Put yourself on the map

To view Pilton Food Map click here

CHEX Network member, Pilton Community Health Project has developed a really useful online community food map that visually displays information about local community food projects in the Greater Pilton area

Pilton Community Health Project developed the food map to make it easier to find out more about local food projects. The projects have also formed the Food for Thought Forum, which hosts the map and meets regularly to discuss and plan how to deliver good food activities in the Greater Pilton area. The map makes use of Google Maps to show the location of more than twenty community food projects in the area. It allows you to display projects by the type of activity, and by clicking on each entry you can access more information such as times and contact details for each project. By clicking the ‘talk to us’ tab at the bottom of the map you can contact Pilton directly and request that your own activity in the area is added to the map.

Urban potential of hydro

The Harlaw Hydro share launch on 9th April, in St Joseph’s Hall, was outstandingly well attended with almost 250 listening to a presentation on the share launch and asking questions of the team afterwards.  The prospectus and forms are available online on Harlaw Hydro’s new web site www.harlawhydro.org.uk/ .  Over time there will also be copies of relevant supporting documents.

Harlaw Hydro Ltd is an Industrial Provident Society created by Balerno Village Trust (BVT) for the express purpose of installing and operating a micro-hydro electricity generator at Harlaw Reservoir.  A great deal of preparatory work has been completed and the project is now ready to move onto the next stage.  If you are interested in what other coops are raising money for look at community shares.

The Water of Leith is a source of green energy right on our doorstep. The river used to power industry inSouth West Edinburgh, and it has been a dream of many to harness this energy for the benefit of the community. The plan is to install a 65Kw turbine at the base of Harlaw Dam and to take advantage of the government’s Feed In Tariffs (FiT) for Renewable Energy to sell power to the National Grid.

Harlaw Hydro (HH) has now achieved several major milestones.

• In September 2012 Harlaw Hydro, an Industrial Provident Society (IPS) a co-operative established for community benefit, was incorporated.

• In October 2012 SEPA (Scottish Environment Protection Agency) granted HH a CAR (Controlled Activities (Scotland) Regulation).

• In October 2012 City of Edinburgh approved the planning application.   Full details of the application can be seen on City’s website https://citydev-portal.edinburgh.gov.uk planning application 12/00001/ful.

• The terms of the lease for the site City of Edinburgh have been approved by the Councillors.

There are still several major milestones still to come;

• The application for a connection to the national grid has been submitted. Scottish Power Networks response is expected in May.

• Raising the capital to purchase and install the equipment will start when the above two items have been secured – target is April 2013.

It will cost an estimated £313K to implement the project. To help finance it, it is hoped that many in the community will purchase shares in Harlaw Hydro  which has been created to own and run the hydro scheme. The more the community invests in the project the less will have to be borrowed from banks, and the sooner profits will be available both to shareholders as yearly interest payments and as grants to improve our community. We hope people will get excited about the project. We also hope people will want to invest in it. Once planning permission is secured we will be issuing a prospectus inviting people to invest in Harlaw Hydro.  If you are interested in receiving a copy of the prospectus, or would simply like to know more, then please contact Martin Petty (mpetty712@aol.com).

Background

BVT consulted with the City of Edinburgh Council to install a small hydroelectric generator at the outflow of Harlaw reservoir.

2009.  Funding for Feasibility Study Confirmed: Balerno Village Trust (BVT) were pleased to announce that Community Energy Scotland had awarded £6,000 to 5 local communities for a micro-hydro feasibility study on the Water of Leith. This initial pilot study includes Harlaw (through BVT), Redbraes (through Greener Leith), Mossy Mill (CEC), Harperig (through Kirknewton Development Trust) and Dean Village.

These 5 sites were analysed for their generation potential but at this stage only the Harlaw site was deemed to be commercially viable.  The turbine will not power Balerno but it should provide a small income by selling green energy to the Grid that can then be invested in further community developments.

The project could also play an exciting role as a demonstration and educational resource for local schools and colleges and the general public. Historically the Water of Leith has been used to power mills built during the Industrial Revolution. It thus seems fitting to re-harness that power potential to provide valuable green energy today.

Fundamentalist proposal enters mainstream 

New resident-led regeneration scheme aims to transform communities

The Big Local’s attempt to let residents decide what they want is showing encouraging signs of budgetary responsibility and long-term thinking

Many of the big-budget regeneration projects since the 1980s made attempts to involve residents in their community’s transformation, some more successfully than others.

The Big Local is the latest programme to attempt resident-led change at neighbourhood level. Through it, the Big Lottery Fund in England is investing up to £200m in 150 neighbourhoods. Each area – covering between 3,000 to 10,000 people – receives an endowment of at least £1m to be spent over 10 years.

There are some key differences between the Big Local and earlier schemes. While earlier regeneration schemes have been largely professional-led, even where residents were involved, decision-making in Big Local areas rests firmly with boards requiring a minimum of 50% resident representation.

Each area is assigned a representative, who works with local residents and acts as a mediator with the Local Trust, which oversees the programme. Support is also available from a designated ‘locally-trusted organisation’, but councillors, local service providers and consultants are only called upon where they are wanted by residents. Some might see giving groups of inexperienced people budgets of up to £1m as a risk, but 18 months into the programme, the Big Local areas are showing encouraging signs of budgetary responsibility and long-term thinking.

Over the lifetime of the project, the north Northfleet Big Local area in Kent has seen the growth of new community enterprises and the development of a project providing access to work in the nearby Bluewater shopping centre. Carl Adams, who worked as community development worker on the project, says it has not drawn on much of the funding that has been allocated, but a lot has been achieved already.

“If this became all about spending the money, then we would have all failed,” says Adams, from Action with Communities in Rural Kent. “You can use the money to get people to the table, but it has to be secondary.”

In addition to his work at Northfleet, Adams is now working with two newer Big Local projects in Ramsgate and Dover as a Big Local rep, he hopes to transfer some of the lessons from Northfleet to the other two projects.

Adams says that one lesson he has passed on was to encourage risk taking where appropriate. “We took chances on people that others wouldn’t work with,” he says. “We considered investing in entrepreneurs despite them having a bad credit history.”

Ross Miller, a resident in the Dover Big Local area explains that this “clean slate” approach is one his project is keen to replicate, having seen its impact in Northfleet. “We are interested, not in people’s history, but what they want to do in the future.”

Debbie Ladds, chief executive of the Local Trust, says that this kind of willingness to innovate is one of the characteristics of the Big Local areas that makes it distinct from more traditional community regeneration projects. But she adds that this innovation has been in combination with a cautious approach to spending funding allocations, which can be used for both grants and to attract social investment.

“Residents are being very cautious with the money, often more so than established organisations and local authorities are. I am impressed that communities are talking to us about achieving long-term change.”

This cautiousness about spending the allocation is evident in several Big Local areas including Dover, North West Ipswich and the William Morris ward of London’s Waltham Forest. In the steelworks town of Corby a group of residents with no community development training exemplifies this.

Local resident George Hill of Corby’s Kingswood and Hazel Leys Big Local says the Big Local has taught him not to rush in. “We are careful, this isn’t a race,” he said. “People within the panel are naturally frugal – I don’t know if that has something to do with being Scottish, or the responsibility of being on the partnership.”

One issue for several Big Local projects has been the challenge of enabling residents to manage the project in a way that is sustainable. While some areas have been reluctant to spend their funding on hired support, others have chosen to employ support workers. One of these workers is Grace Williams, a volunteer coordinator at the William Morris Big Local, who is also a resident of the ward.

She says that the decision to use the budget has been a good one for the area, but the challenge now is to build up residents’ skills to sustain that work. “I think initially there was a very strong feeling that the paid worker would do this for six months and then that person would just go and the volunteering would happen. I think you always need someone that can pull the whole thing together with this sort of project.”

North West Ipswich, which became the first area to have their plan approved and will be the first project to receive their funding, has also benefited from professional input. Their support worker works four days a week for the Big Local area. Residents’ board chair Ron Impey says her contribution has helped to keep the project “on the straight and narrow”.

But Impey says the challenge for the future is sustaining this work and keep it moving. “It’s very much a learning process at the moment. We are trying to keep everyone on board and we’ve been fortunate so far.” There are mechanisms to share lessons learned between the different areas through events and get-togethers.

Reflecting on the achievements of the programme, Debbie Ladds says the biggest has been its success in involving residents directly. “Some of these people have never been involved in their communities previously. That’s the brilliant thing.”

Grow your own

Plans to simplify and overhaul Scotland’s allotment rules were announced last week.

Rural Affairs Secretary Richard Lochhead has launched a consultation to consider the shape of future allotment legislation.

Among the questions being asked are:

• Should councils be required to provide people in their area within a specified timeframe

• Should councils have a duty to provide a specific number of allotments in their area per head of population

Mr Lochhead said:

“Growing your own food is continuing to grow in popularity in Scotland and this goes hand in hand with an increasing desire to know where our food comes from.

“Allotments provide a range of benefits including better health, an opportunity to learn new skills, and an understanding of where food comes from – not forgetting the chance to eat the fruits of your labour.

“We’re committed to helping people to grow their own food and this consultation will consider what changes should be made to the existing legislation to make it simpler and fit for today’s community needs.

“Many communities have expressed a desire to get back to nature and more involved with growing their own food and that’s exactly what we’re working to make possible.”    

Consultation details

In his latest book Local Dollars, Local Sense, Michael Shuman makes the case for local alternatives to the global financial system. Clare Goff, for New Start magazine, interviews him about how to create the infrastructure for local investment. 

THE SUBTITLE OF YOUR BOOK IS ‘HOW TO SHIFT YOUR MONEY FROM WALL STREET TO MAIN STREET AND ACHIEVE REAL PROSPERITY’. HOW CAN WE MAKE THIS HAPPEN?

We need to abandon one very widely-used practice in economic development – the attraction of corporate business – and embrace three new ones. The effort to attract and attain non-local business is an obsession. In the United States it is synonymous with economic development. People may understand that there is another way but it is still widely practiced, not only in subsidies but in time. Every hour of economic development time put into this is an hour not available for creating real prosperity by better means.

The three principles I urge people to take on are:

MAXIMISE THE PERCENTAGE OF JOBS IN LOCALLY-OWNED BUSINESSES. Ownership is key. There’s too much focus on distances travelled – e.g. in food, from farm to table – but to me of greater consequence is that the businesses in the chain are locally owned. Ownership governs economic impact.

MAXIMISE LOCAL SELF-RELIANCE, not to hermetically seal ourselves from global trade but because a community that increases its local self-reliance will be in a better position to benefit from global links from a position of strength

IDENTIFY, CELEBRATE AND SPREAD MODELS OF THE TRIPLE BOTTOM LINE. Many believe business that is mindful of standards will perform poorly but so many disprove that and we need to spread that.

WHY DID WE GET STUCK IN THE CURRENT LOCAL ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT PRACTICE AND HOW CAN WE GET OUT OF IT? 

For a long time attracting corporate business was part of the school and the theories were widely prevalent. Now there is so much evidence against it but it’s not so much about economics but about politics. Politicians want to attract big corporates. Compare one business that brings in 1000 jobs with the difficult but important work of a few jobs in a lot of businesses that don’t grab headlines. We need to get practices back in alignment. We need to either abolish economic development or figure out ways to make it less biased. I will be urging the abolition. I feel most of the people working in economic development are so far beyond reform we have to start from scratch. Practitioners love international travel. I think we should tell staff that we’ll send them on an international trip anywhere on the condition that they spend 11 months of the year doing their job at home. I would also take economic development out of the public sector and put it in to private sector.HOW CAN WE GET ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT PRACTITIONERS TO THINK DIFFERENTLY? 

In the work that I do it’s around helping better thinking economic development practitioners to recalibrate their programmes. I get them to focus on six categories, all of which begin with P – planning, people, partners, purse, purchasing, public policy.

PLANNING: We need to identify leaks in the local economy and find those businesses that will make progress in plugging those leaks.

PEOPLE: We need to train entrepreneurs or a new generation to lead replugging businesses

PARTNERS: We need to create partners to achieve more competitive networks

PURSE: Local investment (see my Top Tools for local investment below)

PURCHASING: This is the most common feature. We have to think local first and move towards full cost accounting of tax revenues that are collected. You will collect more from a company that spends more money locally. That is the direction for reform for procurement. I’m not in favour of overt favoritism for local but favour full cost accounting that takes into account tax revenues.

PUBLIC POLICY: A lot look for ways government can be in favour of local business. I’m more modest. I’d like to end government discrimination against local business. Most economic development can be considered a subsidy for global companies against local business. My view is to remove the advantages to global business. There are so many examples: no anti-trust laws followed with rigour; tax policies that impinge heavily on local retailers but not on internet sales. There is some movement to fix this in the US.

Local economic development can try to think about the ecology one can create in a community in support of those six Ps listed above. Can we do many of those ‘P’ activities through self-financing business?

SO HOW CAN WE CREATE THE INFRASTRUCTURE TO ALLOW MORE LOCAL INVESTMENT TO HAPPEN? 

We have a four-page overview of tools and we’ve seen a huge revolution in local investment in the last year. The basic problem is that when you look at long term investment in US – for retirement for example – it totals about $30tn and they are big categories – stocks, bonds, mutual funds, pension funds and insurance. All of that money is invested in corporates but half of the US economy is local/small business. Roughly speaking in an efficient capital market place half of the capital should go to small businesses but at the moment nothing is. To me this represents a massive capital market failure.

The reason is the bias in the law that makes it so expensive for a small business to do the paperwork to get a dollar that it doesn’t happen. In the US we have recently overhauled securities to make it cheaper and easier to issue stock. We’ve addressed one problem in law, but it’s still very difficult to trade stock and a whole new set of laws are needed. In a local ecosystem you would have a lot of stock, trading of stock and also investment companies that created that stock. We need to do it one step at time.

I’ve been arguing that economic development would be stronger, and smarter, if it embraced self-financing models. This way, it would be less dependent on fickle contributions for local government and philanthropy. So, there are examples of incubators that self-finance, mostly by charging a fee for service before or after incubation.  The problem with these models is that they adversely affect the incubated business’s bottom line. A smarter approach is for the incubator to take an equity share in the company, and then sell it. My thought, then, is that an incubator might help client businesses transform themselves into small stock companies and market the shares. But the incubator would keep, say, 10-20%, just like an underwriter does when it assists companies doing an IPO.WHAT ARE YOUR TOOLS FOR LOCAL INVESTMENT? 

I have 24 tools for local investing. Here are five of them:

1.    MOVE YOUR MONEY: Move all your day-to-day financial activities to a local bank or credit union so that the capital is recycled locally.

2.    TAKE YOUR LOCAL BUSINESSES PUBLIC: In the US thanks to crowdfunding reforms companies can now ‘go public’ very cheaply and unaccredited investors can purchase stock.

3.    ISSUE SLOW MUNIS: Local government issues bonds all the time. How about creating bonds to finance local businesses? Food bonds for example could be created the proceeds of which go into a local fund that collateralized loans from local banks and credit unions to high-priority local food businesses. If structured properly these bonds could be tax exempt and the bonds could be purchased by local residents.

4.    CREATE A LOCAL STOCK MARKET: As crowdfunding spreads there will be a growing number of local stock purchasers who will to sell their share and you can facilitate this by creating a local or regional stock exchange.

5.    PREPARE A COMMUNITY LIST: Imagine a local Craig’s List of all the local investment opportunities in your community.  A list like this is easy to create and invaluable for potential local investors.  As long as the list does not ‘offer advice’ on the quality of various investments, it is completely legal.

ARE THERE ANY GOOD EXAMPLES OF THIS HAPPENING NOW?

There are a lot of great models everywhere. One model is Bendigo Bank. It’s a global bank – the fourth largest in Australia – and they have created community franchises to allow the local community to own and operate a local branch. It was initially launched as a response to the closure of rural banks but has since been rolled out in cities.

Michael Shuman is director of community portals at Mission Markets and fellow at Cutting Edge Capital, Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE) and the Post Carbon Institute.

Watch Michael Shuman on Youtube here (first ten minutes for an outline)

The Jimmy Reid Foundation has launched a Commission on Fair Access to Political Influence. It was launched with a report, Not By The People (supported by the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust), which showed that the people who are invited to influence government policy in Scotland are drawn from a very narrow section of the population, almost all in the top 10 per cent by income. Meanwhile, the 70 per cent of the population which earns average wage or below makes up only about three per cent of these ‘influencers’.

Political decisions made on the basis of the views of such a limited spectrum of the Scottish people risks being unrepresentative. Giving the impression of not listening to the experiences of the majority of the population risks increasing disillusionment. And revelations about the lobbying industry has caused concerns about political accountability.

We want to produce a set of proposals for how a much more diverse set of people can gain access to decision-making processes. We’re calling for people to tell us about their experience of trying to influence politics without large PR budgets and to propose concrete solutions. The sorts of things we think might start to address the problem are:

• Alternative forms of decision-making which include more diverse groups of people making decision – for example Citizens’ Juries.

• Initiatives that bring decision-makers closer to those affected by their decisions – for example secondments to community groups

• Actions which can make existing decision-making processes more representative – for example an expectation that evidence will be taken in proportion to those affected by a decision

• Means of drawing people into debate about public policy – for example web-based participative democracy initiatives

• Ways to get a better picture of how decisions will affect different groups – for example by producing more detailed social impact studies

• Opportunities for ordinary people to influence political agendas – for example, through additional powers for the Scottish Parliament’s Public Petitions Committee

We will produce a final report which will collect the best proposals together and will present these to the Scottish Government and all the political parties in Scotland. The aim is not to produce a ‘discussion document’ but a call for action; we will follow up its publication with a coordinated push to get its recommendations implemented.

You have to be of a certain age to remember the ‘cludgie’. It’s not something anyone remembers with affection. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine in the 21st century a time when people lived without their own bathroom and toilet; yet many folk in parts of Scotland had to share such basic facilities, with the toilet (the ‘cludgie’) outside in the back yard. This was still happening as recently as 40 years ago. It was rightly regarded as a national scandal. The campaigns for better housing didn’t just lead to better plumbing. It lead to much wider reform of housing as well.

Today, with housing and welfare reform back at the top of the political agenda (though for different reasons), a new book Annie’s Loo by Raymond Young tells the timely tale of one Govan community’s efforts to finally get indoor toilets in their tenements in the 1970s. But it also tells of how the movement for reform helped created the model for the housing associations and co-operatives that manage social housing across Scotland today.

The book launch will take place later on today (Friday) at the Pierce Institute in Govan. The author will give a local history lesson to a class of primary 7 pupils from Lorne Street Primary School. He’ll tell them about the conditions of life in the area not so long ago and also about the remarkable housing reform movement which was started by people from their community.

Raymond Young will tell the children that flushing toilets had been invented centuries earlier. “Bathrooms in new middle class homes had become the norm by the late 1800s, and were standard in new social housing from 1919. And yet, in the 1970’s here in Govan and in many other parts of Scotland, families still lived in tenement houses without an internal bathroom and toilet. Tenants in Govan decided do something about it. “The solution was partly technical, financial and social with neighbours joining together for their own and their community’s benefit. And when Annie Gibbons’ indoor bathroom and toilet was installed, media and crowds gathered to see politician Pat Lally arrive in a big black car and make his way up to the third floor, to officially open Annie’s loo.”

The event is being hosted by Dr Mary Taylor, Chief Executive of the SFHA, who also wrote the forward for the book. At the reception Dr Taylor will add that the story of Annie’s Loo “is an important part of Scotland’s social history, told by a key protagonist reflecting on the lessons of history. It is serious and wry in equal measure. And its message is very relevant today for tenants and social landlords, as we tackle the massive changes currently coming into place through welfare reform. The achievement of modest ambitions to solve a basic problem in one community in

Govan, demonstrated what could be done through a voluntary association led by the local community and encouraged and supported by enlightened governments.”

In the view of David Orr, Chief Executive of the National Housing Federation, “the key to the Govan community’s success in tackling their outdated living conditions was the willingness of the residents to get together for their own and their community’s benefit – and that voluntary spirit laid the foundation of today’s housing associations. Now, not only do all of those houses have internal plumbing and flushing toilets, most are insulated to high standards, with efficient heating systems in place or being installed, and support services can be provided to those who need them. The associations and co-operatives of today are significant social enterprises, providing secure affordable homes for around half a million people in Scotland, more than one in ten households.”

Annie’s Loo is a paperback of 128 pages published by Argyll publishing. It is priced at £9.99, but is available direct from the SFHA at £7. Please contact us with any enquiries about this book.

Please use the Publications Order Form to purchase copies of Annie’s Loo. Price: £7

To read full report click here : Control Shift

We live in a society that has become used to nationalising risk– be it through the welfare state, the NHS or the expansion of universal public services. This shift from the personal and civic to the national has mostly been welcomed by a society that recognises its obligations to other citizens. But recent social attitudes surveys – and a growing political consensus –contribute to an impression that personal and local responsibility and agency are insufficiently rewarded. At a time of austerity, and with demographic changes leading to greater demand on the public purse, a new settlement between the state, the individual and communities is needed.

Control Shift is the final output of a project which was designed to reach some consensus over what ‘responsibility’means in terms of policy – based on a series of expert roundtables, analysis of public polling and attitudinal research. It looks at what levels of personal and civic responsibility people yearn for, where such reciprocity throws up political discomfort and what might be achievable in terms of rebalancing the individual’s relationship with the state.

This report makes the case for embracing so-called ‘nudge-plus’ proposals, incentivising healthy behaviour and making it easier for people to make informed decisions and take greater responsibility. By implementing ideas such as creating an independent Risk Commission, making better use of data and rewarding proactive local authorities with a community cashback scheme, the report argues that the Government can support individuals, families and communities in making better choices without being heavy-handed.

For copy of full report click here 

By Julian Dobson 

Politicians of all shades should be pleased that the latest report from the think tank ResPublica is about Britain’s strivers. While researching it I was struck by the amount of striving that goes on, often in unexpected places.

In half-abandoned streets in west Hull, for instance, families are striving to make ends meet and bring up their children. In Rochdale’s social housing estates volunteers are striving to support their local communities in the face of the loss of local services and personal benefit entitlements. In Lostock in southwest Manchester residents are striving to support their neighbours, sharing skills and talents.

Look behind the stereotypes of poverty and depression and you’ll find plenty of striving. Often, in the face of rising costs of living, lower incomes from work, real-terms cuts in benefits and a job market so desperate that 1,700 people recently applied for just eight jobs at a Costa coffee shop, getting from one end of the week to the other takes all the striving a man or woman can muster.

Incomes and standards of living have not recovered as they did after previous recessions. The Office for National Statistics recently found that net national income – the total income available to citizens – had fallen by 13.2 per cent four years after the onset of the 2008 recession, whereas in the early 1980s and 1990s it had returned to pre-recession levels at a similar stage.

More than one fifth of British workers are low-paid and the proportion is higher than in comparable economies. Nearly 10,000 more working families every month require housing benefit to help pay their rent. The Trussell Trust, which provides food banks helping people in crisis, fed twice the number of people in 2011/12 as it did the previous year.

In these circumstances, bullish talk of economic growth and investing in infrastructure is not enough: the benefits will take too long to reach those living in and on the edge of poverty. Neither is it enough to expect the policies of localism alone, which seek to devolve powers to local communities, to make a difference in our most deprived neighbourhoods. We need localism that creates work and opportunity, rooting recovery in the communities that are most crying out for it.

The route to a more productive, dynamic and sustainable economy in the UK begins when people can live lives that fulfil their potential and sustain their wellbeing. That will not happen when many are unable to contribute fully to the public good.

ResPublica’s report is called Responsible recovery: A social contract for local growth. The title takes the current political debates about fairness and places them in the context of real people’s lives, arguing that reciprocity and contribution are at the heart of any sustainable recovery, and that government policy needs to be geared to enabling all to contribute to the best of their resources and abilities.

For that to happen, policies need to be people-centred, locally accountable and locally responsive. The report takes the ‘sustainable livelihoods’ model that has been tried and tested in the context of international development, and picks up on work by Oxfam and Church Action on Poverty to apply it in the UK. It views the journey out of poverty as a shift from surviving to coping, from coping to adapting to change, and from adapting to accumulating.

The assets people need to accumulate to escape poverty are not just material. They include social assets such as family, friends and neighbours; human assets such as practical skills; and public assets such as local services, infrastructure and community organisations.

Undermine one set of assets through policies such as the ‘bedroom tax’, which forces individuals with ‘spare’ bedrooms to move or lose benefit entitlement, or through funding cuts to local voluntary organisations, and it becomes harder to build the others. The loss of affordable childcare, for example, can make all the difference between a job being worthwhile and becoming a poverty trap.

The report proposes three interrelated approaches designed to build and sustain individual and community assets in order to enable people to contribute fully to society.

Secure and affordable housing is the first building block. By developing intelligently, with a view to long-term community sustainability rather than short-term completion targets, housing providers can lay the foundations for well-functioning communities.

Second, the public services that support poorer communities need to be opened up to them, providing job and training opportunities for those who are on the edges of the labour market. The Fresh Horizons social enterprise in Huddersfield shows how local people with limited experience and qualifications can provide locally sensitive and accountable services such as home repairs, childcare and youth work, and managing community facilities. In doing so they bring income into the community and provide positive role models for friends and neighbours.

Third, government needs to localise employment support and the Work Programme so that it is sensitive to local labour market conditions and trusted by local people. Current policies make little distinction between looking for a job in Surrey and trying to find work in Sunderland. Local accountability and conditionality must be coupled with an approach that encourages all to contribute to their communities, valuing the time spent volunteering, not just the time spent filling out job application forms.

The paper puts forward a raft of recommendations to help put these approaches into practice. These include extending participatory budgeting schemes; ‘community deals’ devolving services to locally accountable organisations; selecting housing providers on the basis of their long term investment in communities; and using procurement and contracting to create local social and economic value.

None of these proposals are magic bullets. But all involve a shift of mindset that values and supports people living in our poorest communities and views them as equals. That’s why we call it a social contract for local growth.  

by Jane Gray, originally published by Transition Culture   

In Scotland at least, rural areas are politically ‘soft’. It’s a critical mass thing – we simply don’t have enough bums on seats to bring in the big guns. Market-based approaches don’t give the necessary returns and publically-funded initiatives don’t justify a particularly high level of investment when you’re lucky to have a population density of a third of the national average.

Don’t get me wrong, there are rural investments and there are rural initiatives, but they tend to be sectoral – you can run a project for older people or younger people or business people or just about any other ‘people’ you care to mention. But it’s a hard sell to persuade those holding the purse strings that rural areas deserve an integrated, holistic approach, an approach based on geographies rather than targeted bits of the population. This piecemeal approach to rural development gradually undermines the sustainability of rural geographies and chips away at our understanding of geographical identity and belonging. As a result of this, power and money and skills and resources have haemorrhaged away from rural communities over the decades, to be only partly replaced by the energies and aesthetic of a legion of culturally creative incomers.

By contrast, investment and funding seemingly pours into urban communities, especially those in multiple deprivation, layer upon layer of initiative and innovation delivering ‘outputs’ and ‘outcomes’ and ‘metrics’ and endless reports and evaluations. Hopefully, along the way, a little seeps through to improve the lives of those people actually living in the communities, not just the project worker’s salary grade.

Does this sound like sour grapes? It isn’t, honest. Just an irritation that we continue to use an outdated ‘development through growth’ paradigm that sees urban and rural areas as separate and in competition with each other for resources and that each new batch of funding serves only to reinforce the separateness and the stereotypes each area holds for the other.

To read the full article click here