examples that Ministers can use to undermine their complaints, and they can explain it away as the vagaries of local democratic legitimacy or poor council performance.

Towards a new performance framework for neighbourhood policy

2011-02-03T17:05:00.005Z

How does government best ensure that delivery agencies achieve their objectives in neighbourhood renewal? one way is to improve the conceptual understanding of the problem and likely impact of various responses (what some call a 'theory of change' approach). The other main way is to provide a set of formal targets. My view is that Government and others have put targets before improved conceptual understanding but, to make matters worse, the target and performance management framework has also been wrong.The story goes something like this. The Index of Multiple Deprivation came out and measures deprivation along a number of classic lines – health, education, crime etc. This is based on what can be measured at the national level but quickly becomes the organising framework for the Policy Action Teams and the Neighbourhood Renewal Strategy. The targets were based on whole population measures for the relevant spatial scales (e.g. local authority educational attainment results, unemployment counts for neighbourhoods). This was done for understandable reasons, for the strategy was supposed to be ambitious and create transformational change of whole cities, districts, towns and neighbourhoods.

Significant money is found and distributed to local partnerships on the basis of ‘improving’ these measures. Lo and behold, partnerships fund activity that seemingly will tackle the problems in that theme – more police to tackle crime, more advisers to tackle worklessness, more smoking cessation workers to tackle poor health and so on.

However, neighbourhoods don’t work like that so the funding has not realised the promises made. Lack of progress is seen as a failure of the activity or the partnership, or vice versa.

I don’t think anybody can pretend to know all the complex dynamics that affect peoples’ lives but we do know they are fundamentally driven by housing, labour and education markets with cultural and community capital also playing a key role – if anything changes in mainstream services may be one of the less strong influencing factors.

In my view, one fundamental challenge to the NSNR was that the measures attached to it were not sensitive enough to the impact of the actions it funded or influenced. This piece attempts to offer a more practical view in terms of how to structure and measure activity at the neighbourhood level in the future, learning from my experience of the NDC programme.

High levels of worklessness and poor health are structural problems that cannot be solved at the neighbourhood level alone – the targets and performance framework should be more focused on the added value that the neighbourhood approach can provide.

Although we haven’t discovered a magic bullet for transforming deprived areas, I think there is enough experience to create a more useful framework for guiding work on the ground, and measuring its impact:

· A spatial vision for physical development that makes the most of local assets and delivers real benefits for local people. Measures could focus on the quality of land use, urban design and public realm, and the distribution of land ownership.

· A focus on improving access for all services, making sure they are responsive and taken up by those that need them most. Measures could focus on quality of access arrangements, levels of take-up amongst disadvantaged groups and follow-through.

· A focus on building local community infrastructure and capacity of individuals to participate and drive change that is locally distinctive. Measures could focus levels of social capital and health of the local voluntary sector.

· High quality community facilities, located in the right place and shared between different services and community groups for maximum use. Measures could focus on the quality of local provision and levels of usage.

· Neighbourhood alliances to provide the momentum for change, join up services and sectors, broker local issues and to ensure the neighbourhood is well connected to important local authority and other strategies. Measures on extent of partnership working, business involvement and strength of governance links to higher levels.

This could provides the ‘bones’ of a new framework that makes sense to practitioners and gives local areas the best chance of success, in the sense of activities and benefits that can only be delivered and realised at the very local level. Appropriate measures could then start to tell us which neighbourhoods were making most of resources to create positive change, perhaps despite countervailing structural forces. Only when we have better theoretical and practical evidence about the impact of interventions in the neighbourhood, can we make a stronger case for a specific ‘neighbourhood policy’.

By Kirby Swales, Renaisi Director and Chief Executive of EC1 New Deal for Communities

Blame It On The Boogieman

2011-02-02T19:06:00.000Z

On Friday I met with staff from Chicago’s Near West Side (NWS) Community Development Corporation, a grassroots organisation with over 20 years experience of community organising - galvanising residents to lead and facilitate projects that have included the development of affordable housing, neighbourhood planning and tackling issues such as youth unemployment, community cohesion and low mortality rates within their community.

After meeting with academics, LISC and officials at City Hall I was looking forward to finally meeting some of the grassroots organisations being heralded as a model we should aspire too back home. I was particularly keen to hear their thoughts on our Governments plans to grow the Big Society; devolving powers to the community level and establishing a ‘neighbourhood army’ of 5000 Community Organisers to be schooled in the methods of the famous community activist, Chicagoan and self professed radical Saul Alinsky.

After explaining the UK’s plans outlined above and described in some greater detail here, the team, and in particular Earnest Gates, Director and founding member of NSW were dubious about a government led scheme to encourage community organising, describing it as an “oxymoron”. Quite simply, they thought that whilst any move towards giving communities a greater say should be encouraged, the involvement of government in the selection, training and deployment of organisers would only result in suspicion amongst residents and the continuation of government ideas being forced upon communities. Ultimately resulting in a lack of take up by residents. Particularly if the community leaders come in from outside of the community; ‘they don’t stand a chance, you can’t just waltz into a community and expect people to follow you, instantly people with suspect you’. Instead Earnest believes that groups need to grow and emerge from within the community as do community organisers.

Asked where then are community organisers going to emerge from, Earnest believes that they are already there. ‘Your community organisers are already there, they are the folks with a track record of doing small things for neighbours, attending meetings, maybe organising one or two others, and they might not get much recognition but trust me they are there. They are the people with a stake in the community and can galvanise folks’. In Earnest’s experience this has included sports coaches, local business owners, church council members and those that attend community meetings amongst many others. ‘These people have the raw materials to be leaders, they were born with it, it’s just what they do, these are the folks that you should be training up, that have the will to learn and the right guidance they can develop the skills to make a difference’. The leader of the free world is testament to this, quite casually Earnest recalled a story of a young man called Barack who would attend meetings of one of the earliest groups Earnest was involved in, ‘young Barack weren’t that good an organiser, but he was keen to learn, see what was going on and try things, he ain’t doing so bad now!’ The message here is that the governments plans to train community organisers should be welcomed, where they should be focusing their recruitment is from within communities and developing this raw talent, whether that message has got through to Government only time will tell.

Our discussions moved beyond the emergence of leaders on to how community members can be recruited and motivated to become more involved, for Earnest the most fruitful way is to appeal to individuals self interest. Communities are most likely to organise when they can be rallied against a common enemy or threat. As Earnest put’s it, ‘You need to find a Boogieman, something or someone that threatens the community, their way of life’. When the Boogieman’s in town communities will rally together to try and chase them away. And how do you alert neighbours to the fact there’s a Boogieman in their midst, ‘you’ve got to talk to people, in Chicago you’ll be lucky if 5% of people reply to a flier, you need to go out there and talk to people, tell them how it is, make them see that something needs to be done and they can be the ones to do it’.

In the case of Earnest and his fellow NWS founders their Boogieman came in the form of the local American Football team the Chicago Bears who planned to develop a new stadium in the area that would have displaced 1,500 homes and changed the make up of the community considerably. In response to this “attempted land grab” the community rallied together, through word of mouth they set up meetings and committees and begun a campaign against the proposals. This protest culminated in 100’s of residents and a TV crew being bussed to the then owner of ‘The Bears” home where they promptly played out a game of Football on his front lawn and handed out fake fliers advising his neighbours their houses were soon to be knocked down to build NWS’s new stadium. A week later it was announced that the Bears would be seeking an alternative site. The community had won - the Boogieman had gone. ‘The community felt good but the challenge ever since has been to build on this and keep people working for the community’ LaShunda Gonzalez, Program Director says NWS do this by giving the residents information, keeping them informed of issues that effect them and by organising regular meetings and events that bring everyone together.

Before finishing the interview I asked Earnest what he felt was the role of a community organiser or a CDC like NWS, he referred to the old saying ‘you can lead a horse to water but you cant make them drink’. Their job as Earnest saw it ‘is to find the river, get it flowing, then get folks to that river to drink.’ Earnest goes on to refer to his love of animal documentaries and likens the struggle towards community organisation as to that of a herd of migrating antelope stalling at the bank of a river, ‘…instinctively they know they need to get across the water, but there’s always those scenes when they stop and hesitate because of all the things in the water, even though they know getting across means they will survive for generations to come. That’s where I see people, we can do the groundwork, can lead them to a river but the challenge is getting them to cross. We try to get their toes in and test the water so they can see it might be safe to cross”. I remarked that this sounds remarkably like the challenge back home, made all the more frightening for communities by the lack of financial support and the distain felt for government following the cuts. LaSunda was quick to correct me, ‘you don’t need lots of money, now’s the time communities can come together and be innovative because they don’t have money, their anger at government for taking it away can drive them’. ‘Sounds to me like you’ve found your Boogieman” says Earnest… Mr Cameron beware!

One Good Deed Deserves a Mother

2011-01-28T19:39:00.000Z

This week I met with Jenné Myers, Chicago’s first Chief Service Officer and the person responsible for One Good Deed Chicago - a campaign to promote increased volunteerism across the City of Chicago. Launched in September last year the program aims to build on the cities long history of civic engagement by “match making” non profit organisations and willing volunteers and provide capacity building training and tools to ensure that both parties get the most out of the volunteering experience.

Back in October last year David Cameron issued a call to arms inviting the public to join the ‘Big Society’ and “blast through…the old system of selfish individualism” and in it’s place “create a citizenship that is not simply a transaction in which you put your taxes in and get your services out”. A view shared by Chicago’s Mayor Richard Daley and a number of other Mayors across the US who have banded together to form The ‘Cities Of Service’ coalition, an initiative that aims to develop innovative methods to encourage greater civic action across major US. By meeting with Jenné I hoped to find out more about Chicago’s approach to promoting civic engagement and take home some lessons we might want to consider back in dear old Blighty; of which I can tell you, there were many.

The biggest of which is that any ‘call to arms’ like this needs to be properly managed and communicate clear sense of purpose for everyone involved. Which is why I was very interested to read Social Enterprises piece yesterday on the confusion being caused around the lack of clarity surrounding the localism agenda. The article states that 80% of councils do not have a specific strategy in place to address localism and that community engagement ranks as the primary challenge of those local authorities taking part in the study.

Worrying statistics and the sentiments of which were echoed by my conversation with Jenné. After explaining the goals of The Big Society she was quick to point out that “something like that is not just going to happen organically, it has be properly thought through and approached strategically, it’s also going to need management and resources if they are really going to make it happen”. Jenné believes that a lot more people would be willing to volunteer and take part in their community if they felt the work they were doing was “meaningful and was a good use of their skills and time”, finding those kind of opportunities in Chicago had been a lot more difficult than it should be she tells me and likewise non-profits in the City are often complaining to her that they don’t know where to find volunteers with the skills they need. One Good Deed is trying to address this by providing a “one stop shop” where non-profit organizations can list their vacancies/needs and potential volunteers can search for those that match their skill set. Despite only going live this month the site is already proving to be a success with a number of “matches” being made and non-profits remarking on how useful it is to reach out to a larger audience, something they wouldn’t have been able to achieve themselves on their limited resources. One Good Deed are also taking steps to engage with Universities and big businesses asking them to do more as part of “active learning in the community”, or in the latter’s case “Corporate Social Responsibility’ initiatives and pro-bono work, as Jenné says they are the ones with “so many of the skills that non-profits desperately need” as well as the small factor for a City $700m in dept “they’re also the ones with the money!”

But connecting volunteers and non-profits is only “a very small piece of the puzzle, the biggest challenge is utilising volunteers properly and keeping them engaged so they keep coming back”, this is was Jenné sees as the most important part of her role. Having “lost count of the amount of people who’ve talked to (her) about bad volunteering experiences as their reason for no longer getting involved” One Good have set about carrying out the “dig deep work in non profits to make sure they know how to use volunteers in the right way”, helping them establish their skills gaps they have, training them on how to work better with volunteers, support and develop them and ultimately how to manage the whole process of working with volunteers. Jenné hopes that through this training non profits will realise that the relationship with volunteers “needs to be nurtured”, likening the role to a parent child relationship “volunteers need to feel appreciated and cared for… and when they are they really thrive and that’s when the innovative stuff starts to happen”.

I asked Jenné what advise she has for UK practitioners as we begin to build up our own civic society; according to her we’re going to need 3 things;

- Political support; the walls of Jenné office are adorned with pictures of her with past and present presidents, all of which have told her how important they personally rate community service and that when one President hands over to their successor it’s one of the few agenda’s they ask them to promise to protect and continue to grow. Mayor Daley, huge advocate of civic engagement himself has helped to spread the message about One Good Deed and the Cities of Service. “Leaders need to push the agenda, get it in the public conciseness, and utilise contacts to make it happen” said Jenné. I think it’s fair to say we at least have the political will back home, especially at a national level where the Localism agenda continues to be championed, at Jenné tells me that someone from the Mayor of London’s office had paid her a visit not too long looking at how London could adopt such an initiative, are we soon to see a One Good Deed London?

- Financial Support – Whilst the political will may be there, unfortunately the money is not so readily available. But if we are serious about building the civic society investments will be needed to provide the training and advocacy services that are beginning to show signs of success over here and in letting non-profits and social enterprises know they exist. Although it doesn’t have to be ridiculous sums of money, Jenné is testament to that; the whole project is funded by a $200k grant from the McArthur foundation. An enthusiasm for the cause, getting big businesses on board and utilising the contacts of Mayor and his cohorts have all been just as integral factors in establishing One Good Deed as money.

- A Clear Message – “People need to understand what’s in it for them” Jenné says, “if you’re trying to mobalise them they need to know what for… they need to know that their time and contributions will make a difference and that there is benefits for them as well, that’s the message we are trying to spread through One Good Deed”. As the Social Enterprise news story pointed out there’s still some way to go before this is to be achieved back home but the Government could do a lot worse than look towards organisations like One Good Deed Chicago for some inspiration about getting that message across and how with the right support and guidance the coalition's brain child the Big Society might begin to grow and flourish after all.

Keeping Communities in The Loop

2011-01-25T17:20:00.000Z

Day one of my US research trip and I’ve arrived Chicago. Considered the birthplace of the community organising movement and the starting point of the modern labour movement Chicago seems like the perfect starting place to understand more about organising and empowering communities in the USA.

Yesterday I met with Yittayih Zelalem co-director of the The Nathalie P. Voorhees Center for Neighborhood and Community Improvement (NVC) to discuss their work supporting Housing Associations and Community Development Corporations (CDC’s) in some of Chicago’s most deprived neighbourhoods. The Centre specialises in Community Development with a focus on services around affordable housing. Yittayih describes the centre as a bridge between the University and the Community with students and staff providing communities and local government with research assistance, information, gap analysis and technical assistance to help them achieve their goals.

I wanted to know more about how the Center works with communities, the methods they use to engage with them and how they build the capacity of these neighbourhoods. The engagement part Yittayih tells me is very easy, as NVC has built up a reputation of successfully helping communities towards their goals, these days communities come to them for help. Keeping them engaged and building the confidence that they can actually elicit change is much harder and not something outside organisations can easily foster. We talked about the notion of the ‘Big Society’ and Yittayih was in favour of the idea “The start of community organising cannot be top down, the moral authority, the moral strength for communities comes from trying to do things for themselves, only then will they work for it”. Although he was slightly cynical about the motives of such an initiative in a time of Government austerity, it will only work he says if “…communities are given the resources and knowledge to facilitate any change …and truly believe that what they are working for is to their own benefit”.

What NVC tries to do is get a clear understanding of what the community groups want to achieve and then sets about giving the information and encouragement that they can make a difference. He used community planning as an example, despite all of the good news stories emitting from local government and big business that communities are better engaged in the planning process Yittayih doesn’t see it this way, the poorest communities are still at the mercy of public agencies and bureaucracies when it comes to planning. In the most part their concerns are not taking on board and in many cases not even heard, the process he says is “symbolic, communities are not meaningfully involved”, they are kept out of the loop. NVC are attempting to readdress this balance by empowering community organisations to have a greater say in property development in their neighbourhoods. By giving communities information on their rights, the potential impacts of planned developments and data relating to the housing make up of their community in a format they can easily understand communities have the confidence to speak up about their concerns and become a lot harder to ignore by local government and big business. Unfortunately, such practices Yittayih tells me are far from the norm in the US and it may be some time before there is a sea change towards meaningful community engagement in the planning process.

Whilst I’d hoped to hear a more optimistic message about the potential of community led planning, NVC’s work does show there is the potential for greater community involvement given the right conditions, and if the UK Government is serious about given communities a greater say in the process Yittayih says such a move should be encouraged. He was far less complimentary regarding another planned Government initiative; Tax Increment Financing (TIF).

For the past couple of years TIF has been heralded as a model the UK should look to adopt to speed up economic recovery. No City has taken to them more than Chicago, with some 30% of the City’s land area designated as TIF districts and whilst they have been heralded as fuelling growth, particularly in Downtown Chicago and The Loop the cities main business and tourist centres, Yittayih warns that they can come with some huge costs. Public services in Chicago, such as schools, emergency services and public parks are largely funded by revenues from property tax, when a TIF district is approved property taxes in that area are frozen for the duration of the TIF (this can be for as long as 24 years), the implications being that as the area develops and businesses and property developers reap the benefits, increased pressures are put on the public services by greater activity in the area. Yet they receive none of the additional revenues generated. Instead the burden is passed on to properties just outside of the TIF zones, meaning property taxes in the surrounding areas, usually home to some of the cities most disadvantaged communities rise, whilst their employers in the TIF zones are increasingly recruiting staff who commute from the more affluent areas of the city at the expense of those living in surrounding areas, a common problem in The Loop. Yittayih’s describes the system as “inhumane”, and that by designating so many TIF zones local government is “condemning surrounding areas to no longer be able to live there, they argue everyone benefits as their property values rise but try telling that to all low income families in the rental market”. Some food for thought for policy maker’s back home maybe?

But all is not lost, a number of disaffected community groups have come together to form New Chicago 2011 a new community organising campaign that’s calling on Chicago Mayoral candidates to spread the economic development money around to neighbourhoods desperate for living wage jobs and more investment in their communities. Hopefully given the right information, support and encouragement from organisations like NVC communities represented by the alliance will be too difficult to ignore.

Big Society in the Big Apple (...and Chicago, ...and Washington)

2011-01-21T14:51:00.000Z

From Monday I'll be taking over the Renaisi Blog for a couple of weeks as I embark on research trip to the USA to learn more about how regeneration is approached across the Atlantic.

I'm involved in a Knowledge Transfer Partnership between Renaisi and Kingston University, the purpose of which is to research and develop new services. As social enterprises like Renaisi adapt to the fall out of the recession and begin to define a role for itself in David Cameron’s Big Society it is important to look abroad for lessons and inspiration. A good starting point has been the USA who have a long history of community organising, empowering residents and creating and utilising innovative funding models.

With this in mind I'm heading off to visit a wealth of organisations in Chicago, Washington and New York that include Community and Economic Development Corporations, Skills and Training Providers, Government Bodies, Academic Institutions, Housing Associations and of course Grassroots organisations to better understand how the Big Society might look in practice and the roles communities and organisations like Renaisi and Kingston University could play within it. I've put together a list of the people and organisations I'll be visiting in this nifty little map.

Throughout the trip I'll be posting daily updates on this very blog and will be sending regular tweets throughout the day on the Renaisi twitter account http://twitter.com/Renaisi. Hopefully I'll have lots of interesting insights to regale you with and some useful lessons to report home. My hope is to create some debate and interactivity throughout the trip so any comments, contributions, questions or suggestions from yourselves would be most welcome. I'd also welcome any further recommendations of people/organisations to visit whilst I'm in the State's should you have them. Feel free to contact me through the channels above or at r.sugden@renaisi.com

That's all for now, the next time you hear from me I should be in Chicago, birthplace of community organising, to tell you about my visit to the Nathalie P. Voorhees Center for Neighbourhood and Community Improvement, a research center that not only rolls off the tounge but also focuses on working to improve the conditions and lives of people in the Chicago metropolitan area.

Institutional memory

2010-09-29T14:19:00.001+01:00

Things have a habit of ending. Governments, funding streams, and initiatives all come and go. And as a result, people come and go too.

It can often be seemingly obvious when they end too. A local or national government gets elected out of office; a programme comes to an end; a job is left. Dig a little deeper though, and it’s never really that clear.

Renaisi has been delivering the EC1 New Deal for Communities (NDC) programme in Islington for the last 9 and a half years. There are six months to go until the end date of 31 March 2011. In that time a great deal has been achieved (and we’re just about to publish our evaluation work which attempts to unpick the real success of the programme): a large number of talented staff have worked on the programme, a much larger number of residents and local community groups have worked with the programme and helped drive the change in the area, and hundreds of projects and ideas have been commissioned, piloted and delivered.

As with every other NDC, EC1 had to develop a succession strategy in the years before the formal end date. This involved developing the evidence, rationale and approach for how to best maintain the work of the programme that the community wanted to see continue. In EC1 a big priority was, for example, the maintenance of our innovative and award winning Connect project, and this was achieved through the establishment of a new charity (http://www.helponyourdoorstep.com/). So did the programme start to end when we started to think about the end? Or does it not really end, because things that we started during the life of the programme will continue?

One way to answer this is to not think about the programme, but to think about the place. The neighbourhood that the programme is delivered in has people and organisations in it that were there long before the programme started and will continue to work for the area well after it has gone. It is an exciting part of London with a unique history and a promising future. Governments and funding streams can at times seem ephemeral to the real workings of a neighbourhood – the people who live and work there will continue to shape the place.

But that sort of response begs the question, what was the point of the programme in the first place? If nothing is lost when it goes, the area would have gained no benefit from it being there at all. Whilst this position is taken by some about certain funding streams, my experience of EC1 NDC is not that. And so as we continue the process of winding the work of the delivery team down, and handing over more and more of our responsibilities to other local institutions, it becomes clearer what which will be lost: the knowledge, contacts and connections of the people who either work on the core team, or who are funded through the NDC grant to deliver services for the area. Collectively, this is the institutional memory of the NDC programme.

This programme is in the fortunate position of being able to build up to its end date – we always knew it was coming. But as we do this I am more and more struck by how hard this is going to be for public sector staff who are working in communities, but who are going to be made redundant in the coming months (and years). How are they all going to have the opportunity to pass over their informal knowledge of places, and where will this institutional memory sit? Places will take the double hit of losing both the role, and the person who came with it.

Bothered about BURA?

2010-08-27T11:56:00.001+01:00

So the British Urban Regeneration Association (BURA) is to go into voluntary liquidation and is expected to reborn in a new guise.

This is a chance to reshape it into something that reflects the new regeneration landscape, but to do so it will have to address some key issues.

Firstly, it will have to develop a clear idea of what regeneration is all about in the absence of any lead from a coalition government made up of two parties that didn’t mention the term at all during their election campaigns (and have barely mentioned it since).

Secondly, it will have to figure out how to represent a sector based around a broad range of professions and disciplines, and it will need to engage with the myriad social enterprises, charities, and voluntary organisations that are expected to help deliver much of the work under the current regime.

Thirdly, it needs to recognise that regeneration isn’t just about large-scale property-led physical redevelopment, but also about social and economic aspects that are often done on a smaller scale and at a more local level. These things may not grab the headline, but it is where the majority of regeneration-related activity takes place.

Fourthly, it will need to thoroughly update its image and the way it works. This is something they recognise, with current Chair Jackie Sadek remarking that the “expansion of regeneration media, events and networking channels has created ever greater competition and has challenged BURA’s model”.

Finally, it will need to ensure it effectively showcases the achievements and benefits of regeneration in the face of shrinking capital budgets and government’s apparent indifference to the sector and those who work in it.

If BURA’s replacement can address these things, then the regeneration sector should welcome it with open arms. If not, one would have to question its value in the current conditions.

Regeneration's Lack of Radicalism

2010-08-13T15:49:00.002+01:00

There was an interesting article on the Planning Blog website the other day about the TCPA’s celebration of the radical routes of the town planning movement.

This got me thinking – when was the last time there was a truly radical town planning/urban regeneration idea? All of the strands of policy currently coming to the boil, including greater localism, more community involvement, the need for sustainable development and so forth, are least 40 years old, having emerged in the late 60s as a response to the failures and excesses of the comprehensive state planning system.

The huge raft of policy papers and manifestos released in the run-up to the General Election calling for greater devolution of power, community empowerment etc were striking only in their crushing lack of originality and homogeneity.

In fact possibly the only radical regeneration/planning related idea presented in the last year was the Policy Exchange’s paper calling for millions of new homes to be built in London and the south east, and for people in the north to move south to find prosperity. It may be a no-go politically, but as an idea at least it was interesting (and radical).

Maybe I’m wrong, but I’d be interested to hear of any other examples of radical regeneration/planning ideas you’ve seen. Post your comments below.

A Great LEP Forward?

2010-07-30T14:14:00.004+01:00

In some form or other the idea and role of regions has been discussed a great deal over the past six months. The Conservative Party expressed a clear intention to abolish the regional tier of decision-making and to devolve power to a more local level, a fact reflected in the coalition’s programme for government.

There are plans to replace Regional Development Agencies (RDAs) with new Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs), comprising of representatives from the local authority and the private sector and focussing much more on economic development and job creation, have proceeded much more carefully.

The government says these should ‘reflect the natural economic geography of the areas they serve’, and in many areas of England this effectively means the city-regional level.

In London the situation is more complex, since it has too many local linkages to be treated solely on a city-region basis, and at the same time has national and international linkages that a focus on the sub-regional level would miss.

So what is the best way to manage London’s economy through LEPs?

Discussions are currently underway with Mayor Boris Johnson to further decentralise powers in light of the abolition of GOL. A joint letter from the Mayor, the London Assembly and London Councils to Secretary of State Eric Pickles outlines a number of areas of agreement between the three agencies about what powers should be devolved and to whom. Issues around who gets funding and responsibility for certain policy areas are likely to dominate developments, as boroughs and the GLA jockey for position, as our questions about the democratic accountability of LEP bodies. Existing agencies delivering the priorities of LEPs will no doubt also want a role.

The mayor’s planning adviser Simon Milton has also met with the Thames Gateway London Partnership to discuss the possibility of east London boroughs joining a LEP also comprising Kent and Essex councils in the Thames Gateway region. There is also the possibility that the five Olympic host boroughs, already operating under a Multi-Area Agreement, could become an LEP. But there is still much to be decided.

The National Audit Office has reported that most of England's regional development agencies are performing to a 'strong' or 'good' standard; it is important to move quickly to ensure that the most effective aspects of the RDAs’ work can continue under the LEP model and that they can support local economies to create the jobs that local people desperately need.

Knocking the Big Society into Shape

2010-07-23T13:11:00.000+01:00

At the moment the ‘big society’ resembles an architect’s conceptual drawing – what we’ve heard so far gives us a vague idea of what it looks like but we are a long way from actually building it. Now begins a process of taking those conceptual drawings and coming up with a technical diagram for making it happen.

This week saw David Cameron attempt to start the process. Speaking in Liverpool, the Prime Minister said the Big Society is about ensuring that ‘people feel both free and powerful enough to help themselves and their own communities.’ He outlined three strands of the agenda:

1. Social action;

2. Public service reform; and

3. Community empowerment.

These are three things Renaisi has been closely involved in doing for the past 10 years. To us the Big Society is a logical extension to what we have advocated since we started: that effective regeneration is best delivered at the neighbourhood level by local people themselves.

So how do we seize the opportunity that the government is presenting? First, there needs to be a recognition from the government of the good work already undertaken by the voluntary and community sector, which has been helping to deliver the aims of the big society for many years, often in the face of what the government in Downing Street were doing.

Secondly, more needs to be done to overcome the sector’s natural suspicion about the government’s motivation for advocating the big socity agenda. Rightly or wrongly, many people see it simply as a front to hide inevitable public sector cuts or to privatise services by the back door.

Thirdly, funding needs to be in place. The big society cannot be about the government telling people to fend for themselves while they cut back on public services and government funding. If the project is to be successful, the government needs to ensure it is properly funded from the outset. Plans to set up a Big Society Bank using money claimed from dormant bank accounts are positive, but we need to see how much money will be available to get projects off the ground before they become self-sustaining.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, there are real concerns about the capacity of local communities to grasp the chance on offer to them. Critics have rightly pointed out that those areas most in need of regenerating often lack the human and social capital necessary to make it happen, and express concern that already well-off areas whose residents are skilled and able to organise will benefit more from the big society, further increasing the gap between rich and poor that exists in many parts of the country.

If these issues can be addressed, there is no reason why the big society can’t be successful at regenerating our towns and cities and improving the quality of life of the people who live in them.

Is there a future for Prevent?

2010-04-19T11:55:00.000+01:00

A few weeks back, the Communities and Local Government Select Committee released their report on ‘Preventing Violent Extremism’. The report is based on extensive oral and written statements from a range of key opinion-formers from across the public and third sector engaged in counter-terrorism, preventing violent extremism and community cohesion. We will have to wait for the results of the CLG-commissioned Prevent Evaluation later on in the year for a more robust scientific, and perhaps less engaging, treatment of this issue. Despite its potential gaps, the report makes interesting reading.

I was keen to see what the committee was recommending for the future shape of Prevent. The timing is particularly relevant after all – as the next Government will want to set out how it intends to take forward the Prevent agenda. So a Cross-Party Committee is ideally placed to influence policy whatever complexion the next Government is.

There is much to commend in the report. It picks up on a number of important ways to improve the effectiveness of the programme. For instance, the need to put in place a more sensitive understanding of the risk of violent extremism that looks not just at the ‘Muslim community’, but at the whole area. Another important recommendation is the development of a more sensitive funding formula that is based around a wider set of qualitative considerations, rather than just the number of different communities within a local area, for example. A key selection of the report’srecommendations is set out below.

Risk: risk-based approach to tackling all kinds of extremism in a local area
Evidence: update the CONTEST strategy (and guidance) to reflect recent research and intelligence on the factors associated with the pathways to radicalisation and extremist violence.
Myth busting unit: revisit a recommendation made by the Commission on Integration and Cohesion for a central 'Rebuttal Unit' to help local authorities tackle all extremist myths with accurate facts.
Information sharing: strengthen information sharing between local partners to ensure local authorities haveinformation required to decide which organisations should be funded under Prevent.
Training and development: provide much more training and support to front line workers such as council staff, police, teachers and youth workers.
Direct democracy: make available a proportion of funding currently provided through Prevent specifically to projects aimed at encouraging direct participation in democratic means of debate.
Cohesion: recognise explicitly the long-term value to the UK Counter-Terrorism strategy of projects designed to improve understanding between people of different cultures and religious groupings.

However, I was struck by the sense that the Committee was not seeking simply to make recommendations, but to deliver the final nail in the coffin of the current approach of Prevent. The Committee boldly states that, ”Our inquiry has shown that the current overall approach to Prevent is contentious and unlikely ever to be fully accepted in its existing form by those it is most important to engage.”

The report states that Prevent has alienated and stigmatized the very people who would have been most important to engage. They maintain that counter-terrorism work should be done by counter-terrorism agencies and community cohesion work by local authorities and community cohesion agencies. There needs to be a clear dividing line between cohesion and PVE agendas. In short, they recommend an overarching cohesion approach and a more targeted and narrowly focused PVE approach.

It’s not clear from the report whether or not they’ve arrived at this central finding through speaking to beneficiaries on the ground - it seems to be only opinion formers working in Think Tanks, senior officers in Local Authorities and community leaders.

My experience of evaluating a Prevent project and speaking to beneficiaries leads me to some different conclusions. The report does not pick up on the unique and complex nature of the Prevent agenda or acknowledge that the current approach is hampered by the failures of the system - in particular a culture of silo working in local government that hasn’t helped to develop the resilience of communities or tackle the underlying causes of violent extremism including inequality and alienation.

The central question remains for me. Should there be a clear dividing line between Counter Terrorism and Cohesion; or should Prevent remain a messy middle ground where the two agendas uncomfortably converge?

We will have to await the final answer to this question in the Evaluation of Prevent later this year or even in 2011, but, in the meantime, I offer my own take on this question.

We need to recognise that violent extremism is an intractable problem; it requires intelligent and sensitive handling and should not be divorced from the wider cohesion and counter terrorism agendas. It requires the skills and expertise of a plurality of agencies being brought together at a local level – not being torn apart by dividing lines, as the report appears to be recommending . The current approach may indeed be messy and controversial, but at least it recognises the reality that for Prevent to work it needs different people and different agencies working together at a local level.

Another point to consider is whether the overall approach of Prevent is responsible for alienating and stigmatizing people, or is it simply the poor delivery of the programme by some local authorities who did not have the capacity, sensitivity or willingness to undertake such a programme? My experience of evaluating the intervention in question suggested that if delivered sensitively an intervention can actually achieve the opposite: build trust between local people and local service providers and strengthen local networks of community organisations and public sector bodies.

It is deeply challenging and there is no quick fix. Things can easily go wrong. But that doesn’t mean that it should be jettisoned. Whoever the incoming government is they will need to engage honestly with the debate and learn the lessons about what has worked well with some of the prevent initiatives that have been delivered locally..

So does this mean that the next Government should dismantle the architecture of Prevent? I think not.

By Adam Barnett, Senior Consultant, Renaisi

2010-04-01T09:49:00.000+01:00

Conservative civil society plans are working at the _____ level.*

There are no prizes for guessing that it is not the regional level. So, ‘Broken Britain’ will be, under a potential Conservative government, repaired by a ‘Big Society’.

If you look under the capitalised headlines and try to unpick what that means, there are some interesting ideas around the role of linking civil society to neighbourhood renewal. I would like to see more on what plans there are for taking neighbourhood renewal forward, but that if for another day.

What is very clear, however, is the spatial level that the Conservatives see this working at...

By John Hitchin, Renaisi Senior Consultant

In the land of open source planning, the facilitator is king…

2010-03-11T13:02:00.000Z

By Russell Spencer, Consultant, Renaisi

The history of planning theory is something most people are not interested in. Yet the theory of planning, what could be called the philosophy of planning, has a fundamental impact on the shape of regeneration and the way it is achieved. Indeed, the idea that planning should seek to regenerate areas at all is simply one, albeit relatively uncontested, view of what planning should seek to achieve.

The philosophy of planning has undergone a series of changes since the system was introduced at the beginning of the 20th Century. Improving local areas was there at the start, and has remained a firmly embedded principle ever since. In the past the guiding philosophy of planning was that planners should take an active role in changing areas, with little public involvement in what they were doing.

By the 1960s this model was being increasingly challenged by politically-active community groups and vocal local residents. As such the public were given a greater voice in how planning was carried out. The philosophy of planning was therefore to work with the public to shape local areas, albeit with planning officers still firmly in control.

This idea has remained relatively unchanged over the past 30 years. There have been slight changes and new fads, e.g. that planning should achieve economic growth and development; planning should revitalise city centres; planning should improve health and wellbeing etc, but although we have been on a trajectory towards greater citizen involvement in shaping local areas, it is still planning officers who have the power to take the decisions.

Now, with the launch of the Tory’s planning green paper and their promise to introduce ‘open-source planning’ led by the local community, the philosophy of planning is being changed once more. Instead of planning officers taking decisions, albeit in consultation with the public, it seems that their role will become as facilitators, helping local people express what they want to see for their local areas and helping them to develop the policies to achieve this.

This would represent a fundamental shift in what planning is all about. It will also require a whole new set of skills if the new system is to work properly. I’m not sure whether planning officers, who for too long have been used to making the decisions themselves, will have these skills, at least initially. They will need help to work under the new system – and companies offering expertise in facilitation and collaborative planning will be well placed to offer this.

If the Conservatives win the next election and implement their ‘open-source’ planning system, then the facilitator will be king.

Was there ever a golden era of regeneration?

2010-03-11T11:12:00.001Z

When was regeneration?
Posted on Tim Williams Blog March 07

I’ve been thinking about regeneration which is not unexpected in a man who runs a consultancy team with Regeneration and Investment Advisory in its title and who writes for a journal whose raison d’etre is indeed regeneration. My thinking has led me to a hard question:when was regeneration? My own answer is from the inner city riots of the early 80s to the credit crunch. Click here to read more and add your comments to other Renaisi consultants.

2010-03-11T09:37:00.000Z

Inequalities of motivation
By John Hitchin, Senior Consultant, Renaisi

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.

Regenerating the English

2010-03-03T16:02:00.001Z

John Denham spoke last night at a Smith Institute lecture on England and Englishness. The Smith Institute have previously done a great deal of good work looking at identities within Britain – which has been strengthened by their long running relationship with Linda Colley. (If you are interested in this debate and haven’t read her book Britons, then you really should.)

The event last night returned to the debate, and it was an engaging one. There were thoughts on the consequences of devolution (both positive and negative) and the idea that the English have ‘identity envy’, but also championing St George’s Day as a positive national event about what it means to be English today - just as St Andrew’s and St Patrick’s days are about modern experiences of being Scottish and Irish. There is a lot in this, and here is not necessarily the best place to get in to it all.

I was most struck, however, by the presence of Professor Anne Power of the LSE at the lecture.
She asked an important question of John Denham that was essentially - what does this debate mean for the rest of your portfolio within CLG?

As soon as you start to unpick questions of identity in deprived neighbourhoods, then there are whole range of issues, difficulties, unintended policy consequences and misunderstandings lying underneath. Our deprived communities often experience the most immigration, particularly in cities, and this is because those places have lost their narrative or understanding of what they are for. People who can afford to move out, do so, and those that can’t afford to live anywhere else move in.

When thinking about improving neighbourhoods and areas, there is something to be said about first understanding the people who live there and what their identities are. This often gets bundled up with the ‘cohesion’ agenda (and John Denham highlighted the Connecting Communities fund) but if we treat it as an agenda to think about afterwards, then those issues of identity (and all that comes with it) will make it all the harder to re-build places, and re-write the narratives for those areas.

John Denham didn’t really answer her question, in case you were wondering.

By John Hitchin, Senior Consultant, Renaisi

Tories Pledge to Scrap RDAs.

2010-03-02T17:29:00.000Z

By Russell Spencer, Renaisi Consultant

The Tories’ plans for the regional tier of local government and policymaking are reasonably clear: they will get rid of it. Apart from one aspect that is. They have been prevaricating over what to do with Regional Development Agencies (RDAs) for months, with Ken Clarke, the Shadow Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, anxious to emphasise that the party had “no fixed views” on what to do with them. It was thought the key northern RDAs would be retained as they were politically sensitive.

Today, however, Clarke has come out with a firm commitment to abolish them, arguing that they are too expensive in the current economic climate and “they are not the best way of delivering either business support or urban regeneration."

Such a pledge has a huge impact on those working in the urban regeneration sector. For one thing the RDAs control the ‘single pot’ and also European Union regional development funds, meaning they have considerable discretion over how to spend money regenerating their local areas. For another thing these bodies are in a position to commission a wide range of work themselves from the neighbourhood to the regional level. Abolishing them with no indication of what will take their place or who will control funding, is an extremely risk approach.

In a nod to their localism agenda, Clarke has stated that it will be for local authorities to decide if they want a regional-level body, suggesting that sub-regional groupings of councils, known as “Local Enterprise Partnerships” will be “leaner and more focussed”. This could be a good thing – the regions did not necessarily take account of the way the economy functioned across boundaries and at the sub-regional level. It could also be very bad – focussing regional development solely around economic factors. And that’s notwithstanding the problems of getting local councils to work in partnership with each other as we can see too clearly from the situation in Greater Manchester at the moment.

As with a great deal of things in the world of urban regeneration, the only option at the moment seems to be to wait and see what happens. The thing is, by abolishing the regional structure en bloc, this might take years to find out…

The future for regeneration?

2010-03-01T16:23:00.000Z

‘#regenfuture’ is the twitter tag for a new debate about what should go into a new manifesto for regeneration. In addition to the Renaisi lecture, we attended a roundtable event organized by New Start, last month, to kick off discussions. There were many interesting proposals. All participants agreed that regeneration needs to be made about much more the built environment, and there should be a continuing focus on deprived areas. People felt we should do more to recognize and nurture the enthusiasm and aspiration of local people - a new phrase’ community outlook’ was aired, which tries to explain why some communities are more resilient and cohesive than others. Other common points were to devolve more power/funding to city/regions and neighbourhoods, learn from continental Europe rather than the US, support mutual models of ownership and indigenous economic development, and change the relationship between state and citizen - with the state’s primary function is arguably to become primarily one of enabling change at the neighbourhood level. Many of these arguments are well-rehearsed but also very high-level. There is a real need to now make them actionable (or outcome-focused in the jargon of the day), especially given the more austere times ahead. This is the next test to make this group a success, and we’ll keep you updated on as it progresses

What next for Regeneration?

2010-02-25T17:30:00.001Z

By Russell Spencer

“What Next for Regeneration?” is a key question that is on the lips of all those with an interest in the sector. The approaching election, public spending cuts and general economic uncertainty have bought this question to the fore, and delegates at Renaisi’s Annual Lecture were looking to our speakers for answers.

Caroline Spelman, the Shadow Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, was understandably in full election mode: giving her speech a few days after the launch of the long-awaited Conservative Planning Paper, Spellman spelled out the benefits the Tories’ changes would bring for regeneration. More money would be available for local authorities that encouraged business and housing development; regional level bureaucracy would be abolished and a presumption in favour of sustainable development. Under the plans the Community Infrastructure Levy would also be abolished.

Vince Cable’s then took the rostrum and promptly admitted he didn’t have any expertise in regeneration. Not the most auspicious start you might think, but Vince went on to talk convincingly about the state of the economy and what it might mean for financing regeneration in the future; together with the gloomy outlook for property-led development there was also optimism about the new models of regeneration that could emerge out of the chaos, and Vince expressed a strong desire to give local authorities more power and control over revenue generation which could be ploughed back into their areas.

This was something taken up by Sir Albert Bore, the former leader of Birmingham City Council who has overseen an impressive transformation of the physical fabric Birmingham Town Centre. Bore trumpeted the achievements of renowned 19th-century Birmingham mayor Joseph Chamberlain and his fellow municipal socialists in transforming their areas and boasted of the steps New Labour had taken to give a greater degree of control to local authorities. He also praised the former mayor of Barcelona, Pasqual Mira, who oversaw the Olympic-led transformation of his city in the early 1990s. According to Bore, Mira stressed two important things needed for successful regeneration – vision and leadership. He didn’t add, however, that these are only effective if they are backed up with real power at the local level.

Questions from the audience were many and varied. Renaisi’s own Adam Barnett kicked off the questioning by asking what should be the underlying principles for urban regeneration, to which most of the panel answered ‘sustainability’ – although without discussing what this actually means or should mean. Another audience member took the speakers to task for failing to mention the importance of tackling inequality – something that shocked Ms Spelman who was adamant the spirit of this could be discerned in her party’s planning measures. Other topics raised included the importance of developing new models to capture private sector financing and the role of families in urban regeneration schemes.

Overall the debate was lively, the speeches thought-provoking, the wine plentiful and the food abundant. As ever with these things, answering one question seems to throw up several more. Subjects for future Renaisi lectures, perhaps…

Thoughts from the Future of Regeneration debate (pt 3)

2010-02-25T16:09:00.001Z

Rod Stewart and public service reform

By John Hitchin, Senior Consultant, Renaisi This is one of three short blogs that were written after sitting at the back of a recent Chatham House rule debate on the ‘Future of Regeneration’, hosted by Renaisi. There were a range of participants from academia, consultancy, the public sector and the social enterprise sector. The pieces are inspired by the debate itself, but also Philippe Starck, Albert Einstein and Rod Stewart.

‘I wish, that, I knew what I know now, when I was younger’. Sound like Rod Stewart to you? Well it was actually written by Ronnie Lane and Ronnie Wood of The Faces. Ronnie Wood, now of the Rolling Stones, sang vocals, not Rod Stewart. Although the version you’re thinking of is probably the 1998 Rod Stewart cover. That piece of useless information might be useful to you in a pub quiz one day.

To finish off my three notes on the debate, I’ve started with another quote. This was provoked by one of the participants stating that ‘if we knew ten years ago what we know now, we could have done it all with half the money’. That got your attention didn’t it? The amount (half the money) was obviously more rhetoric than a calculated case, but the point remains whether it was 40%, 50% or 60%.

This statement was not so much a shock, we all know that hindsight is a wonderful thing, but it did highlight three points to me. The first is that a lot has been done in the last ten years. Through investment in public services and a growing awareness of the powerful role of the voluntary and third sectors, much has been achieved in regenerating our communities, and everybody in the sector can talk of strong success stories. In doing this, a lot has been learnt.

Secondly, do we do enough to make sure we don’t forget the lessons of previous approaches? The New Deal for Communities programme, for example, is one of the most evaluated pieces of public policy, and yet it seems to be quietly slipping off any agenda. I know, from experience, that there is plenty to learn from this massive investment in 39 of our most deprived neighbourhoods, but you try finding the NDCs on the CLG website. The evaluation reports are there, but they are not easy to find. Nobody is suggesting that we could (or even should) have another round of NDCs, but there is obviously an enormous amount to learn from them. In terms of an agenda, this is the remit of the HCA Academy (soon to be taken in-house) but a lack of institutional memory has occurred before and will probably occur again. We perhaps need to rethink how we retain knowledge within the communities themselves and not the ‘sector’. The communities are always there; individuals and governance structures move on.

Thirdly, money isn’t enough. The last ten years have seen a massive re-investment in many communities, but it also feels like money can blunt your thinking. Sorry for the cliché, but necessity is often the mother of invention, and relying on state money across the board has perhaps been pushed as far is it can in some of our communities. I am not advocating for a lack of investment where it’s needed, but I am hoping that less resource means smarter delivery, and an acceptance that money driven agendas can sometimes cloud our minds to what we originally wanted to do (see Kevin Harris’ article on empowerment that illustrates these issues from one perspective)

What Ronnie (and Rod) didn’t mention is that learning something is not a binary thing. You don’t not know it, and then suddenly become aware. It’s a process we need to go through, and we can’t ‘know’ it when we are younger. We’ve got to live it and learn it together.

Thoughts from the Future of Regeneration debate (pt 2)

2010-02-25T16:08:00.001Z

Albert Einstein and my neighbours

By John Hitchin, Senior Consultant, Renaisi

This is one of three short blogs that were written after sitting at the back of a recent Chatham House rule debate on the ‘Future of Regeneration’, hosted by Renaisi. There were a range of participants from academia, consultancy, the public sector and the social enterprise sector. The pieces are inspired by the debate itself, but also Philippe Starck, Albert Einstein and Rod Stewart.

My understanding of quantum physics is basic, to say the least. I have, however, really enjoyed reading Manjit Kumar’s excellent book on the history of twentieth century physics and the debate between Einstein and Bohr on the complex question of the quantum. After reading it, I was intrigued to find out a bit more about Einstein himself, and came across a list of quotes of his. My favourite was, unquestionably, “Everything should be as simple as possible, but no simpler”. I’ll come back to Einstein in a moment, but keep that in mind...

To some people, regeneration is all about the big, physical stuff: developing land, building new homes, shops and offices and bringing investment into places. For me it always has to be more than that, and must include the people who live in the areas that are being ‘regenerated’, and their experience of living there. That, however, can quickly expand ever outwards and it can become difficult to draw a line between regeneration and public policy in general. In fact, for some people, regeneration seems to mean creating nothing short of ‘the good society’. For this reason, I understood the feeling in the future of regeneration debate that seemed to endorse the idea that the very term ‘regeneration’, was potentially becoming redundant.

Current ideas of mutualism, cooperatives, social enterprise, community capital and the co-production of services are already influencing the discussion about what should come next, and I feel we should embrace that. The role of the state is going to have to change; partly because the state has less money than it has had, but also because there is a real strength of feeling that the next level of public service reform will be a more cooperative and mutual one.

What is strikingly apparent, however, is that this is not simple. It never was, but it is going to become ever more complicated. The key is that it is not allowed to appear overly complicated to the people and communities that these services are for. My neighbours don’t need to know how many agendas and pieces of public policy are intertwined in their area; they just want it to work for them, in a way that is supportive, sensible and responsible to their views and needs. Whether through the use of jargon, the excuses of targets or the mistrust between different sectors, this has often not been the case.

When I finished Quantum I announced to my partner that I wanted to be a quantum physicist. She laughed off my glib comment, but for a moment I thought of a simpler life – one where I work with quarks and atoms, and not people and communities.

Thoughts from the Future of Regeneration debate (pt 1)

2010-02-25T16:00:00.001Z

Philippe Starck and regeneration

By John Hitchin, Senior Consultant, Renaisi

It is difficult to talk about a session that was under the Chatham House rules without either breaking that rule, or looking like you’re stealing the ideas of other people without having to reference them. To be responsible about this, let us assume that any points of interest in these pieces come from the participants, and the dull bits in between are mine! (For more information about the debate itself, listen to these thoughts from Renaisi Chief Executive, Kevin Sugrue.)

Early on in the discussion, one of the participants quoted the designer Philippe Starck when talking about the mess of structures and institutions that make up the regeneration landscape in East London, and which at times seem designed to stop things getting done. ‘You’ve got to keep the violence of the original idea’.

It was that quote that got me thinking: what is our original idea now? The regeneration industry has become a more mature one over the thirty years since Michael Heseltine’s infamous White Paper, but in maturing it also has a tendency to forget what it wanted in the first place. I watched Revolutionary Road on the same night, and kept thinking about how we can all lose track of the violent ideas, passions and hopes of our youth. That’s not always a bad thing; sometimes we need to mature, smooth off our edges and learn from experience, but it’s a terrible thing if that comes at the cost of what we wanted in the first place.

Regeneration has had a couple of ‘original ideas’. The first came from Heseltine, another was driven by the incoming Labour government in 1997 with the twin projects of Neighbourhood Renewal and Urban Renaissance. (The regeneration framework of 2008/09, whilst having a promising definition of regeneration can hardly be described as a document that got the heart racing!)

Whatever the outcome of the forthcoming election, a new idea is needed: something that shapes and drives what regeneration is, and also what it can achieve. What we absolutely do not want is something that builds depressingly on the existing model. Endlessly trying to re-jig what we have with a policy tweak here, a new initiative there, just isn’t going to cut it.

Many of us know this. Julian Dobson and New Start Magazine have been raising these very issues over the last few months, Kevin Harris has been talking about it for a long time, and the debate at Renaisi underlined just how frustrated many are with the situation at the moment.

The question is how to do it. I would like to propose that in undertaking this process those of us working in regeneration forget that it is a ‘sector’ or an ‘industry’ and focus on the communities we are supposed to support. This will probably mean that our next ‘original idea’ won’t come from the centre (with any luck).

Fate is a great provider

2009-06-11T17:16:00.001+01:00

Yesterday evening at the Old Finsbury Town Hall a discussion took place, organized by the EC1 New Deal for Communities entitled “Finsbury, Past, Present & Future”. As if everything had to happen for a reason, the same evening, I finished reading Will Eisner’s comics The Contract with God. This trilogy tells the story of tenement life in a New-York estate. Dropsie Avenue, especially, portrays the history of a Bronx neighbourhood and traces the changes from 1870, when there were “still farms in the Bronx”. The comics describes the succession of ethnic groups, from Dutch-descended farmers to Irish, Italian, and Jewish immigrants, and how this succession and the complex interactions between places and people have built a city and created a diverse and vibrant neighbourhood. This saga is all about the fascinating links that can exist between a place, its inhabitants, the pace of industrial, political, social changes, and the wider world.

And – as luck would have it - this was also what the Finsbury’s discussion was about. The event was part of a broader project, looking at the past to understand the present, generating debates about the future of the neighbourhood, and contributing to a shared vision of EC1. A panel of five speakers – Chris Smith (Rt Hon Lord Smith of Finsbury), Chairman of the Environment Agency and former MP for Islington South and Finsbury, Prof Ian Gordon, Professor of Human Geography at the LSE, Dr Mike Raco, Department of Geography at King’s College London, Tom Jupp, Chair of the Cripplegate Foundation, and Eric Sorenson, Director of Central London Forward – examined and commented on Dr David Green’s report Finsbury: Past Present and Future.

A great deal of expectations, challenges, issues and past successes was highlighted yesterday, thanks to the report, the speakers’ input and to some excellent interventions from the audience. We have learnt that Finsbury is not just one neighbourhood, but has a legacy of progressive personalities: from the vibrant manufacturing and building period of the 18th and 19th century; through the post 1950’s and the exacerbation of housing and overcrowding issues, and the challenges caused by the setting of big businesses at the boundaries of the area; and to the post-industrial 1970’s and the advent of small enterprises and a more diverse and unstable population.
Finsbury is also about political gatherings and social cohesion – the “Radical Finsbury” (David Green) – about the value of social housing and the pride of its inhabitants - and about many more things. Finsbury is a historic place, a “pioneer” (Chris Smith). This great record of achievements throughout the centuries has to be taken forward to (re)create and carry out a sense of belonging, to rethink the relationships between the residents, with the city itself and the wider world.

What struck me, when bringing together Finsbury’s discussion and Eisner’s comics, is that, in both cases neighbourhood has to do with “faith” and “pride”: faith in destiny, faith in the neighbours, faith in the unknown - what is outside the temporal or geographical boundaries; but also pride, in the past, and in its positive legacy, pride in the present and in what makes people belong to a same territory; and in the future, what makes them want to contribute to its construction. That may be what “One History, EC1 in the making” is all about.

For more information about EC1 History: http://www.ec1history.co.uk/
For more information about EC1 New Deal for Communities: http://www.yourec1.com/

Blaring resignation

2009-06-05T09:35:00.001+01:00

Hazel Blears has not tiptoed around very long… she was on her way out but decided to make the first move (or the second after Jacqui Smith’s) in resigning. She could not obviously have done this in a more cacophonic and damaging manner: just after Ms Smith’s resignation, a couple of hours before Prime Minister Questions, the day before European elections. Her departure has intensified dissensions and backstabbed a weakened Gordon Brown on the eve of a national election.
The champion of community cohesion leaves behind her a load of neighbourhood regeneration and empowerment initiatives. But she also leaves a great deal of uncertainty about the future of regeneration and communities. We know that times are challenging and that the actors of sustainable communities have to think about new ways of doing things, whatever the results of the next elections will be. But an abrupt call for election is more likely to jeopardize the promises and slow down the discussions on current important matters: eco towns, accelerated development zones, regional planning reforms, etc.
Blears surely did not resign in the correct manner, and she is obviously worsening the mess. However, it is the time for the government to appoint a new expert team, able to take up the challenges and complexities faced in the regeneration agenda. It could also be the opportunity for the Labour party to start thinking about the dangers of division and working on the vision it wants to spread and share.

Financing models are dead, long live financing models!

2009-05-18T14:22:00.000+01:00

The 6th session of the APUDG which took place last Thursday 14 May at the Houses of Parliament, made clear that alternative financing arrangements such as ADZ have been given the thumbs up by business leaders, property developers and key public sector players. Accelerated Development Zones (ADZs), adapted from the US Tax Increment Financing (TIF) model are “well worth exploring” in such challenging times, highlighted Professor Michael Parkinson, head of the European Institute for Urban Affairs at LJMU[i].
Times have seldom been more challenging for financing regeneration; this inquiry aimed at analysing the regeneration financing environment and solutions to jump start regeneration and development.

Four key fundamentals for financing regeneration have been pointed out by Prof Parkinson: new money needs to be brought into the system, the flow of resources needs to be increased and regeneration projects need to attract new investors; greater expectations are put on public sector and we have to move our way towards a new investment culture, where public sector invests and takes the lead; financing regeneration is complex and technical, and needs simplification. Finally, masterplanning is going to be more and more important to prepare the work for developers and help them invest in places they know.

“The financing schemes which would have been valuable two years ago are not anymore”, confirmed property developers (Peter Vernon, Chief Executive of Grosvenor Britain and Ireland; Peter Miller, Chief Operating Officer at Westfield Centre). Existing financing models (such as Section 106, Local Asset Backed Vehicles, and the proposed Community Infrastructure Levy) work far better in the good times than in the bad.

With this context and those fundamentals in mind, the new financial tool ADZ would help getting investors back in by sharing the risks of development with the public sector. The public sector, in stepping in financing regeneration, would offer value for money to projects, underlined Ray Mills, (partner, regional development group Pricewaterhouse Coopers). ADZs would help reduce the burden for the private sector by securing the finance, and would give the public sector the strength to negotiate with the private. For the developers, it is a “win-win” situation where nobody loses, where the money spent gets back, generating income that can be invested to create new infrastructures.

For the public sector however remains the question of timescale and risks taking. What type of guarantee do the local authorities have that the private sector will step in and deliver investment that increases local tax streams? Even if TIF attracts private sector investment, the revenue predicted will not likely be realised for several years. Such financing schemes require a long term commitment from the private and the public sector and are what has been called for by Prof Parkinson in his report. The risks to the public sector purse require that ADZ schemes are accompanied by a strong risk-analysis. Local authorities have to be very clear about what the public benefits are going to be in this investment, insisted Chris Brown, chief executive of Igloo Regeneration Fund. To gain full benefit from TIF schemes, new skills such as financial awareness, risk and change management are needed more than ever amongst public sector leaders.

[i] Parkinson, M et al (2009) The Credit Crunch and Regeneration: Impact and Implications London: Communities & Local Government (the full report can be found at www.communities.gov.uk/publications/citiesandregions/creditcrunchregeneration).

Financing regeneration – a comparison with France

2009-04-24T14:27:00.000+01:00

Faced with the challenges of narrowing gaps between deprived areas and the rest of the country and the huge financial resources needed to undertake urban regeneration projects, finding innovative tools for financing regeneration projects has always been a concern for governments.

The US-style funding mechanism called Tax Increment Financing (TIF) that is being examined by Whitehall may be an appropriate tool: it allows local and regional authorities to fund infrastructure projects by borrowing against the future tax revenues that the public works project is expected to create.

A TIF does indeed offer a wide range of advantages for the partners involved, local authorities, private investors and property owners. It is however being criticized for its limits in attracting investment in the poorest and most in needs areas and for the risk of pricing out residents due to the rise in prices and property taxes that it involves.

A similar funding system exists in France to remedy the absence of private initiative investment. Public investors such as the Caisse des Depots et des Consignations (public bank), or Industrial and Commercial Public Establishments develop financial packages to implement infrastructure projects, resulting in a significant amount of financial leverage and launching private investment in most deprived areas.

Such money is likely to be spent on infrastructure investments that are most likely to encourage greater private sector investment, and focuses in France on shopping center reconstruction, damaged co-ownership buildings, and hospitals settlements.

In France, this system has been integrated in a wider funding policy since 2002.

Faced with the complexity and the fragmentation of funding tools, and with the limitations apparent in the programmes implemented over the past 20 years, the French government has been led to implement a new co-financing process forming a one-stop funding centre. The Agence Nationale de Rénovation Urbaine (ANRU) - comparable in a way to the new Homes and Communities Agency - has been created to process files and allocate subsidies; it follows two main principles: fungibility and coordinated delivery. Fungiblity means that the subsidies coming from various sources (state, Caisse des Dépôts et Consignation, private sector and social partners) are used freely, without any relation to where they come from. Coordinated delivery implies that those credits are consistently invested in local projects.

This pooling of credits represents a simplified framework for regeneration projects, and a better joining up of regeneration and economic activity. But above all, it seeks to involve the local actors of urban regeneration. The funds are indeed allocated following a strategic application process, during which the need of the project and the backing-up of the local authority are evaluated, with one of the most important requirements being the political momentum by elected members. There may be disadvantages, but the new agency has the benefits of securing the local anchorage of a project and the involvement of local partners, and this could represent an example of best practice the HCA could look at.

Darling, I think you’re doing it wrong

2009-04-24T10:28:00.000+01:00

The Budget included several measures to improve regeneration and said yes to property sectors push for Tax Increment Financing. TIF’s, as they are called in the US, are public financing instruments that are widely used in the US to raise revenue for infrastructure, affordable housing, economic and community development, and environmental clean up. It has been pushed in the UK for some time by local government. Most notably the London Borough of Barnet, which has been pushing the Treasury since 2007 to raise revenue for its infrastructure development plans through tax increment financing instruments.

So what is it?
Tax increment financing is a mechanism that allows local governments to borrow against anticipated increases in tax revenue. It is usually structured as a municipal bond, which is sold to investors who are paid back from tax revenue. In the US, the investors also receive a tax exemption for the interest they receive.

Is it good for regeneration in the UK?
There are many characteristics of TIF that makes it an attractive model for the UK. First, TIF models give local government an opportunity to raise revenue for regeneration independently. Councils has been severely limited in their ability, since the Thatcher era, to raise revenue for infrastructure and housing because of a deep rooted culture of distrust in their ability to be credit wise borrowers.

Secondly, the TIF model means that local governments can raise capital without raising taxes. This assumption relies on increases in tax revenue due to growth and investment. So what happens if the movers and shakers with the money bags don’t produce? Or what if you are in an area that experienced stagnant growth even before the recession? Which leads to the next question- Does the TIF model really provide a mechanism for really tackling regeneration? As the Regeneration Framework acknowledged last autumn, regeneration and economic development are not the same and the evidence from the last 30 years demonstrates that despite strong national and regional growth there has been an increasing gap between wealthy and poor areas since 2001. Well before we entered the economic crisis, there lacked a real redistribution mechanism that delivered wider economic benefit and inclusion. And now more than before, there is a need for a regeneration model that addresses the widening gap between wealthy and poor areas.

Will this further regeneration in the recession and after?
TIF is unlikely to provide a real boost of investment to the poorest most needing areas during the recession and recovery. The reliance on growth to secure bonds means that only areas that are most likely to provide quick and reliable growth will be targeted for TIF style financing. Put in another way, TIF is likely to be launched successfully in areas that would have been invested in without government backing in a better market, not the most difficult to transform or economically stagnant areas. TIF’s weakness as a model to finance regeneration is reflected in Section 106 and the yet to be launched Community Infrastructure Levy, which relies on property uplift to incur community benefit. By attaching revenue and benefit to expected growth, investment will only occur in areas that are most likely to be successful.

We need a model for recruiting capital for regeneration and housing that is not connected to local property growth. There is a need for a real redistribution mechanism. The Community Infrastructure Levy, which has been postponed till April 2010, was seeking to do this in part by allocating a portion of the revenue raised to regional and central government for large scale infrastructure projects that would have wider social benefit.

A real redistribution mechanism
The changed economic environment is unlikely for quite a few years to be earmarked by high speculative development and growth that characterised the pre-recession market and in turn fuels tax increment financing, Section 106 and CIL type models.

Investment for regeneration needs to be detached from raising capital for economic development. A simple means of more effectively redistributing revenue would be to pool Section 106 benefits and allowing them to be redistributed more widely throughout a local area or over an extended period of time. This would allow Section 106 revenue to be shifted to poor areas and saved for use on a rainy day.

TIF is a noble effort. There is a need for new locally controlled financing mechanisms, but growth based models will unlikely provide the capital for low investment areas during a period of no growth. Maybe it is time to look at the tax system- particularly tax relief as a way to raise revenue for local areas. The tax increases proposed provide an opportunity to push for tax relief models to finance regeneration.

Community Investment Tax Relief (CITR)
CITR is a finance model where individuals and corporate bodies invest in accredited Community Development Finance Institutions which in turn provide finance for qualifying businesses, social enterprises and community projects. This model is already in place in the UK and would only require raising the incentives and take up. This allows for regeneration to take place from the ground up where local businesses, organisations, and people are financed to drive forward growth.

US Style Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC)
LIHTC is a dollar for dollar sale of tax relief that individuals and investors purchase and in turn raises capital for affordable housing. Through the sale of tax credits enough capital is raised to lower the amount of debt taken on by housing providers and the cost savings are passed on to home owners. The tax credits are allocated to state and local governments who manage and distribute the credits to assist affordable housing builders.

It is without a doubt that the next few years will require an economic rebuilding effort near or equivalent to that of the post war era. There are real opportunities to address the widening gap between wealthy and poor areas that has characterised the last eight years. And when we finally emerge on the other side, we will have equipped local government and local people with the financial tools to regenerate their areas.

Budget 2009 – First Impressions

2009-04-23T11:43:00.000+01:00

At first glance the Budget, with the snappy regeneration-related title of ‘Building Britain’s Future’, seems to offer a lot of positives for the regeneration sector, with the Chancellor committing more money to jobs, green growth and housing. But all this is balanced by a greater demand for efficiency savings from local authorities and lower spending growth and, in the longer term, record levels of borrowing.

First the good news: £600million will be allocated to stimulate housing investment and to kick-start stalled housing developments or dormant sites with planning permission. £100million of this will be used to allow local authorities to ensure higher energy efficiency standards in social housing developments.

The Budget also saw the confirmation of Leeds and Manchester as pilot city-regions, which will give them greater powers to integrate planning, housing, transport, regeneration, employment and skills programmes and increasing their ability to drive sustainable growth and economic development.

Perhaps the most daring move is the £1.2billion that has been given to the Young Persons Guarantee Scheme, which aims to help alleviate the danger that the recession will lead to long-term unemployment by guaranteeing a job, training or work placement for all 18-24 year olds who are unemployed for 12 months. This is a staggering and unprecedented move which will see funding made available for local authorities and voluntary organisations to employ 100,000 young people in ‘socially useful activity’ with 50,000 more jobs on offer in areas of dense unemployment; 10% of these jobs are in the ‘green’ sector. More concrete details about this are eagerly awaited.

Meanwhile a further £260million will be made available for education and training including the expansion of the number of places at sixth-forms and colleges by 54,000 starting in September.

Also of interest is a £750 million Strategic Investment Fund to support advanced industrial projects of strategic importance, £250million of which is earmarked specifically for low carbon projects, helping to create sustainable jobs for the future.

The bad news is that, whilst the Chancellor believes that the economy will recover and begin growth at the end of this year and will grow by 3.5% by 2011, the IMF are more pessimistic, predicting that the UK economy will shrink by 4.1% this year and 0.4% in 2010.

Increased public borrowing, at a record level, combined with less growth in public sector spending and demands for increased cost-saving and efficiency will place further pressure on public sector finances. And whilst the investment to get the housing market moving again are welcome, they represent a drop in the ocean compared to the bail-out of the banks.

The problem, as ever, will be to ensure these initiatives meet the needs of people and places at the neighbourhood level. Renaisi is all about the neighbourhood but the danger is that the initiatives announced in the Budget will not benefit the neighbourhoods and the people that need it most. Take the measures to boost housing development for instance – care will need to be taken to ensure the funding does not simply allow private-sector house-builders to profit at the expense of creating affordable housing for local people. Similarly the Strategic Investment Fund for industry must be careful to ensure local people are connected to the jobs being created and have the opportunity to fully benefit from the investment.