Sleat Community Trust have double cause for celebration. On 1st June they took over the ownership of 1,000 acre of Forestry Commission woodland in south Skye and on 2nd June the Trust was awarded the Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service.

The Trust has been discussing potential joint projects with the Forestry Commission in Tormore Forest for many years including the development of native woodland, trails for walkers and bikers and education facilities for local children. When the forest was officially put on the open market, Sleat Community Trust registered an interest and then had 18 months to raise the funds.

Chris Marsh, who lives in Sleat, has been appointed Community Forester. Overall management is through Sleat Renewables Ltd a subsidiary of the Trust. Mr Marsh said “This gives Sleat not only ownership of its first large area of land, but also control over an important community asset. For the first few years, work will inevitably focus on the extraction of some of the mature timber to help cover our current costs, in order to develop a number social projects which will enhance the area and create local jobs.”

Local fundraising asked for sponsorship for each acre of ground and various agencies and banks provided loans and grants. These included Social Investment Scotland, Triodos Bank, Highland Opportunities, Highlands and Islands Enterprise, the Tudor Trust, Highland Council and the people of Sleat and beyond.

The Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service

Just after the official purchase of the woods, Sleat Community Trust was officially notified of the receipt of The Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service. This is the highest award given to volunteer groups across the UK for outstanding work done in their local communities.

Duncan MacInnes, who recently stepped down from the Board as Chair and Vice-chair, said “We are delighted with, and honoured by, this award. It is a big thank you to everyone in Sleat who has been active in the Trust and supported it in many ways. The Trust has developed a close working relationship with local landlords, our Community Council, Sabhal Mòr Ostaig Gaelic College and other community groups. Collectively this is creating a bright sustainable future for Sleat.”

The Sleat Community Trust has almost 500 local members, which is 80 percent of the adult population. Their achievements include purchasing the local filling station and garage in 2007 with Big Lottery funding, and taking over the management of one of Sleat’s two post offices in 2009. Sleat Renewables set up a woodchip supply and is collating information for a possible community wind turbine.

The Trust’s ‘Clean Sleat’ project has supported energy reduction and house insulation schemes, provided a community log-splitter, an infra-red camera and other equipment. It encourages development of community and individual vegetable growing with a rotovator. Sleat’s Great Bike Week has worked with local school children to make cycling more common and safer.

Author: Kaiya Marjoribanks, Stirling Observer

GARGUNNOCK villagers have a few more weeks to wait before realising a dream take over of their local community centre.

Stirling Council’s executive was told that things were on track for the transfer but councillors decided to delay a final decision until a meeting of the full council within the coming weeks.

Council leader Graham Houston said: “A lot of information has been going around at the last minute so I feel it would be prudent to take the item to the full council.

“The council stands willing to make the transfer but we need the proper assurances in place and further explanations may be needed.

“Some information has been submitted but I think we need a fuller explanation and for that reason I think we should perhaps take it to the full council. It’s not a question of the council not wishing to do this. It’s about what security it requires to have over the property if anything should go wrong. We don’t want that to happen but we just need a clearer idea of what that security looks like.

We are currently in the position of saying that the request is not unreasonable and this shouldn’t hold anything up but I think there’s a difference of views on some aspects so we just need clarification.”

Gargunnock Community Trust first asked to acquire the centre from Stirling Council in 2008 and the council’s executive agreed in principle to the transfer.

The decision hinged on funding for the refurbishment and extension of the centre being secured by the trust. Last year the trust confirmed it still wanted to pursue the transfer but now wanted a revised scheme on a smaller scale.

Earlier this year the community centre management announced it had been given £148,000 by the Scottish Government and Leader towards the refurbishment of the centre.

That will be added to £90,000 from the Gargunnock Estate Trust, £20,000 from the Stafford Trust and money raised by locals.

Final handover of the grant is dependent on the centre being transferred to community ownership by Stirling Council.

Sport Minister, Shona Robison today pledged a new fund to support community ownership and management of sport facilities, and the creation of at least 100 Community Sports Hubs

Those were just two of the commitments she made during the first parliamentary debate in her new Ministerial role.

The related points of Ms Robison’s speech were :

• The creation of at least 100 Community Sports Hubs across Scotland by 2014; there are currently 56 in 20 local authorities
• A £500,000 fund to encourage community ownership and management of sport facilities

Ms Robison said:”In Scotland we are uniquely placed to reap considerable benefits from sport and activity. Not only will 2014 see us host two of the world’s greatest sporting events in the Commonwealth Games and the Ryder Cup, it will of course also be our year of Homecoming.

“The events of 2014 will place Scotland well and truly on the global stage and it is around the Commonwealth Games in particular that our vision for a sporting nation will crystallise – a vision where Scots are helped to become more active, where physical activity is embedded in our culture and where our athletes excel.

Major sporting events can stir our passions and rally a real sense of nationhood. But it is at a community level that we have seen the maximum benefits of sport being realised. Community engagement and development lie at the heart of our commitments and that is why we have made today’s pledges on both community sport hubs and funding to encourage community ownership.

Author: Polly Toynbee, Guardian

‘Let local people decide!’ sounds fine in rhetoric but reeks in reality. The consequence is services sold out or gone forever.

Here is a great example of what pollsters call the public’s “cognitive polyphasia”. In plain language it means we want impossibly contradictory things. As the localism bill returns to the Commons for report stage today, the government should be warned that while people love the Ambridge sound of localism, they deplore the postcode lottery it brings.

Brave would be the politician these days who refused to pay lip service to the localist idea: who could be against local people taking making local choices, until you ask what and how? Labour in power was utterly conflicted, pouring out initiatives for community action while raining down centralised diktats.

Now here comes Eric Pickles, not conflicted but deceiving. Tory devolution hands down responsibility for failing to finance local services, devolving the blame for cuts. His bill squares the problem: if the money doesn’t cover all that councils are obliged to do, this bill gives him the power to revoke any inconvenient duty on councils. Parliament has painstakingly passed laws obliging councils to do things we regard as essential to civilisation, but this gives ministers Henry VIII powers to strike any of them out at a stroke.

There may be daft regulations on the statute book, but this includes everything from the duty to protect children at risk to providing libraries, free parking for the disabled or enforcing food safety laws – all lumped together as “burdens” that ministers could scrap without further debate. From protecting ancient monuments, wildlife and hedgerows to the mental health act, child poverty act, homelessness act, adoption and children act, the chronically sick and disabled act – hundreds of laws will become open to summary removal.

Labour has no chance of winning its Commons amendment to stop this legislative vandalism, but the Lords may yet rebel. If you find it hard to believe how much of the fabric of social protection could be snuffed out at the whim of ministers, pause to scrutinise the official list of “burdens”, listed on the Communities and Local Government website..

This act is a powerful mechanism for shrinking government, amid Pickles’ ritual abuse of “bureaucrats” and “town hall busybodies”. Let local people decide! Let them vote for councils that provide whatever services they want.

That sounds fine in rhetoric but reeks in reality. Recent local elections show that council elections are mainly a barometer of national, not local, politics. If people rarely vote on local issues, they certainly don’t get much involved: Ipsos Mori finds one in five people claim they might get involved – but only 2% do, no change, despite years of Labour’s community efforts by Hazel Blears and others. Of course participation could and should be better, but people know well that most funds – and most cuts – come from Westminster, where blame usually lies for shortfalls in local services. Pickles stopped reform of council tax and George Osborne capped it, while the Lib Dems gave up on local income tax.

In polls people say they want services to be fair. Equality always trumps local autonomy. Mori’s Ben Page says “Fairness is a strong British value. They say state provision should be the same everywhere – and the buck always stops at the top with ministers.” How extreme is their wish for equal services? Mori found 91% thought the grass in public parks should be cut with equal regularity everywhere. This country thinks nationally when it comes to rights to services. Unpicking all those laws that protect the weak and ensure citizens can trust the food they eat, the water they drink and the air they breathe goes against the grain in a country where these are part of the natural history of social progress. Francis Maude says centralism never did away with local variation, but just see how extreme his postcode lottery becomes.

Remember all this happens while the government massively redistributes council funds from poorer to richer areas. The cuts hit the poorest councils hardest – Liverpool worst – and the richest like Dorset are barely touched. Pickles’ plan to let councils keep their business rates will make the rich very much richer at the expense of poor areas. Currently business rates are centrally collected and handed out according to need. Once keeping their own business taxes, the City of London gains £517m, Westminster and Chelsea gain £1.6m each while the great losers are Birmingham, cut by £175m, Hackney by £116m and Liverpool by another £104m. When the government lets councils decide how much – if any – council tax credit to pay poorer households, what will rich areas do? Without geographical sharing we stop being a nation in any meaningful sense. But that is the logic of localism: the little platoons all thriving or struggling on their own.

There is more danger in this bill: Sir Robin Wales, the mayor of Newham, also worries the bill will be a charter for the planning corruption it took so long to stamp out. Developers can get up a small local group to front their plan, with unseen backhanders. Meanwhile the bill lets nimbys stop plans for necessary social housing or unpopular services on their doorsteps.

There is more: any small group can call for public services to be put out to tender. Naturally, this is dressed up in “big society” disguise, promising local people can run their community centre or take over their library and leisure centre. The reality is that the door to everything is being opened to “any willing provider”, as David Cameron revealed in a recent speech.

Yesterday the head of Capita, the outsourcing company, told the Financial Times he had been assured by Francis Maude that the “big society” would not get in the way of large firms taking the lion’s share of contracts. Eyeing one giant £2.6bn contract, he came away saying: “There is absolutely no way on the planet that is going to be let to a charity or a small- or medium-sized enterprise … the voluntary sector will not be a massive player as they simply don’t have the scale and can’t bear the risk.” Exactly that happened with the Department for Work and Pensions DWP welfare to work contracts: 38 of the 40 contracts went to a handful of big firms with success records worse than the jobcentres.

So much is being torn up in a whirlwind, with uprooted services outsourced or gone forever. This government is making sure it leaves behind ineradicable change. As Margaret Thatcher disposed of utilities, David Cameron is disposing of the state.

Housing associations could lead public service reform , Foster Evans , EVH

The Christie Commission’s review on the future of public service delivery is expected to be published this month.
 
The commission is likely to address a range of fundamental challenges, and call for changes. Service redesign might emphasise the need for more working in partnership, including involving local communities, politicians and the voluntary sector. It will stress the need for innovative responsive services designed around what people need. And it will call for early intervention to cut costs later.
 
In our own submission to the commission, EVH have highlighted the potential for local community-based housing associations (CBHAs) to meet these expectations.
 
Many housing associations have been successful in moving beyond being a landlord, doing more than providing good quality affordable housing. There are countless examples of housing associations delivering a range of important local services. We see health and wellbeing as one of the most pressing issues for many of the communities they serve.
 
It is a natural evolution, given that high levels of social rented housing are often found in areas of poor health, poverty and benefit-dependency.
 
A greater integration of effort and collaboration between the NHS, local authorities and the local social housing provider could have a positive effect on health and wellbeing at individual and community level. Top-level commitment to developing this relationship could bring real benefits.
 
Many CBHAs possess a unique community credibility and that high trust relationship could be exploited effectively for the promotion of community health and wellbeing.
 
Their expertise in housing development, professionalism, local credibility and, critically, knowledge of their communities suggests they could provide an ideal platform from which to improve local services as well as the physical environment.
 
There are many good examples, including housing integrated with health promotion, care and other services. These can be isolated; relying on individual initiatives and specific local factors. Re-examining the structural relationship between the social housing, care and health professions should build from these experiences. That way such work can be scaled up to take advantage of the sector’s potential to provide community anchor organisations, around which services can be based.
 
Opportunities presented from the commission’s recommendations could support CHBAs to enhance the services they provide to the communities they serve. This will arise from both a desire to do more and a realisation that current services models will be stretched to breaking point as tensions building between resource constraints and public expectations become more severe.
 
Good health encourages independence and supports opportunity. Communities are built on this. Building better communities attracts people, improves services, enhances assets, attracts investment and supports sustainability.
 
It is interesting to note that EVH’s initial research for this was supported by private sector partners (Cruden Estates and Land Engineering) with an interest in this developing policy landscape and how this will influence the way in which they conduct their future business.
 
There are challenges and opportunities in the reforms to public sector service delivery in Scotland. The housing association sector represents an under-exploited resource for the development and delivery of public services. CBHAs can do more to support this and are ready to translate Christie’s policy recommendations into practice.
 
Foster Evans is director of EVH, who have over 140 housing associations as member employers.
 

Author: Steve Wyler, chief executive of Locality

Charity will use commission’s formula to convey government ideas to community groups

The charity Locality, which has been asked by the government to “help the sector and communities to better understand the opportunities of the big society”, will adopt the definition of big society provided by Acevo.

In its role as a strategic partner to the Office for Civil Society, Locality has been asked to make sure community groups understand the government’s agenda. Other strategic partners have been given responsibilities in different areas.

Steve Wyler, chief executive of Locality, told Third Sector a “working definition” of the term was necessary in order for it to carry out its task.

He said the charity would use the definition (set out in full below) that was published in a report produced last month by the Commission on Big Society, a group set up by the chief executives body Acevo.

Wyler said the OCS had also asked Locality to identify any challenges faced by community groups.

He said Locality would carry out its role of helping communities to understand the big society by telling its members about the provisions in the Localism Bill and the progress of the Big Society Bank, and notifying them of new government funding programmes.

He added that it was equally important to make sure the government listened to criticisms from community groups.

“We will build up evidence about any obstacles that charities and communities face, and take that back to the Cabinet Office,” he said.

“Where things are going wrong we will be in a position to speak truth unto power, but we will also try to find solutions.

“We are campaigning for a moratorium on cuts, so that charities and community groups are given a right to reshape services before their funding is lost.”

He said he did not think Locality’s role as a strategic partner compromised the charity’s independence. “When we bid for the funding we put forward our own agenda and we will now be able to carry that out,” he said.

“The role of helping communities to understand the big society is an additional role to that.”
 
The Commission on Big Society’s definition

“A society in which power and responsibility have shifted: one in which, at every level in our national life, individuals and communities have more aspiration, power and capacity to take decisions and solve problems themselves, and where all of us take greater responsibility for ourselves, our communities and one another”

For a copy of the full report click here

Practitioners with experience of using an asset-based approach to community development have contributed to an important new guide published today.

The new report, Appreciating Assets, published by the Carnegie UK Trust and the International Association for Community Development (IACD), comes as the UK Government’s Big Society agenda puts increasing emphasis on the role of locally-based practitioners such as Community Organisers who will be expected to understand and build on both human and physical capital or ‘assets’ in their communities.  The resource will help develop a practical framework for asset-based approaches, and helps users reflect critically on the policy environment.

Chief Executive of the Carnegie UK Trust, Martyn Evans, says it is about helping build on the ‘assets’ that are to be found in every individual, group and community:

“The central message is that it is possible to produce remarkable results through the hard work of local people who have learned to build on community strengths rather than dwelling on weaknesses or the absence of abundant resources.  Assets are not just the things you can put a price on, they are also about people, skills and opportunities.  The report provides a valuable contribution to the debate, raising issues the public and third sectors are now having to consider.

“Although many asset-based approaches, and the frames of reference for them, have come from North American experiences, there is a wealth of relevant and rich experience from the UK.  This publication sets out a range of UK experiences and frames them in a global context.  This helps us examine a much more broader and sophisticated set of issues around asset-based approaches, across a broader geographic and historical context than has previously been the case.”

Appreciating Assets explores what is meant by ‘assets’ and how to appreciate assets – both physical and human – drawing on experiences from across the globe.  It presents a holistic overview of asset-based approaches to community development, looking into the assets of people, the politics of assets, and how assets are grounded in places and in communities.  It was produced by the International Association for Community Development (IACD), with support from the Carnegie UK Trust, and is the outcome of a nine-month enquiry process, initiated at an international event in London in November 2009, which focused on the applicability, challenges and potential of using asset-based approaches in a UK/Irish context.

Ingrid Burkett, President of IACD says the strength of the publication is that it sees seasoned practitioners share their own hard-won lessons about building more vibrant, sustainable communities – even through tough times:

“This report aims to incite discussion and dialogue in practice, policy and academic circles about the place of assets-approaches in community development.

“The report is also timely given the conversations about the future of community development that are happening, both in the UK and Ireland and also, increasingly, around the world, as governments and community organisations alike examine new ways of working with people in communities.”

Appreciating Assets goes behind the scenes of asset approaches and offers a critical but practical perspective of how these approaches have shaped and will continue to shape community development.  As well as tips and checklists, the guide is full of questions that groups and individuals need to consider such as ‘when is an asset a liability?’ and ‘what skills are needed to enable – rather than stifle – community initiative?’. It is important reading for anyone currently working in community development, but also anyone engaged in or concerned about the practical realities of the Big Society agenda. It offers helpful insights for practitioners, policymakers and community members alike.

Notes for Editors
For more information and to speak to the people behind the report please call John Macgill, media adviser to the Carnegie UK Trust on 0131 557 7727 (including out of hours).

The Appreciating Assets report is the outcome of a nine-month inquiry process, initiated at an international event in London in November 2009.  Across different fields, from regeneration and community development to health, a new language of ‘assets’ is helping practitioners find new ways of tackling old issues.

The International Association for Community Development (IACD) is a not-for-profit, non-governmental organisation with members in over 70 countries worldwide. Its aims are to promote community development across international policies and programmes, and to provide opportunities for learning, networking, information and practice exchange.

The Carnegie UK Trust works to develop evidence-based policy to support beneficial change for people living in the UK and Ireland. The Trust is one of over twenty foundations worldwide endowed by Scots American philanthropist Andrew Carnegie

For a copy of the full report –  More than GDP: Measuring What Matters, click here

This report explores the complex issues hidden behind two simple questions: what is Progress and what is Prosperity? It argues that GDP is an insufficient and misleading measure of whether life in Scotland is improving or not. It takes the findings of the 2009 Stiglitz Report,2 which emerged from the Commission set up by President Sarkozy to advise on how better to measure economic performance and social progress. It recommends that the new Scottish Government applies these to creating a performance framework better able to deliver, measure and report on economic performance, quality of life, sustainability and well-being. The report also shows that over-reliance on GDP as a measure makes it difficult for politicians to back policies that are good for society or the environment if they might hamper an increase in GDP.

The Scottish Round Table which created this report was established by the Carnegie UK Trust to look in more detail at how to better measure economic performance and social progress in Scotland. We were concerned to ensure that the strong social structures and healthy environment, necessary to create a flourishing Scotland, were not overlooked as a result of working to measures mainly focused on economic activity. In short, we are  advising that the Scottish Government should measure what matters.

In the short-term, Scotland’s new Government needs to learn from the experience of measuring a wider set of indicators through the National Performance Framework (NPF) and engage with and be guided by the recommendations of the Stiglitz Report to create a new framework with new indicators.

In the medium term – which we see as being across the next parliamentary term – the Scottish Government should work alongside wider civil society to host a much wider debate about the aspirations of Scotland, the relevance of wellbeing as a goal and how we can develop better measures of well-being that resonate with the wider population.

Our two main recommendations for the short and medium term lead us to four key factors in applying the Stiglitz Report to Scotland.

1. When the Scottish Government chooses what it measures, it is by default defining what matters, and what it focuses attention and resources on;
Our Round Table is clear that too much emphasis is currently placed on the importance of GDP as a measure
of progress. It is an important indicator but not one that should predominate. It should simply be one of a small
select number of indicators used to track economic performance and social progress. Through its NPF the previous administration made an attempt to move in this direction. That Framework can be a building block in helping Scotland go beyond GDP; by creating Scotland’s ‘GDP Plus’ dashboard of headline indicators.

2. Whatever the Scottish Government measures, the critical issue is connecting this measurement to the actions that help move Scotland towards its end goal;
While the new Government needs to consider how to improve on any framework or dashboard, more critical is
working to ensure that it is better used in policy making and in clearly aligning work across each part of government. Over the last four years, Scotland’s Government used the NPF to improve how performance was measured. We saw this as a significant development in how government is organised. Certainly others outside of Scotland have much to learn from this recent experience. However, we do not see that in practice our Government used the Framework to its full potential, or that it led to more informed or joined up-decisions.
The Scottish Government made the NPF the responsibility of national and local government. Next, Government
must look more closely into how to build a sense of shared responsibility and partnership in both deciding the
contents of a framework, and then in aligning the work of local government and agencies to ensure effective
partnerships on the ground.

3. To achieve well-being we need to look at how we measure, deliver and hold Government to account;
Over the last four years, Parliamentary accountability has not been based around the Framework. This has meant that, outside of the civil service and Cabinet, few people have understood how to use the Framework to scrutinize Government performance. Government’s chosen method of reporting – Scotland Performs – is thorough but technical, and does not encourage a debate about how better to organise government and develop and deliver better coordinated policies. It is also not very well known outside central government. Scotland Performs should be maintained – it is critical that statistics are easy to access and use and seen as objective – but our preference would be for Government to report annually against any dashboard or framework it sets itself. A critical factor is the need for wider civil society to also hold Government to account. What we choose to measure defines what is important, and what Government focuses its effort on. If we want Government to be more ambitious and focus on delivery of well-being, wider open and public discussion will be crucial.

4. Having reviewed in detail the 12 recommendations of the Stiglitz Report, we are of the firm view that they are relevant and timely and the new Government needs to make their implementation a priority;
Below we set out our 12 recommendations, with advice from our Round Table on how to implement the findings of the Stiglitz Report. If the Scottish Government wants to be better at delivering well-being through having a healthy economy, and by tackling inequalities in our society, then it needs to take the Stiglitz Report seriously and look closely at our findings to see how they can be implemented in Scotland.
While our focus has been on Scotland, our findings are relevant across the UK. The UK’s four governments all
need to better understand how to measure well-being and report on their own performance. Our Round Table was established in Scotland in part because of existing Scottish interest in this topic. We also see that other governments can learn from Scotland’s experience in using performance frameworks. It is vital that the UK’s four governments take lessons from each other in reviewing and applying the Stiglitz Report. We would like to see more cooperation on this vital topic.

Author: Polly Toynbee, Guardian

On Monday, David Cameron will again try mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on his “big society”. It took another near-death blow from this week’s report by the Commission on Big Society, which found 78% of voters say they have no idea what it means. What began as a clever replacement of Margaret Thatcher’s notorious “no such thing as society” has eluded both popular imagination and real-life substance. Lord Wei, its standard bearer, has retreated somewhat. His inability to define it flummoxed officials, as he issued nothing but stirring anecdotes of good citizens – of whom, thankfully, there have always been many. The Third Sector Research Centre says a steady 25% of people volunteer at least once a month, with twice as many in prosperous areas.

But 5 May 2010 was Year Zero to Cameron’s government. Nothing good ever happened before, with nothing to learn from the last decade. Soviet-style, the past is eradicated. The very names of policies that worked well have been airbrushed from the record. For there is nothing new about the big society. Labour embraced communitarian ideas, influenced by Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone call for social capital in an atomised society, and with Richard Sennett’s call for mutual respect in poor communities. Neighbourhood renewal schemes were a hallmark of Labour policy, but you would think Labour’s “V” initiative for young volunteering or Volunteering England never existed.

Instead, here come the National Citizens Service and a new bank holiday for volunteering – though the commission’s report found 80% unlikely to use their day for community activity. Around 2,500 community organisers are to be trained – but the contract was carefully not given to Citizens UK because it is too good at this, and in danger of organising against the cuts. Meanwhile, Timebank, mobiliser of 300,000 volunteers, has been axed by civil society minister Nick Hurd – a great surprise. I chaired its 10th anniversary debate where Hurd praised it to the skies and tweeted a congratulation for “countering the cynicism of the big society”. But even it fell in the purge.

Next week I’m summoned to give evidence to the public administration select committee’s hearings on the big society. Of course, I’ll start by saying it’s A Good Thing: whose heart isn’t warmed by volunteers improving their own and others’ lives? But Cameron’s big society words are hollow when he strips the voluntary sector bare. Peter Kyle, acting head of Acevo, the charity CEOs association, says £1.4bn government funding has been cut from charities this year, rising to £3.1bn by 2013 – replaced with a paltry £100m “transition fund”. Thousands of applications rushed in and each charity had to prove it had suffered at least a 30% government cut.

In search of big society ideas, I will urge the committee to look at the New Deal for Communities, the boldest initiative ever tried. This week I visited Aston Pride, the NDC that topped the 39 schemes Labour created in the nation’s worst areas. Each was given about £50m to spend as local people chose over 10 years. That committed funding drew together communities weary of half-hearted previous attempts, always abandoned when money ran out. The 17,000 inhabitants of this multi-ethnic, high-unemployment patch of Birmingham had 17 often fractious mosques and six diverse churches, but slowly and with difficulty they came together and transformed the place.

A shabby, underused park was renewed, now with beautiful sports grounds; a local museum refreshed; a new health centre reaching people the NHS had neglected; schools springing to life through bringing headteachers together, funding equipment and giving a hot breakfast to every child. The main emphasis was on training and job-finding, with money skilfully levering in funds from other partners. The results were spectacular, with lower crime than the city average, school results and youth employment that rose faster, while antisocial behaviour fell. Small businesses were supported and hundreds of volunteers took qualifications.

Perfect? No. But the change is remarkable. When Aston Pride ended this March, local people were mortified at receiving no recognition, not even a junior official from Eric Pickles’s Department for Communities to visit, or a letter of praise for being the top NDC after all those years of giving so much and overcoming such obstacles. Simon Topman, a local manufacturer who took over the chair of Aston Pride after it ran into early trouble, expresses his disappointment, afraid that with all support gone, the area may start to slide back again.

But above all, he is indignant that the government does not want to learn how it was done. This really is the big society, creating new local champions, bringing people together in the hardest places, levering in outside help. Cameron would not like to know the truth: it only happened with money so local people could employ their own chosen professional support – and those things are not free. In Witney, people have time and money – but in places like Aston, with no resources, nothing happens. This is not a little light volunteering in the library – this is heavy-duty hard grind, often quarrelsome, and the people who made it work really are local heroes, whose own lives were changed. But that’s all erased from the record. All that hard-won experience in creating community is lost.

However, the big society can still sound great. David Brooks, the currently fashionable US guru, author of The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character and Achievement returned from a London visit to eulogise the big society in the New York Times on Friday. Though a journalist by trade, he seemed to have swallowed Cameron’s press handout whole, without inquiring into the truth of any of it. Just about every word of this short article is misleading (including views he attributes to me). He says: “The [big society] legislative package has been a success.” There is no such thing as yet. He praises Cameron for decentralising, for giving local communities money to “run things themselves” (what money?) and says “Cameron’s reforms are fostering the sorts of environments where human capital grows”. Where has he been to see that? He concludes, “No other government is trying so hard to tie public policy to the latest research into how we learn and grow.” Or, sadly, how we deliberately forget and shrink. Let’s hope New York Times readers are not so easily deceived by travellers’ fairytales – so far British public cynicism is rather better grounded.

A full copy of the response from the Forum can be seen here

Glasgow and West of Scotland Forum of Housing Associations (GWSF) has published its response to the Scottish Government’s discussion document about regeneration, Building a Sustainable Future.

Written by Dr Kim McKee of the Centre for Housing Research at the University of St Andrews, the paper draws on discussions with many of the 50-plus community-controlled housing associations and co-operatives (CCHAs) who are GWSF members.

GWSF Chair, Peter Howden, said: “I am pleased that the Scottish Government invited views about the future of regeneration policy earlier this year. We have submitted our paper to the new Government and look forward to discussing it with them, in particular the greater role many CCHAs are willing and able to play in regeneration.

“Regeneration is as much a part of what CCHAs are about as the lettering is in a stick of rock. We are part of our communities, so we know at first hand that good housing is not enough to tackle really deep-rooted issues such as poverty, poor health and inequality.

“Kim McKee’s excellent paper captures the current achievements of CCHAs in taking local action, to make their communities stronger and better places to live. And it sets out a vision of how we could take things to a new level in the future, through our own efforts as community anchor organisations and with commitment on the part of government and public bodies to support to community-led regeneration.

“I would stress this isn’t just about how much we spend on regeneration, it’s about how well we spend it. In the current climate, it’s vital that we get the best value out of available resources. CCHAs show that local, community-led solutions help achieve exactly that”.

Dr Kim McKee said: “CCHAs are more than just social landlords. Given their local scale and place-based focus they are important anchor organisations in their communities. They add real social and economic value through their significant contributions to cross-cutting policy agendas around health, worklessness and inequality. With more support, they have the capacity and potential to deliver even more.”