Uproar about Tesco’s Development Plans in Partick
There’s a rammy going on in Partick and the sons and daughters of the rent strikers are up in arms in protest about the proposed Tesco store and other development plans in Beith Street.

STOP, the organisation formed by residents to campaign against the Tesco applications are supported by Architecture and Design Scotland and Historic Scotland.

Fuel was added to the fire when the old Partick Station Ticket Office was suddently demolished in January, 2007. The removal of this local and historic landmark provoked an uproar and harnessed further support for the campaigners.

Samer Bagaeen outlines the issues in his article on the dispute:

Uproar against Tesco’s proposal for a ‘Tesco Town’ in Glasgow’s West End

This proposal by Tesco involves a Tesco 24-hour superstore, student accommodation, student union, leisure centre and underground parking on land on Beith Street in Glasgow’s West End. All details relating to this on-going dispute can be found on the website of the residents group formed to campaign against this application – STOP (Stop Tesco Owning Partick. Supporting documents from Architecture and Design Scotland, Historic Scotland, and extensive media coverage including the BBC television and BBC Radio Scotland can be accessed via this site.

STOP is arguing that this proposed scheme by Tesco (http://www.stoptesco.info/tescoplans.htm) does not comply with Glasgow City Council’s own policies on retail developments, quality and design, greenspace or landscape and several Scottish Executive policy notes including those on transport, retail and town centre development. [They further allege that] The proposed density on site is totally inappropriate given that the density of the proposed student accommodation, located on top of the 24-hour store, is excessive in both height and footprint.

STOP argue that the traffic flow impacts of this scheme will be overwhelming. [And allege that] Tesco’s own traffic impact assessment is flawed. [They further believe that] The traffic impact of the development will be substantial and the mitigation suggested will not adequately address this increase in congestion and traffic levels, and makes no assessment of the likely impact of the development to the problems of on street parking already existing in the surrounding area.

Early in March 2007, the group’s chairman has set up an e-petition on the Scottish Parliament’s website calling for the Scottish Parliament to consider and debate the traffic, environmental and sustainability impact on existing communities in designated town centres of large 24-hour supermarket developments. This can be accessed

Culag Community Woodland Trust was delighted to be awarded over £227 thousand pounds from the Big Lottery under its Investing in Communities Programme, for an Access Improvement and Training Project on the Little Assynt Estate, near Lochinver.

The project involves upgrading a waymarked walking route on the Estate that connects with other recently completed paths including the award winning All Abilities Path. This new route provides better access to the historic remains of a Pre and Post Clearance settlements and provides access into wilder land and the chance to see golden eagles, black throated divers on a SSSI designated loch, and other rare flora and fauna. It could also provide a much needed asset for the community on which potential outdoor recreation related business could be developed. Local Scottish Natural Heritage area officer Sue Agnew, said “We are delighted that the Trust has received the backing for this path which will see visitors and locals enjoying and learning about our natural heritage in this special area of Scotland. We are sure that many others will now visit the SSSI.”

But perhaps the key to this project lies in the opportunities it will give to the people of the community. Its key aim is to provide training and employment in path building and related rural skills. Over the 2 year construction period, workers will be able complete an SVQ and therefore gain the skills and confidence to do more path and rural skill related work in the area.

The success of the award has been widely praised. Local MP John Thurso who attended the opening of the all-abilities path highlighted the importance of the project for the area. “This new path initiative by CCWT has a wide scope of ambition including tourism, well being, skills training and care for biodiversity,” he said. “It demonstrates that close partnership between several groups in a small community can make a real difference, and I have no doubt that it will prove to be a valuable community asset.”

Over the next few months, the Trust will be trying to secure match funding so that the project can go ahead – hopefully by early summer. With the support of the Lottery already secured, the rest should be easy…!

Author: Radical Economics

I was a teenager in the 1930s (phew! That might put me off the map!). It was a time like ours today. We were troubled spectators watching from the sidelines as far away disasters came closer.

Dictators and invasions on the up and up. Abyssinia, Spain, Czechoslovakia. Back home, massive unemployment in the ‘distressed areas’.

Plus the arms race -a David Low cartoon showing a flock of bewildered sheep confronted by a gaggle of carnivorous beasts emerging from the portals of their conference centre, telling- those sheep: “Sorry, we can’t resolve everything. It’s all because of your aggressive instincts. “

Then, in the 1940s, came the f Blitz. Local government bombed out and ineffective, and people at street level taking over, improvising shelters in church crypts and warehouse basements, fighting fires with stirrup pumps alongside the Auxiliary Fire Services, setting up rest centres in local clubs where people could come up for air –and , a cuppa, and maybe a sing-song – in the lulls between the bombing.

Those local clubs and a sort of survivor’s joie de vivre saved the day. And when the local authorities recovered from their break- down, there was, for a while, a new and better relationship between Us and Them.

Later, working in war-torn Sicily, Italy and China, I witnessed the same process of self-discovery in the face of disaster.

SINCE then, following up in other parts of Europe and in Mrica, the Caribbean and the
USA, there have been opportunities to develop tools –like Planning for Real -which help to bridge communication gaps: home-made 3D models of a key building, or a derelict area, or a housing estate, or the bus routes in a town -coupled with Now Soon Later priority charts -eye-catchers attracting attention wherever people foregather, getting everyone off their butts and clustering around, trying out alternatives with the help of a thumb size ‘option’ cards, gradually sorting out agreement about

What needs doing, Where and When. As to Who can help in the doing -the first step is an informal survey, done by a handful of residents, each going house-to-house with a
skills list, extending from being able to do a skateboard kick-flip to computer technology and accountancy, via cookery, gardening, music-making, joinery and chatting people up to get them involved.

The process has caught on in many parts of the world. The reason people give is that it brings Us and Them -whoever they happen to be -together, literally on the same footing, exploring possibilities and priorities side by side, not confronting each other in a public meeting or across an official’s desk. Our motto: Eyes down, hands on, rubbing shoulders and a lot less Big Mouth. Gradually identifying what we can all agree on, How ‘best to get cracking, and Who else might lend a hand.

A Kenyan village pastor summed it up: “We have discovered that we are sitting on gold -our own human resources to get things done.”

THE SELLING point about the Planning for Real technology developed through the
Neighbourhood Initiatives Foundation, and later the Scarman Trust, and parallel approaches linked to net -time banking, BizFizz, Slivers of Time -is that the talk is an informal supplement to ‘hands on’ action.

‘Leadership’, if the notion is needed at all, is shared. The key is joint ownership. A bunch of teenagers taking part in a city-wide Planning for Real, planned and planted a row of saplings boarding a main road.

A year or so later, a van driver inadvertently backed into a young tree and crushed it. The teenagers were ready to massacre him “for damaging OUR tree”.

In another city, long after a successful Planning for Real, the chief executive rang me up out of the blue to say that he was commissioning a bigger project –the transformation of a disused college campus -“because my officers are still talking with residents and all the time both sides are using each other’s first names”.

The joint action planning is a bit like a family party tackling a jigsaw puzzle together. Aunty and the kids working on a few jigsaw pieces. Granny and the uncles sorting out another lot. And then the clusters connect and the: whole picture takes shape. No need for anyone to ‘take the lead’ -and if Granny tries it, she’ll be quietly ignored.

The dangers and opportunities confronting us Now, Soon, Later are part of our everyday lives. Teenagers and granddads in the same leaky boat. Our response so far as been too often hamstrung by our dependence on competing leaders who rely for on words to allay our misgivings.

Words “that are substitutes for action, often a cover-up. Spin masks sleaze. The gun-runners, money- manipulators, forest-destroyers get away with their several kinds of murder whilst our religious, racial and cultural affiliations are seen as obstacles to the combined operations needed to repair the damage.

A French cartoon stays in my kind. Two toddlers, boy and girl, face to face, inspecting what lies within each other’s knickers. And the caption: “Vive la difference!”

Being different, not being separate. And all of us with shared awareness, street crime, dog shit, traffic dangers, drug peddling, alcohol abuse, inadequate play facilities, the needs of the frail and housebound. These are common concerns and could be shared opportunities” to tackle them together.

The facts speak for themselves; no need for doctrinaire statements. And so do the opportunities: bulk buy co-ops, credit unions, multi- cultural festivals, advice centres, gardening clubs, teenager fashion shows, keep-fit classes -you name it.

IT’S LATE in the day. It is crucial to reach across the barriers of race and religion which are creating a new and lethal apartheid. It’s not being nice to each other (that’s incidental). Well-meaning homilies don’t go far enough either. What matters is the fellow- feeling that comes from joint efforts and gets results, with a bit of laughter and chat along the way.

No mission statements, ego-trippers, committee-mongering. Leadership, if it is needed at all, is team leadership, with a canny eye to the needs and opportunities that everyone can agree on, here and now.

Common ground as the base, shared achievement as the spring- board to bigger things. As Tom Paine put it -making Common Sense.

Author: DTA

The forthcoming Community Empowerment White Paper seeks to increase the ability of the individual citizen to influence local decisions, improve local services, take on civic roles, and hold officials and councillors to account.

But as many in government recognise, community empowerment is not achieved simply by people acting as individuals alone. It is also about people who are excluded from power organising themselves, building alliances with others and creating vehicles to bring about positive change.

We are delighted to invite you to an afternoon of high-powered debate and a reception at a stunning new community venue in London’s South Bank on 5 June. The symposium will investigate the role of multi-purpose community anchors, examine the growing momentum behind community asset ownership and community-led social enterprise, and how these relate to community empowerment and explore the implications for community investment and support.

The symposium will bring together over one hundred key people at the heart of these issues including local authorities, government agencies, policy makers, funders and those at the forefront of social change.

Further information about the event is available on the attached programme or visit www.dta.org.uk/symposium.

If you would like to attend please return the attached booking form as soon as possible. There are limited places available and similar events held in previous years have been oversubscribed, therefore early booking is advisable.

Download Programme here

Download Booking Form here

Author: Katrine Bussey

RURAL communities in Scotland were given a huge cash boost yesterday.

A total of £57.7 million is being made available to help “grow” local economies, improve facilities and conserve the environment.

It is the first wave of funds to be released under the £1.6 billion Scotland Rural Development Programme, designed to empower communities at grass-roots level, and is made up of cash from the Scottish Government and the European Union.

The money will be matched at local level with both public and private funds, potentially doubling the amount available to communities.

Richard Lochhead, the environment secretary, said: “This is a massive investment in rural Scotland which will see decisions taken in local areas on how best to support a wide range of grass-roots community projects.”

A total of £38.5million from the funding package will be distributed across all of rural Scotland, while £19.2million will go to the Highlands and Islands.

Sixteen local action groups will administer the cash and Mr Lochhead said: “The fact that all funding decisions are to be taken locally will greatly empower community decision-making.”

THE North Harris Trust (NHT) has been awarded £900,000 from the Big Lottery Fund to support the purchase of a community wind farm.
This marks a major step forward in the Trust’s plans to site a wind farm at Monan, on Harris.

Three 86 metre turbines will be erected on the site, and it is anticipated that the renewable energy project will result in a 1.8MW community owned wind development on North Harris, generating income averaging £180,000 each year over 12 years.

Calum Mackay, North Harris Trust Chairman, welcomed the grant.

He said: “The North Harris Trust is delighted that the Big Lottery Fund has awarded this generous grant towards its proposed community wind farm. This development will bring considerable benefit to the entire North Harris community in the years ahead.”

David Cameron, NHT Development Officer, explained the difference this funding will make.

He said: “Developing a community wind farm is similar to doing a jigsaw and the Big Lottery Fund contribution is a vital piece of the funding picture. We are therefore extremely pleased that the Trust has received this generous financial award from the Lottery. It is equally important to us that this award is acknowledgement that what the people of North Harris are trying to do, has strong support from outside the community.”

Western Isles MSP Alasdair Allan commented: “I am very pleased that the North Harris Trust have secured this funding for their community renewable energy project which will result in a 1.8MW community owned wind development on North Harris, and which will generate a significant source of income for the North Harris Trust and the local community.

“Hopefully this is one more initiative which will allow the North Harris Trust to invest in local projects to revitalise the area, and hopefully stabilise and grow the population.

“It is no secret that Harris is desperately in need of economic regeneration and I am delighted that the knock-on effects from this funding will allow investment in the local community to create new employment opportunities, develop initiatives to release land for affordable housing, promote tourism, environmental sustainability, and to help tackling the problems of fuel poverty.

“I would like to add my congratulations to all at the North Harris Trust who have worked so hard to secure this funding for the future of the island of Harris.”

Author: Regeneration and Renewal

From the start, the eco-towns should create opportunities for new residents to build their communities, and create development trusts to deliver local public services. These are the key messages of new guidance on eco-towns by the Department for Communities and Local Government and campaigners the Town and Country Planning Association (R&R, 28 March, p2).

These aspirations cannot be faulted: early investment and an upfront community development process – including mapping existing services, building resource centres to provide space for activities, organisations and small firms, and recruiting community workers – are sensible moves. Crucially, the simultaneous planning and implementation of physical, environmental and community development are integral to achieving cohesive and sustainable communities. Timely advice, but does it go far enough?

Planners and developers often talk about community, but it usually comes a poor second to hard infrastructure projects, with such facilities being provided long after residents arrive. Fantastic community capital projects may emerge, but often with limited revenue attached or little thought given to financial sustainability. The last generations of new towns are littered with crumbling, cash-starved community centres desperately turning too late to the development trust model to inject entrepreneurialism.

The guidance pinpoints the key factors in creating sustainable community infrastructure: early planning and investment coupled with a key delivery vehicle – namely a community trust with an endowment released over time – to manage public services. However, the guidance fails to explore the true potential of trusts.
Trusts can provide a community’s glue, manage facilities and create income. But such activity also needs ongoing funding through local taxation or grants. The alternative is building enterprise into the endowment, using freehold property and land to attract community projects such as rented business space and energy projects.
Community investment, ownership and management through a trust can deliver long-term benefits to residents and happy places to attract potential purchasers of new developments.

Author: The Guardian

Unhappy days are here again. This is the season of a ghoul-on-every-page. Each February Britain opens Pandora’s box and out leap a hundred serial killers, multiple rapists, child molesters, “scumbags”, stabbers and feral bingers. The BBC adores them – it even sexed-up Monday’s news with footsteps of a stalking killer – and so does the press. “Collapse of society as we know it” is the nation’s annual X rated movie. As for Pandora’s last gift, hope, we wait in vain.

Reaction comes from the familiar army of moaners, platitudinisers and retributionists. To the tabloids, the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah is too good for modern Britain. Where are the parents, the teachers, the moral leaders? Apparently they should all be lined up and shot for dereliction of duty. Ten years ago, I bet a Labour government would be so terrified of the far right as one day to bring back internment, torture and hanging. I already win on the first two.

The bromides are always delivered in the passive voice. Yesterday the nation’s supposed moral leader, the Archbishop of Canterbury, wrote on these pages about what “ought to be done” about young people in public. They should be made welcome. Others suggest something should be done about parents, the police, teachers, social workers and the latest guardians of the social contract, alcohol salesmen. Something should always be done by the government. Responsibility is never active and first person singular.

Something is missing from this cacophony and I know exactly what it is. A tier of social control has been lobotomised from British public life. There is nothing between the individual or family unit on one hand and the central state on the other. Britain has fallen into De Tocqueville’s trap of an atomised society, where “every man is a stranger to the destiny of others. He is beside his fellow citizens but does not see them … while above them rises an immense and tutelary power, that of the state”. We have lost the habit of association.
The nearest any British community has to local government these days is the police force. Local leadership is a 999 call. Whether it is a rape epidemic, an unruly school, trouble with immigrants, a released paedophile or bingeing teenagers, the community appears before the world as a police officer. There may be walk-on parts for a firefighter, a priest and, bringing up the rear, a national MP. But the figure of reassurance and authority in any British town nowadays is in uniform (which is why Muslims turn to their mullahs).

Go to any community abroad, whether in America or France or Germany or the Netherlands, and that figure will be a locally elected official, normally a mayor. He or she may represent a city, a village, a neighbourhood or just a block association, but they will be known by their people and trusted. Mayoral name recognition in France and Germany is 80%-90%. Legitimacy rests not on a uniform but on a vote.

The renaissance in US cities over the past quarter-century has depended on civic leadership supplied through election. The same applies to the newly confident cities of Spain and eastern Europe. It is to mayors and councillors that parents, businessmen, farmers and teachers naturally turn in time of trouble. It is they who barter local power, cut deals, express civic pride, reward and punish, as they have done through history.
The still stumbling urban revival in Britain requires anonymous party-based councils to plead with regional offices of central government. Local elections no longer make an appreciable impact on policing, health, education or economic development. Councils retain no fiscal discretion to aid communities with social clubs, sports halls, libraries, parks or playgrounds. In my London borough, not only have we no neighbourhood council but we are not allowed to elect our own councillor lest he or she “represents” us alone. We are merged with neighbourhoods elsewhere. This is no incentive for civic leadership.

In France there is an elected official for every 120 people, which is why French micro-democracy is alive and kicking. In Germany the ratio is 1:250; in Britain it is 1:2,600. In France the smallest unit of discretionary local government (raising some money and running some services) is the commune, with an average population of 1,500. In Germany that size is 5,000 people. In Britain the average district population is 120,000, and even that body can pass the blame for any service deficiency to central government.

Cynics sneer at the “calibre” of local councillors. Yet nobody will exercise leadership in a community if denied the power to make it effective. I do not believe that British citizens are unique in Europe in being incapable of taking responsibility for their communities. They may prefer to sit at home and blame others but if you reduce local institutions to consultative status, consultation is all you get, not leadership.

Of all nationalisations in British history, none has been so corrosive of the public good as the nationalisation of social responsibility. I am not starry eyed about the vigour of local democracy abroad. It is messy, bureaucratic and often corrupt. But it appears to yield communities more able to discipline themselves and their young, and more satisfied at the delivery of their public services. They do not throw nearly so many people in jail. Local newspapers are not, as in Britain, filled with impotent whinges against central government. Local leadership is considered a duty by citizens permitted to exercise it.

Britons have come to regard democracy as they do weddings and funerals, a ritual to be endured as briefly as possible. In every other part of the world, however poor, community coheres round some forum of elected, appointed or anointed body, where grievances are aired and redress is sought by people living and working together and, to an extent, governing each other. In Britain this is found in some rural parishes but is virtually unknown in urban and suburban areas.

In recent years, a phoney mantra about civil society has been preached by Gordon Brown, David Miliband and Hazel Blears, usually presaging an expensive and meaningless “conversation with stakeholders”. Such top-down paternalism is not self-government and never will be. Democracy bites only when it votes, taxes and delivers. Only then do its participants have the legitimacy to enforce social responsibility and communal discipline. We can moan as much as we like, but all else is for the birds.

Author: LPL

Scotland’s first large-scale tidal energy project is to be installed on the island of Islay. Members of the community-owned Islay Energy Trust have backed creation of the commercial-sized project, which is to be built in collaboration with Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen.

Scotland’s fifth-largest island will become home to between four and six turbines with a total capacity of around 2 megawatts. Developing the turbines is expected to cost up to £750,000 and should take around three years to complete. Once in operation, revenue would be generated from the sale of electricity.

‘It’s a very innovative business model,’ said Philip Maxwell, chairman of the Islay Energy Trust. ‘Instead of the conventional route of involving a large energy company or turbine manufacturer, the community is taking the initiative.

‘We aim to ensure that any exploitation of the considerable tidal energy resources in the seas around the Isle of Islay yields substantial and sustainable benefits to the community, as well as providing greater energy security.’

Scientists have estimated that marine power could generate one third of Scotland’s renewable energy needs, with the seas around Islay holding particularly rich potential.
Islay, famed for its malt whisky, is already home to the world’s first commercial wave power station – Wavegen’s Limpet at Portnahaven. Waves are driven by winds; by contrast, tidal power taps the energy of the Moon as it raises tides around the Earth.

The new proposal for Islay is a major step forward in the commercialisation of tidal energy exploitation which could ultimately generate enough energy to supply about 5 per cent of total demand for the UK. It will also make a contribution to meeting Scotland’s target of 50 per cent of electricity coming from renewable energy resources by 2020, and could reduce carbon dioxide emissions by around 4,000 tonnes a year.

‘Tidal streams offer a substantial and predictable source of renewable energy and this is an area where RGU has specific expertise,’ said Dr Alan Owen, of Robert Gordon University’s School of Engineering.
It is hoped that the pre-feasibility study, which will evaluate potential tidal resources, locate possible sites for the underwater turbines and prepare for the environmental impact assessment, will be completed by the end of the summer.

Author: New Start Magazine

It’s sometimes hard to understand why, when you know that something works and the evidence shows it can really make a difference, it is not more universally retained and delivered in a form that maintains the features that make it work. For me, neighbourhood management (NM) is one of those things.
The neighbourhood management pathfinder (NMP) programme was announced in 2001 by the former ODPM. Pathfinders were funded through government offices and launched in 2002 primarily by local authorities in 35 deprived neighbourhoods.
New Labour’s policy action team four wanted to test the idea that neighbourhood management might be an effective tool to ‘enable deprived communities and local services to improve local outcomes, by improving and joining up local services, and making them more responsive to local needs’.
I was lucky enough to get a pathfinder job as a neighbourhood manager and was responsible for establishing the Changes in Common NM programme in the London borough of Greenwich. It seemed the perfect opportunity. After years of working in disadvantaged neighbourhoods, here was a programme that made sense. Bottom-up would meet top-down. The effective involvement of a community in expressing its priorities would be combined with service improving, problem solving and joining up at a neighbourhood level. It was the first proper experiment since the costly attempts at devolution by Tower Hamlets and Islington in the 1980s.
Could better intelligence, an agile team, a community development process, and emphasis on delivery (rather than delivering) make the difference? Could real change in outcomes be delivered in disadvantaged communities for less than 10% of the cost of previous regeneration programmes with a new focus on ‘bending the mainstream’?
Many of us running the round one pathfinders felt instinctively that this approach would make a difference. Not only would services be better joined up and more relevant and accessible to local communities, but communities themselves would be engaged in their delivery. Step change might really be possible. When we began there was continuous support from the ODPM with special events and training for the neighbourhood managers, and ongoing supervision of the programme by the government offices. Crucially, if your local authority was not ‘playing ball’ the mere mention of involving central government would get things back on track.

Getting results

So, six years on, what have we learned? We are awaiting the next review from the national evaluation team led by 5QW, but the 2006/07 review was impressive. Average awareness of the programmes by communities was 67%; satisfaction in street cleansing had improved by 8% in pathfinder areas over three years compared to a drop of 2% in control areas; satisfaction with police services was up; and contrary to popular belief, two- thirds of reported changes to mainstream services had gone beyond ‘crime and grime’ issues and were focusing on housing, health, education, children’s and youth services, NM was enabling better ‘joining up’, better
use of local knowledge, and improved access and take-up of services. NM was already showing its ability to contribute to the worklessness agenda by improving access to jobs and adding value to the mainstream providers in promoting enterprise and inward investment, The pathfinders were also demonstrating that they could promote greater citizen engagement, more voluntary activity and increased social capital.

The report concluded by saying ‘the 2006 local government white paper set out a series of ambitions for local government -more responsive services, empowered and cohesive communities and strong local leadership which is”, focused on improving whole areas rather than just individual services. From our review of the nature and benefits of the pathfinders we believe that neighbourhood management initiatives can make an important contribution to this vision’.

All this from a team that had been initially sceptical of the approach! So what has become of neighbourhood management in the age of ‘double devolution’, or ‘devolution to the doorstep’ as Hazel Blears likes to call it? With top-down targets reducing, a new national indicator set, local area agreements (LAAs), and the impending corporate area assessment (CAA) due from April 2009, will NM survive this changing landscape? The answer is not simple and in some ways is quite perplexing.

An expanding approach

On the one hand, the future looks bright. Every govemment paper and review from Lyons to Flanaghan advocates the approach. The National Neighbourhood Management Network, from a base of 35 projects, knew of 250 by 2006 and is now in touch with 360 partnerships (SQW undertook a recent piece of work for DCLG and is aware of 500).

As it prepares for its metamorphosis into an independent member-supported body at some future date, the network is quite satisfied with progress, Fiona Sutherland, who co-runs the network, explains: ‘Central government funding which is specifically ring-fenced for the purpose of supporting neighbourhood management met its demise some time ago, but we have not seen any corresponding decline in network membership. Many of our members are already supported by mainstream funding from local authorities, the police, housing organisations and other local agencies who have been convinced of the benefits of neighbourhood-level working.’

On the other hand, a plethora of approaches to local working are being attempted, but some are not quite as comprehensive and lack the evidence base that NM has. Many local authorities are nobly and ably working to implement their own versions of ward or sub-ward level working to address local priorities and better engage communities. Wolverhampton has expanded its original six pilot NM areas to cover the whole city with its local area and neighbourhood arrangements -11 areas have local NM teams and four have area coordination from the centre. Newcastle has developed a long- standing Ward committee approach to deliver a series of local process called ward coordination, and are now planning to implement city-wide ward plans. Lewisham, in addition to existing NM programmes in its most disadvantaged areas is in the process of rolling out local assemblies to all its wards, as is Westminster. I was personally involved in the roll out of NM in Barking and Dagenham where the seven most disadvantaged wards now have a ‘pathfinder light’ three-staff model with a small budget and neighbourhood partnership, while the rest of the borough gets a ‘lighter touch’ approach working closely with the safer neighbourhoods police teams in each ward.

Uncertain future

These are just a few of the many varied and excellent examples of how approaches to devolution and localism are developing. There are clearly risks with this roll out. The NM model that is nationally evidenced has seven essential elements to it (as defined by the national evaluation team in the Rough guide to neighbourhood management that was produced in 2006). Often, elements are missing when NM is scaled up, most notably adequate and real levels of community involvement, a neighbourhood manager with clout, a team, and a neighbourhood premises. There is no evidence to suggest that the many hybrid versions of NM being developed are going to be as successful as the pathfinder model has been.

With NM, the evidence is growing that this approach to disadvantaged neighbourhoods has been proven to improve services, deliver on many key local outcomes, and improve community
cohesion, civic engagement, and voluntary activity. Yet DCLG still suffers from the need to make ‘the next big announcement’. So we’ve recently had new pilots in participatory budgeting and neighbourhood charters, a replacement for the neighbourhood renewal fund focused on worklessness -the working neighbourhoods fund -and more and more papers such as last month’s consultation paper from the DCLG, Unlocking the talents of OUT communities.

We are about to get a new white paper on community empowerment that asks such questions as how can we tackle worklessness and promote enterprise in the most deprived areas, what steps are needed to revive involvement in local civic roles, and how can we best increase opportunities for communities to hold local public officials to account?

With the NMP programme and the work that has gone on across local authority areas up and down the country, I thought we were much further along in finding more holistic answers to these questions. As for using this and translating it into current policy, either the DCLG is failing to learn from the past or else it has simply got stuck in a never-ending quest for ‘the next big thing’.

It is also hard to understand why some local politicians understand and nurture local approaches, yet others seem to actively shun the national body of evidence and momentum towards localism. Perhaps they find devolution too threatening, or maybe it’s a matter of ideology (though every political party engages in local working somewhere in the country).

Interestingly, perhaps the single biggest problem of this relatively laissez-faire approach is the message that with central government no longer driving the agenda it will be down to councils and their local partners to decide whether or not to ‘do’ NM.

Previously, the simple fact of central government’s commitment to the pathfinder programme was a useful lever to people at grass roots level who could use it to force the hand of local government agencies. Now that’s all changed and communities do not have any kind of ‘call in’ to central government -certainly not through the community call for action. So if you live in a disadvantaged area within an authority that is developing strong local approaches you may well begin to see the seeds of improvement and better opportunities. But if you live in an authority area that is not developing in this way, or is actively blocking local initiatives that do, tough luck. Is this a new postcode lottery? As a devolutionist, I can’t help thinking the government moved away from its top-down approach just as it might have been able to achieve its objectives with some of the bottom-up answers it was developing (confusing, I know.) My hope is that the CAA will be able to ‘out’ the poorer performers and the democratic process will then deliver the change.

Take the case of my old programme, Changes in Common, in Greenwich. This NM partnership tackled one of the most disadvantaged neighbourhoods of any of the pathfinders. Satisfaction levels were some of the lowest. Over the six years it has been in operation, it has massively increased the number of residents aware of the programme and involved in it, and who feel they are able to influence local services. It has achieved or over-achieved on the targets that were set out in 2001- from hugely reducing the percentage of council tenants seeking transfer, to reducing the gap in recorded crime. It has even managed to impact on the more elusive measures – the gap in rates of unemployment with the borough average has reduced; key stage two and GCSE results are markedly improved, and even teenage pregnancy has halved. Under the strong influence of local residents it developed a nationally acclaimed neighbourhood ‘one stop shop’ where residents could get joined-up support on most local issues and services -housing services, children’s services, a Jobcentre Plus, Citizens Advice Bureau money advice -with the NM team and neighbourhood police team located upstairs.

Despite its success, there is no borough-wide approach to NM in development nor support to sustain the new ways of working that have proven so effective. As the NM programme reaches its conclusion there is confusion in the community. It has won the support of local residents and traders in the effort to transform Woolwich Common -a job that was always destined to take longer than six years -and this support will now be much harder to regain in the future.

Changes in Common isn’t alone. Blacon NMP in Chester has delivered a hugely successful resident- led programme that has seen crime fall, fear of crime reduce, educational attainment increase, unplanned teenage pregnancy go down and overall significant increases in resident confidence in local services. A good example of its success was with the abandoned/arsoned car scheme Car Clear Plus which reduced arsoned cars from 80 plus per year in 2003 to just three last year. This scheme alone made net savings in excess of £308,000 last financial year.

The pathfinder will leave a strong legacy through an independent community trust which is now the biggest Blacon-based employer (40 people) with a turnover next year in excess of £1.7m of which the majority is earned income. Yet the approach is now at risk. The strength of their NM lies in its holistic, bottom-up approach that is facilitated by a core team. The core NM team have had redundancies hanging over them since December 2006 when the Government started devolving the NM budgets through the LAA, giving the local authority more power.

The new executive at Chester Council has embarked on a major programme of cuts across the whole council which has left the NMP budget exposed. As a result, NM posts that should have been secure to 2009 are now at risk.

With Cheshire County Council also under review, and despite Chester and Cheshire’s commitments in their sustainable community strategies and LAAs, the future of NM in Blacon is back in the hands of the two authorities that arguably brought about the failing services and neighbourhood in the first place. One Blacon resident recently commented that observing the councils on this issue was like watching two fleas on the back of a dog arguing over which one owns the dog!

I’ll give another Blacon resident the last word: ‘As a community we aren’t going away! We have had a taste of neighbourhood management. If you don’t support it now you will only have to reinvent it in the future. Top-down does not work.’