people before structures - demos · movers and shakers. the strategy for neighbourhood renewal...

People Before StructuresEngaging communities effectively in regeneration

Paul Brickell

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C o n t e n t s

Acknowledgements 6

Foreword 7

1. Summary 11

2. New Labour’s aspiration to involve communities in 15regeneration and neighbourhood renewal

3. Why traditional models of community involvement 19are failing

4. Clues from an entrepreneurial model of 32community involvement

5. Piloting Neighbourhoods in Business alongside 44Neighbourhoods in Committee

6. A new type of local democracy and a new role for 59local government?

Notes 65

First published inNovember 2000

by Demos, with the Community Action NetworkThe MezzanineElizabeth House39 York RoadLondonSE1 7NQ

© Demos 2000All rights reserved

Arguments 27ISBN 1 84180 080 5

5

This page is covered by the Demos open access licence. Some rights reserved. Full details of licence conditions are available at www.demos.co.uk/openaccess

F o re w o rd

I have read with delight and a great deal of enthusiasm this impor-

tant analysis of community regeneration; of where we are and

where we might be, as we become more aware of a new culture grow-

ing in our midst: the culture of the social entrepreneur.

This new force is paving the way for a bold and exciting form of

community regeneration, exemplified by projects like the Bromley

by Bow Healthy Living Centre, but also by others, tried and tested,

large and small, all over the UK.

The practical nature of these grass roots projects reveals an impa-

tient longing for a new way of doing business in the social sector. We

are done with the talkfests that have dominated our politically cor-

rect, endless meetings. ‘Just do it’, is the cry of the new breed of

movers and shakers.

The strategy for neighbourhood renewal outlined in this timely

work provides an opportunity to go beyond setting up yet more

stru ct u res and commit tees, to act u a l ly tra n s fe rring signific a n t

power and resources directly to community organisations and the

social entrepreneurs who lead them. Many of these people have

years of experience delivering real change in communities across

the United Kingdom. The real issue is one of trust. At the moment,

too much of the government’s focus is on audit and, although essen-

tial, audit can never be more than a means rather to an end. It can

never be a substitute for trust within the community.

The pragmatic attitude of the social entrepreneur chimes with

the expressed social policy objectives of the new Labour government

and gives a firm footing to the reality of Third Way politics, whose

bottom line is backing projects that work and make a difference.

Foreword 7

A c k n o w l e d g e m e n t s

I am indebted in very many ways to the community that has devel-

oped around the Bromley by Bow Centre over the past sixteen years

and with which I have been fortunate to be associated for the past

five years. This learning community has taught me as much as I

learned over twenty years at universities in this country, as a student

and as an academic scientist.

This argument is an attempt to capture some of the experiences

and insights of this community and to feed them into the national

policy debate around neighbourhood renewal.

The argument has also been shaped by numerous conversations

and debates with colleagues and friends in other organisations

engaged in the task of regeneration and renewal in East London.

These include councillors and officers at both Newham and Tower

Hamlets Councils, Steve Stride, Anne Matthews and colleagues at

Poplar HARCA, and Michael Owens and colleagues at Leaside

Regeneration Limited.

I am particularly grateful to Allison Trimble from the Bromley by

Bow Centre, Helen Matthews from Bromley by Bow United Reformed

Church, Andrew Mawson and Donald Findley from the Community

Action Network and Tom Bentley from Demos for their many

insights and for their critical reading of drafts of this argument. I

am also grateful to Peter Thomson for his comments and for his

enthusiastic foreword.

Any insights or creative thoughts in this argument belong to all

these people. The errors and misunderstandings belong to me.

6 People Before Structures


solidarity of one class against another, but a desire to belong to the

whole. This power of being ‘the people’ is perhaps the most striking

phenomenon of our time, where friendship and mutuality embrace

the other pillars of democracy, freedom and equality. Friendship is

the core of our human existence. This is the radical edge of the

social democratic agenda. It is a spiritual phenomenon, in that it has

recovered the sacred embedded in the secular, coming from the

depths of our human existence: earthed, fragile but nonetheless

real. This visceral, incarnational theology is the touch stone of Third

Way politics, giving us direction, hope and confidence, rooted as it is

in those perennial values of our common humanity.

The twenty first centur y, the new millennium, has already seen

the birth pangs of this new positive reality. People Before Structuresis

a rigorous, critical and timely work, consistent with it. We continue

to build the road as we walk it, but before us go the bold ones, the

social entrepreneurs.

Revd Peter Thomson

Foreword 9

Partnership is the name of the game. The social sector seems

ready to embrace the lessons of best practice, which the private sec-

tor has refined, and both are eager to respond to a more ent repre-

neurial climate. We have something important to offer each other.

We are eager to do business. We are about wealth creation, not wel-

fare. Together with the public sector, whether central government or

local authorities, we can recover the critical factor, the need to back

‘people before structures’. This would give the necessary traction for

our engine of opportunity.

We need each other to do good business and these new-found

partnerships provide a pool of resources essential for future well-

being. Together we can effect change. It is an opportunity, not a

problem, as we attempt to overcome the often polarised past and

work together for the common good. This time we must leave behind

us the political ideologies of both the left and right, grasping the

future with confidence and trust, using modern technology as an

opportunity for real progress, knowing only too well that progress is

not an inevitable outcome of change.

People Before Structuressuggests that we can recapture the spirit of

good business, and that an exercise in refocusing is proceeding

apace.

It sounds the note for the new social democratic agenda. We are

coming out of our private boxes, where like vertical silos function-

ing separately, we have so retarded our development towards social

and civic maturity.

This liberation is to be celebrated as an act of faith in our trust

and acceptance of each other for bringing different parts of the

solution. It is an act of humility as well, in our ready acknowledg-

ment that none of us have all the answers.

Democracy is entering a new phase, a more positive phase,

aligned to practical action, but based on faith and trust. The type of

community this involves is inclusive, open and bold. Communities

work by trust, families work by trust, and unless neighbourhood

renewal works by trust and encourages a culture of trust, it will

never work.

It seems to me that we are recapturing the uniqueness and the

power of ‘we-ness’, our sense that we need to belong. It is like a new

understanding of solidarity, of fraternitas. It is not about the tired



1. Summary

‘Community’ has been one of New Labour’s central rhetorical planks

since its inception. The bonds of community are seen as a source of

social good in themselves and as a tool for regenerating and renew-

ing parts of society neglected during previous decades.

New Labour has promoted the idea of community strongly, for

example by making ‘community involvement’ a key requirement of

urban regeneration programmes, a driver of local government

reform and a key feature of its Strategy for Neighbourhood Renewal.

However, the means it has articulated to realise its vision – of a

nation of communities that are energised and equipped to deliver

their own renewal – has been far less successful. The UK govern-

ment’s overall approach to community regeneration is in danger of

failing because of its inability to engage communities in a dynamic,

entrepreneurial and widely inclusive way.

The rhetoric has suggested a radical, entrepreneurial approach,

but in practice New Labour thinking focuses more on management

than on enterprise, and more on formal representation than on

direct practical involvement. The government seems set on creating

‘communities in committee’. Its objectives are being stifled by the

institutional forms on which it relies. This pamphlet argues for a dif-

ferent approach, supporting ‘communities in business’ by transfer-

ring significant power and resources from public sector institutions

to the community and private sectors and to social entrepreneurs.

The announcement in late 2000 of a Neighbourhood Renewal

Fund (NRF) to tackle the chronic under-performance of public ser-

vices in the country’s most deprived neighbourhoods underlines the

danger. NRF money will be placed entirely into the hands of local

Summary 11


gramme of ‘neighbourhood renewal’ a realistic ambition. However,

these lessons are being ignored and dissipated by the approach to

governance and representation that is now taking shape.

A series of experiments would enable the more effective spread of

this culture. In particular, the government should support Neigh-

bourhoods in Business pilots as part of its Strategy for Neighbour-

hood Renewal, alongside the more traditional Neighbourhoods in

Committee pilots that are now beginning to appear.

Neighbourhoods in Business would have a specific remit to exper-

iment with methods of service delivery that transfer power and

resources from public sector institutions to the community sector.

They would involve a wider range of partners, including the private

sector, in generating innovative approaches to the challenges facing

deprived neighbourhoods. They would also have a specific remit to

experiment with models of local democracy based on participation,

networking and mutual learning, rather than on traditional repre-

sentation.

This will, in the long run, test the strength of the government’s

commitment to devolution. Rather than seeing devolution in terms

o f c re ating more polit icians and more inst itutions, this new

approach involves redistributing power and decision-making discre-

tion much more widely among communities. As such, it carries a

greater implicit threat to vested institutional authority and to estab-

lished political interests. However, the long-term rewards that it

offers quite clearly outweigh those risks.

Putting people before structures requires a number of specific

policy changes:

● the direct transfer of capital assets, revenue streams and formal

control of neighbourhood renewal programmes to community

groups and social entrepreneurs

● more openings for private sector involvement, not just in deliv-

ery of large scale service programmes, but also in imaginative

problem-solving and entrepreneurship

● a new, networked approach to learning from success and fail-

ure, based on systems of horizontal accountability, peer review

and close inspection of practice

● increased transparency in public sector decision-making

Summary 13

authorities and community involvement will centre entirely upon

representation on ‘Local Strategic Partnerships’. In aiming ‘to help

raise outcomes for those living in the most deprived neighbour-

hoods’ government policy seems to miss the point that it’s not out-

comes that need raising, but incomes.

This managerial and representational approach risks creating

structures that are no more than miniature local authorities. Such

structures will be no more enticing to local people than their larger

counterparts. The consequences will be missed opportunities: to use

local service delivery as a tool for the economic development of com-

munities and to revitalise local democracy. If this happens, New

Labour will fail to deliver either power or prosperity to people living

in the disadvantaged neighbourhoods it seeks to renew.

New Labour’s difficulty in delivering on its rhetoric lies partly in

the fact that attempts to systematise innovative approaches often

tend to focus on replicating institutional arrangements, rather than

on developing a culture. In addition, many of the public sector

employees given responsibility for developing these approaches have

no real incentive to understand or support the groundswell of activ-

ity that would make community involvement real and effective.

Perhaps most important, the entrepreneurial approach required

poses a st i ff ch a l l e n ge to ch e rished pri nciples of d e m o c rat ic

accountability, equity and risk management, which are strongly

defended by many politicians and public officials. This defence has

not weakened, despite the fact that the current formulation of these

principles has demonstrably failed, over decades, to deliver power or

prosperity to the poorest communities in the UK.

Across the country, a growing number of people have grown

weary of the traditional methods of community consultation and

community governance, which have consistently failed to engage

the interest and commitment of local people or to effect real change

in their lives. Out of this frustration has grown a socially entrepre-

neurial model of community development that has engaged large

sections of local communities in their own regeneration.

This new model cannot be drawn up as a Cabinet Office blueprint

and then standardised across the country. Nevertheless, lessons can

be learned from these examples of practice, and from supporting

their principles consistently, which would make a national pro-



2. New Labour’s aspiration toinvolve communities in re g e n e r a t i o nand neighbourhood re n e w a l

Ever since New Labour invented itself in opposition, ‘community’

has been one of its central rhetorical planks. The bonds of commu-

nity are seen not only as a source of social good in themselves, but

also as a tool for the regeneration and renewal of parts of society

neglected during previous decades. Tony Blair made this the theme

of his first speech as prime minister, delivered in June 1997 on the

Aylesbury Estate in Southwark.1 Spelling out the new government’s

commitment to tackling social exclusion, he announced the possi-

bility of a new ‘alliance between the haves and the have-nots’;

between those with the means to exclude themselves voluntarily by

buying out, and those excluded automatically by poverty or lack of

opportunity. He declared that the government would be defined by

its determination ‘to recreate the bonds of civic society and com-

munity’, and would seek concrete ways ‘to engage the interest and

commitment of the whole of the community to tackle the desperate

need for urban regeneration’.

Three years on, the government has made some progress in pro-

moting this idea. One important means of doing this has been to

make ‘community involvement’ a key requirement for obtaining

funds from government regeneration programmes. For example,

agencies bidding for support from the New Deal for Communities

programme had to show how they would ‘work through local part-

n e rships and pro m o te and sustain community invo lv e m e n t’.2

Similarly, Single Regeneration Budget guidelines require that ‘local

communities should be directly involved in the planned regenera-

tion activities, both in the preparation and implementation of bids’.3

Other initiatives such as the Sure Start programme, Health Action

● a new approach to democratic representation, including more

direct involvement of local councillors in community renewal

programmes

● a Neighbourhood Innovation Fund, to support experimentation

with new ways of working and new ways of funding success

● the use of local service delivery as a tool for economic and com-

munity regeneration, in which local people are directly engaged

in the delivery of services themselves.

14 People Before Structures Involving communities in regeneration 15


For example, the Best Value regime for provision of council services

includes a duty to ‘consult with local taxpayers, service users and

the wider business community on how the service can be improved’.4

The 1998 White Paper, Modernising Local Government: In touch with the

people,5 states that the ‘government wishes to see consultation and

participation embedded into the culture of all councils’ and that

‘councils will have a duty to promote the economic, social and envi-

ronmental well-being of their area … [by working] with other public,

private and voluntary organisations and with local people’. The

extent to which local government has failed to achieve this in the

past has been illustrated by falling turn-outs in local government

elections. Spicing elections up with a range of voting gimmicks and,

in the case of London, a directly elected mayor, seems to be making

little difference to the public’s enthusiasm for local government and

the current form of local democracy.

The theme of community involvement has emerged time and

again in the reports of the Social Exclusion Unit’s Policy Action

Teams, and figures heavily in the ‘four imperatives for successful

regeneration’ outlined in the Social Exclusion Unit’s draft Strategy

for Neighbourhood Renewal:6

● to revive the local economy and create wealth

● to revive and empower the community and engage it in shaping

and delivering regeneration

● to improve key public services and to re-engage private services

● to develop local leadership and joint working and find ways to

put deprived communities in the driving seat.

Against this background, it is worth reflecting upon the aims and

likely benefits of involving communities in their own regeneration.

Some of these aims might be:

● to achieve a closer match between the aims of regeneration,

public service delivery and people’s actual needs

● to tackle social exclusion by providing people with opportuni-

ties to reclaim control over public space – both physical and

intellectual

● to release people’s creative energies and abilities

Zones, Education Action Zones, Health Improvement Programmes,

Lifelong Learning Partnerships, Early Years Development and Child

Care Partnerships, and Local Cultural Strategies all require evidence

of ‘community involvement’.

This is an improvement from the time when public sector institu-

tions bidding for regeneration funds barely needed to demonstrate

that they had sought the views of local people, and when the idea

th at a community sector or ga n i s ation might bid for Single

Regeneration Budget funds was greeted with a mixture of disbelief,

alarm and amusement. However, while the rhetoric has changed

c o n s i d e ra b ly, the re a l ity has not. Demonstrating ‘community

involvement’ often means little more than demonstrating the assent

of local people to the local authority’s plans, rather than transfer-

ring control of regeneration funds directly to those people. While

the rhetoric of many regeneration programmes is one of communi-

ty ownership and leadership, the bidding timescales, partnership

arrangements, financial structures and other rules frequently mean

that only large public sector institutions such as local authorities

have the capacity to lead bids. A good example is the Sure Start pro-

gramme, which focuses on the needs of children under four in dis-

advantaged neighbourhoods. This programme places a high premi-

um on community involvement and leadership but has been set up

in such a way that it is nigh impossible for community sector organ-

isations to lead or even to engage effectively, other than on terms set

by local authorities and other public sector institutions. Even when

funding streams genuinely permit community sector organisations

to take the lead – the New Opportunities Fund Healthy Living Centre

programme is a good example – public sector institutions such as

health authorities usually have to give their blessing and, one sus-

pects, have the power of veto. This tends to stifle innovation by

encouraging community sector organisations to conform to main-

stream thinking and to avoid criticising those public sector institu-

tions and funding organisations upon whose goodwill they depend.

These contradictions between rhetoric and reality create a lingering

doubt about the seriousness of New Labour ’s commitment to com-

munity-led regeneration.

Local government reform is a second important tool with which

the government has promoted the idea of community involvement.

16 People Before Structures Involving communities in regeneration 17


3. Why traditional models ofcommunity involvement are failing

If the government has made good progress in spreading the idea

that communities should be engaged in their own development, it

has been much less successful at articulating the means by which

this might be achieved. The prime minister’s 1997 speech on the

Aylesbury Estate set out a clear vision by promising that the New

Labour government would ‘back the thousands of “social entrepre-

neurs” … who bring to social problems the same enterprise and

imagination that business entrepreneurs bring to wealth creation …

people on every housing estate who have it in themselves to be com-

munity leaders’. The government would ‘find out what works … sup-

port the successes and stop the failures … back anyone – from a

multinational company to a community association – if they can

deliver the goods’.7

Realising this vision is highly ambitious, chief ly because it seeks

to systematise – to make part of a national project – the most dynam-

ic, fluid and intangible qualities of successful community organisa-

tion, and to link them with general societal objectives such as dig-

nity, activity, wealth and progress. To add to the difficulty of its

implementation, the vision challenges some cherished principles

that are strongly defended by many politicians and public sector offi-

cials – often in the face of the demonstrable failure of these princi-

ples to deliver for the poorest communities in the country. In par-

ticular:

● It suggests that power and decision making in disadvantaged

neighbourhoods might be vested in individuals or g roups who

‘can deliver’, rather than in representative, elected committees

● to give people access to t raining, employment and enterprise

that provide genuine opportunities to create wealth for them-

selves and within their communities

● to create sustainable communities, by combating the enforced

social exclusion of the poorest and most deprived people, and

the voluntary social exclusion of the aff luent

● to promote social cohesion by creating real partnerships

between very different groups within the community.

It is important to keep these aims clearly in view, particularly since

it is possible to find rather more cynical motives for community

involvement programmes in some parts of central and local govern-

ment. For example, it is not difficult to find examples of public insti-

tutions and other agencies that have been ‘converted’ to the merits

of community involvement simply because it is a requirement for

obtaining government funding.

18 People Before Structures Failure of traditional models of involvement 19


is committed to developing a series of Neighbourhood Renewal

pilots in selected deprived neighbourhoods across the country and

has recently announced its proposals to fund these by establishing a

Neighbourhood Renewal Fund to tackle the chronic under-perfor-

mance of public services in the country’s most deprived neighbour-

hoods.9 So far, so good. However, if the government’s proposals are

adopted as they stand, this money will be placed entirely into the

hands of local authorities and community involvement will centre

e n t i re ly upon re p re s e n t ation on ‘Local Strate g ic Pa rt n e rs h i p s ’.10

Hardly the radical entrepreneurial approach to neighbourhood

renewal that the prime minister appeared to offer when New Labour

came to power.

There is plenty of evidence that good practice – ‘what works’ – is

being studied, but scant evidence that the lessons learned will be

applied effectively across the country. Rather, the lessons are at risk

of being ignored or dissipated by the approach to governance and

representation now taking shape.

This may be because attempts to systematise innovative approach-

es often tend to focus on replicating institutional arrangements,

rather than on developing or growing a culture. In addition, in

many cases the public sector employees given responsibility for

developing these approaches have no real incentive to understand or

support the groundswell of activity that would make community

involvement real or effective.

The priorities in the Government’s approach to stimulating local

democracy, expressed for example in the White Paper Modernising

Local Government,11 are also revealing in this regard. For example, in

spite of the rhetoric, the aspiration to involve people in the life of

their communities is in fact given less weight than the aspiration to

increase the number of people turning out to vote in local elections

– an order of priorities subsequently adopted by many local author-

ities and realised primarily by their experimentation with a range of

new voting arrangements. This is back to front – if we were to put

more effort into encouraging people to get involved with their com-

munities in practical ways, we might find that voting rates improved

– always providing that elected representatives were seen to serve

some useful function in those communities.

The radical, entrepreneurial vision promised by New Labour is in

and boards. It starts with people, rather than representative

structures, and so challenges the dominant notion of what con-

stitutes democratic legitimacy. In doing so, it is honest about

the failure of the existing representative structures of local gov-

ernment to involve, or even to interest, the great majority of

the population – in thriving as well as disadvantaged neigh-

bourhoods. In the long run, such an approach tests the strength

of New Labour’s commitment to devolution. Rather than seeing

devolution in terms of creating more politicians and more insti-

tutions, it involves a further redistribution of power and deci-

sion-making discretion, and a new approach to information and

evaluation.

● It suggests that resources should be directed at ‘successes’ and

not ‘failures’, and so challenges traditional notions of ‘equity’

and ‘fairness’.

● It suggests that resources should be spent on finding out ‘what

works’ – on testing the market by taking risks – and so chal-

lenges existing approaches to minimising financial risk and

accepted views of accountability.

● It suggests that regeneration programmes and mainstream pub-

lic sector spending programmes in disadvantaged neighbour-

hoods should aim to enable the people living in them to create

wealth for themselves and their communities rather than forev-

er being the passive recipients of public sector money.

The signs are that New Labour ’s attempts to implement this vision

a re going badly wrong. Evi d e nce for this can be seen in th e

approaches being taken to promote community involvement in pro-

grammes such as New Deal for Communities and Sure Start and in

the proposals for neighbourhood management outlined in the

Social Exclusion Unit’s draft Strategy for Neighbourhood Renewal.8

The draft Strategy for Neighbourhood Renewal still aspires ‘to put

deprived communities in the driving seat’. Unfortunately, in the

approaches it prescribes to achieve this, New Labour thinking still

appears to be focusing more on management rather than on enter-

prise and more on formal representation than on direct practical

involvement – creating a nation of ‘communities in committee’

rather than ‘communities in business’. For example, the government



tives also have their place, and represent a significant step forward

for many public sector organisations. However, the fact that local

authorities can speak with legitimate pride about their progress in

developing such techniques over the past year or so underlines the

poverty of their existing relationship with the people they serve.

Since these ‘new’ initiatives in public consultation are spoken

about with such uncritical enthusiasm in many quarters, it is worth

reflecting upon their shortcomings. These include:

● difficulties in framing meaningful questions

● lack of clarity about who asks the questions, who answers the

questions and who interprets the answers (the use of power in

‘invisible’ ways to influence the outcomes of debate and consul-

tation)

● over-reliance on external consultants and a perverse under-valu-

ation of local knowledge

● the domination of public meetings by small numbers of indi-

viduals with personal obsessions.

Public consultation exercises frequently ask questions and offer

choices which are so restricted that people are left with little to con-

tribute. At best, ill-f ramed questions can then mislead the organisa-

tion asking them into believing that they have heard the authentic

voice of the community. At worst, questions can be pre-wired to such

an extent that the organisation asking the questions can effectively

pre-determine the answers to suit its predilections, and then present

the results as genuine public consultation.

C o nv e rs e ly, vague qu e stions such as ‘what does the community

want?’ tend simp ly to hold a mirror up to the community in such a

w ay th at limited past experi e nces are re fl e cted back as low asp i ra-

tions. This is a part icular problem in areas which suffer high lev e l s

o f d e p ri vation and social exclusion, ch a ra cte rised by low asp i ra-

tions and the re p e ated experi e nce of p u b l ic sector inst itutions th at

fail to provide effe ctive services or th at promise ch a n ge but fail to

deliver it.

For example, face-to-face household surveys are a favourite con-

sultation tool and have a role in gathering some types of factual

information. They are much less effective at gathering information

the process of being converted into a reinvention of traditional

methods of consultation and structures of representative local

democracy. Some of these methods and structures have their place,

but they have largely failed in the past ‘to engage the interest and

commitment’ of communities, and it is unlikely that they will bring

about the radical change that is now required. Such traditional

methods are being reintroduced in many contexts across the coun-

try, and they operate at several levels.

I n f o rmation provision The lowest level initiatives consist of improving the provision of

information to the public, frequently by developing more ef fective

use of ICT. This is no bad thing, but it focuses on local people as cus-

tomers rather than partners. It is also certainly the case that the abil-

ity of the most socially excluded communities to access and use ICT

lags far behind the ability of public sector agencies to use it to pro-

vide information. In many disadvantaged communities the physical

infrastructure for receiving cable or terrestrial channels is not in

place, ICT is not available either in the home or in local public build-

ings and content is not appropriate for people with language or lit-

eracy problems. Action to address the problems associated with

infrastructure, access and content is urgently required and necessi-

tates flexible and imaginative solutions. For example, difficulties in

creating content that works effectively across barriers of language

and culture in disadvantaged areas could be addressed by develop-

ing content based on local community-based art enterprises. A num-

ber of recently established funding programmes aimed at bridging

this ‘digital divide’ may help in time.

Public consultation A second level of community involvement consists of various means

of public consultation, used to seek the views of residents about ser-

vices and other activities. Techniques include comments and com-

plaints schemes, opinion polls, household surveys, ‘listening days’,

public meetings, citizen’s juries and focus groups. Much of the ‘com-

m u n ity consultat i o n’ curre n t ly used to underpin Single

Regeneration Budget or New Deal for Communities bids actually

goes no further than limited use of such techniques. These initia-



distributing leaflets to several thousand local households, and find-

ing that less than a handful attend. As well as frequently being

unrepresentative by virtue of poor attendance, public meetings are

often dominated by individuals with their own very focused person-

al interest or obsession or with an ideological axe to grind. For exam-

ple, in one east London ward, no public meeting on any subject

escapes a lengthy intervention from a local man on the subject of

public conveniences. Important though these are, they do not war-

rant the level of deep reflection that they receive locally. In disad-

vantaged areas with high levels of mental ill health, public meetings

are also frequently dominated by individuals with mental health

problems and other personal needs. Of course, the same can be said

of public meetings in aff luent areas.

In spite of these shortcomings, many public sector organisations

seem unable to question the legitimacy of public meetings as a

means of understanding the public mind, and unable to accept the

legitimacy of other processes of consultation. For example, the

Bromley by Bow Healthy Living Centre in east London recently

organised a Millennium Festival on Midsummer Day in a local park.

The preparations involved almost 200 local people over six months

and were used as a means to provide accredited training in a range

of skills, from event management to publicity, catering and perfor-

mance. The event and its preparations provided employment and an

opportunity to develop some recently established community-based

enterprises, including a catering business and a grounds mainte-

nance business. Unfortunately, when the planners applied for an

entertainment licence, it was initially refused by the licensing

authority on the grounds that no public consultation meeting had

been held. The many hours spent by many local people over many

months in planning and practical activity did not count. So, the

centre spent time and money delivering several hundred leaflets to

local households, inviting them to a public consultation meeting.

Two people at tended. Although neither had previ o u s ly been

involved in the festival preparations, both fortunately thought it was

a great idea. Given this unanimous support from the community,

the licensing authority were reassured and granted a licence. This

charade was not really the fault of the licensing authority’s officers

– they were simply operating within a set of rules that are com-

about the kind of future envisioned by residents, or the types of ser-

vices or amenities they want. Questions seeking to elicit such infor-

mation frequently prompt a large number of ‘don’t know’ respons-

es. For example when, in a recent survey in East London, people were

asked ‘What help do you want to receive from the community?’, 91.5

per cent answered ‘don’t know’; when asked ‘What do you want to

offer to the community?’, 93.5 per cent answered ‘don’t know’; and

when asked ‘Which … skills would you like to learn?’, 65 per cent

answered ‘don’t know’.

Consultation techniques are often designed and used by profes-

sional organisations with little understanding of the local context.

For example, a housing company in east London recently engaged a

company of professional consultants, based in London’s West End, to

conduct focus groups on one of its estates. The consultants’ report

describes how ‘before each meeting, the focus group facilitators vis-

ited [the] police station to inform them they were carrying £150 in

cash [for participants’ fees] and of the location and time of the focus

group meeting. Both facilit ators pre- p ro grammed their mobile

phones to call the police station [and their head office] in case of

emergency. Wherever possible, additional safety measures were

taken.’ The response of the desk sergeant can only be imagined, but

local people felt either insulted or amused by the perception by

these visitors that their neighbourhood was a war zone. Not surpris-

ingly, much of the rest of the company’s report was ill-informed and

patronising, and the first two ‘key findings’ were that the area was

crime-ridden and unsafe – prejudices of the consultants projected

on to the community they were employed to listen to.

These consultants did at least pay local people a token £10 each

for passing on their knowledge – something that happens all too

rarely. It seems perverse in a world where knowledge is supposed to

be a key commodity with high value that professional consultants

with no local knowledge are paid large amounts of money to extract

local knowledge from local people, who receive nothing in return.

The truth is that both external consultants and local people hold

parts of the jigsaw. Their knowledge sets are complementary and

should be valued as such.

Most public and voluntary sector organisations are familiar with

the common experience of inviting people to a public meeting by



them, and it is interesting that the Local Government White Paper

itself points to appallingly low turnouts in local government elec-

tions as evidence of public disengagement from the structures

themselves. For example, London’s local government elections in

May 1998 saw an average turnout of little over one third, with fewer

than 10 per cent of electors bothering to vote in some wards. There

is no reason to expect that people will suddenly develop much

enthusiasm for such structures in the context of community regen-

eration initiatives.

Why do representative structures fail in this way? A number of

concerns arise:

● They have a poor track record of engaging and sustaining peo-

ple’s ‘interest and commitment’. A repeated experience –

whether with ward forums which have been running for years

or with recently established tenant boards or partnership

boards – is that relatively few people are interested in getting

involved and that even those who begin enthusiastically quickly

get bored or frustrated. The dwindling core of committed mem-

bers can easily become resentful of those who never got

involved or who, having done so, didn’t stay the course. As a

result, the group can find itself devoting more energy towards

trying to recruit new members than to pursuing its goals.

Sustaining significant involvement over the lifetime of a regen-

eration programme is a real problem.

● They are easily dominated by individuals pursuing personal or

ideological agendas.

● They are prey to the attentions of parties of the far left and far

right, who can take advantage of seats on boards that are

uncontested due to lack of general public interest.

● They easily create dependency – for example, by encouraging

the idea that it is somebody else’s responsibility to develop and

maintain attractive and safe public spaces.

● They stifle initiative and creativity – for example by excluding

from their deliberations the great majority of local people who

do not want to, or are unable to, operate effectively through

committees.

pletely inadequate to the task of gauging public opinion.

The festival was a great success, with some 1,500 people attending

between dawn and dusk, and without a single concern or complaint

being raised.

The lesson is that many of our public institutions do not know

how to hear the voices of the communities they serve and are guid-

ed by rules and procedures which no longer have any relevance.

R e p resentative stru c t u re sA third level of community engagement involves the establishment

of representative structures, which are currently being created on a

large scale. For example, one local council has recently set up, or has

plans to set up, over a dozen different types of representative struc-

ture, such as community forums, to which local people can be elect-

ed. Some of these structures simply provide means of information

exchange, while others are charged with formulating policy. A few

have budgets. Many other organisations are also setting up struc-

tures for local representation, and these can be very complex. For

example, one local social housing company, which manages seven

housing estates, proposed to establish a board with two sub-boards,

and seven estate boards, each with two sub-boards; a total of 23 com-

mittees and sub-committees to which tenant representatives can be

elected.

Establishing representative structures for community involve-

ment is seen by many professionals and policy makers as a major set

of new opportunities to involve local people in making decisions

about their lives and their communities. Interestingly, however,

some of the greatest enthusiasts are also the greatest critics. For

example, many council officers and councillors seem driven by cen-

tral government funding criteria into public enthusiasm for struc-

tures of which they are privately suspicious. Such suspicion arises

only partly because of the centralising tendencies of councils; there

is also a real sense that the structures will not work.

There is, of course, nothing new about these representative struc-

tures. They have for many years been the dominant form of democ-

ratic organisation in the voluntary sector, including the Labour

Party and trade union movement, where they have proved increas-

ingly unappealing even to activists. Local councils are also based on



However, sometimes the opposite happens. For example, unlike local

authorities, local housing companies suffer from legislation that

prevents them f rom employing the family members of board mem-

bers. This is a problem for companies with a commitment both to

local employment and to a system of local governance that requires

a large number of local boards to represent a limited number of

households. Inevitably there will be families that have to choose

between being involved as board members or employees.

Other public bodies have discovered the inadequacy of such rep-

resentative democratic structures – sometimes at considerable cost.

For example, an independent consultant recently reported on the

‘resident involvement’ programme of an east London Housing

Action Trust (HAT). The HAT was committed to a high level of resi-

dent involvement and sought to achieve this by means of a compre-

hensive set of representative structures. Residents could join one of

three Estate Steering Groups (ESGs), whose role was to represent res-

idents in negotiations with the HAT and other bodies, to disseminate

information to residents, to obtain independent advice for residents,

to manage an estate office and to stimulate resident involvement.

Each ESG could send representatives to a Joint Steering Group, a

Design Group, a Housing Services Commit tee, a Dev e l o p m e n t

Services Committee and the HAT Board. After five years, and at a cost

of over £500,000, no more than a dozen households – less than 2 per

cent of those on the estates – were regularly involved in these struc-

tures. When questioned, residents seemed not to see the point of the

ESGs and other committees, but expressed considerable interest in

the idea of getting involved in focused practical activities on their

estates.

Like public meetings, representative structures can be paralysed

by sectional interests. For example, the Hjällbo Bostaden social hous-

ing company in Göteborg in Sweden set up a community forum with

representation from all the public and voluntary sector agencies

working locally, as well as from residents. A decision-making policy

based on the need to reach consensus, coupled with a Marxist

Catholic residents’ representative with a love of dialectic, ensured

that no decisions were made for the first twelve months, until the

constitution of the forum could be changed.

● They can too easily, by accident or design, obscure the place

where power actually lies, making it dif ficult for people either

to influence decisions or to find out who is responsible for deci-

sions that have been made. The committee structures of local

authorities are currently being streamlined for this very reason:

it seems perverse simultaneously to spawn new layers of com-

plex representative structures in order to stimulate community

involvement.

The consistent experience of people involved in such structures

in disadvantaged areas (and indeed in many aff luent areas) is that

most people simply cannot or will not join in. They don’t see the

point, or they haven’t got the time, energy, skills or language to sit

on a committee.

Single Regeneration Budget bidding guidance recognises that the

‘mere existence of community representatives in partnerships is not

enough … to ensure that the community has a significant say in deci-

sions’, partly because ‘other [private and public sector] partners are

likely to have greater back-up resources than the community’.12 It

prescribes capacity-building programmes to train community repre-

sentatives to engage effectively with committees. It doesn’t imagine

that it might be equally, or more, important to build the capacity of

politicians and public sector officials to engage with communities

on their terms – a theme developed to some extent in the Social

Exclusion Unit’s PAT16 report.13 Of course, the Single Regeneration

Budget bidding guidance is rather disingenuous in suggesting that a

bit of training is all that is needed to enable people who are

unskilled in committee work to play on a level playing field with

those officers or elected representatives who live and breath com-

mittees. It ignores the subtle, near universal abuse of committees

that allows those with power to manipulate or to circumvent com-

mittee proceedings to achieve what they want.

Compensation for attendance is also an issue. Officials are of

course paid for turning up to these meetings, and councillors receive

allowances of increasing generosity but other community represen-

tatives are usually unpaid. There would perhaps be more virtue in

the system if it enabled some money to find its way into the pockets

of community representatives living in disadvantaged communities.



cers. Unfortunately, although they counted many black and Asian

men and women among their friends, the women could not per-

suade enough of these to attend their committee meetings and so

were unable to tick the council officers’ equal opportunities box.

Meanwhile, another year had passed and the empty building had

accumulated another £50,000 worth of dereliction. The white male

drinkers and the women would have achieved the same scores on

the ‘suitability matrix’ – in fact, the drinkers would have scored

higher because they had been around for longer – but five minutes

in the presence of the two groups would have immediately told any

sane business person where to invest their money.

In summary, both central and local government seem simultane-

ously enthusiastic about ‘community involvement’, but sceptical and

sometimes fearful of the representative structures it seems to entail.

There is confusion and a growing need for better models of com-

munity consultation and community governance.

There are, up and down the country, many examples of organisa-

tions that have struggled with traditional methods of community

consultation and governance for many years and have found them

inadequate tools for the task of engaging people in the regeneration

of the community. In some places this frustration has given rise to

a social entrepreneurial model of community involvement which

has already proved itself in a variety of contexts. The stories of some

of these initiatives contain the clues to a set of principles that could

be generalised in the context of neighbourhood renewal across the

country.

P a rtnerships with community-based org a n i s a t i o n sRecognising that individual community representatives frequently

do not have the skills to participate effectively on partnership

boards, Single Regeneration Budget bidding guidance begins to

think about how to involve community-based organisations in part-

nerships. Local authorities are often afraid to involve community-

based organisations as partners, because they fear that they may be

unrepresentative. Again, this is a particular problem in areas with

high levels of deprivation where political groups from the extreme

left or right may be active. Left to themselves, councils will develop

bureaucratic means of assessing whether a particular community

organisation is an appropriate partner. One recent proposal was to

develop a ‘suitability matrix’ in which organisations were to be

scored on fifteen points, which were then weighted to give a final

score. Community organisations that failed to reach a threshold

score would not be considered as potential partners. By adopting a

bureaucratic solution, rather than by developing relationships with

the community and with emerging community leaders, the council

would be able to present itself as being rigorously objective and fair,

and as promoting equality. Such an approach is unlikely to achieve

any of these things, and will always tend to stifle innovation. It is a

strategy of minimum risk to the council and of maximum risk to

the community.

One recent example of this approach involves a local council-

owned community centre building closed down, rightly, because it

had become a drinking club for old white men, which actively dis-

couraged the attendance of black people, young people and women.

After a year, a small group of young and energetic white women

from the neighbouring estate formed themselves together with the

aim of re-opening the building as a multi-functional community

centre, which would meet some of the considerable needs of fami-

lies on the estate. When approached by the women for permission to

re-open the building, council officers were very suspicious and set

about recreating the women in their own image. They were sent on

courses up and down the country, where they learned how to con-

duct committee meetings and how to write a constitution, an equal

opportunities policy and a complaints procedure. Having jumped

through all these hoops, the women went back to the council offi-



bourhood, but the structure casts participants in roles that leave

them frustrated and unhappy with each other.

The residents’ role is to bring their problems along and to hand

them over to the officers, with varying levels of abuse. There are no

other lines in their script. It is certainly not envisaged that they

might have any part in solving the problems.

The officers’ role is on the one hand to promise to solve the prob-

lems, and on the other to explain why they were unable to solve the

problems brought to the previous meeting. Since the same types of

problem are endlessly recycled f rom one meeting to the next, this

can be a challenging part to play. The officers are not failing to solve

the problems because they are bad or incompetent people, but

rather because their resources and energies are simply outstripped

by the ability of people to generate problems.

Occasionally a senior officer appears as a Deus ex Machinato

explain the latest bright idea for improving service delivery or for

regenerating the neighbourhood. The script says that the residents’

role in this circumstance is to comment sagely on the proposals, to

own them, to adopt them and to love them. More usually, they

assemble themselves into a kind of Greek chorus to rubbish the idea

and to give a dozen reasons why it won’t work – and in eleven of

these the residents are probably right.

The councillors’ role is to referee, unless the officers are smart

enough to make them carry the can.

Instead of involving and empowering residents, the Ward Forum

alienates and disempowers everybody and the Park remains derelict.

The Ward Forum is neither unique nor unusual. Structures like it are

strewn across the local democratic landscape of east London and

elsewhere.

No doubt the council originally took control of the public space –

Bob’s Park – for the best of reasons. When problems arose in the park

there were resources to solve them. However, once problems began

to outstrip resources it began to appear that the council had misap-

propriated the public space – had stolen it from residents who were

suddenly revealed to have no control over it and no permission to do

anything with it. It’s not that the council is particularly bad or

incompetent; like the residents, it has been trapped in a position

from which it cannot win.

4. Clues from an entre p re n e u r i a lmodel of community involvement

B o b ’s Park and the theft of public spaceBob’s Park – named Bromley by Bow Gardens on the maps – lies in

Bromley by Bow in Tower Hamlets, which is one of the most

deprived and socially excluded inner city wards in east London. In

the 1950s and 1960s, Bob’s Park was a jewel in the crown of the

neighbourhood. In many ways, it was a small neighbourhood in

itself – a rose garden for the elderly, a play park for the very young,

a putting green for the more active, all served by immaculate public

conveniences. The decline of this small park illustrates the story of

the decline of Bromley by Bow and similar neighbourhoods across

the country. The story of its regeneration holds clues to the renewal

of neighbourhoods all over the UK.

Bob the park-keeper kept the park just so, but his departure led to

twenty years of decline – a concrete bandstand erected in the 1970s

failed to halt it – until by the end of the 1980s the park was a derelict

mess of concrete and scrub, filt hy with dog’s mess and broken glass

and feared as the haunt of muggers and drug takers.

Bob’s Park, along with the streets and estates around it, belonged

to the council and by the 1990s the Council had established a struc-

ture for involving the community in the governance of these public

spaces – the Ward Forum. The Ward Forum is a smoke-filled room

that doesn’t make deals; a structure that is exquisitely successful at

delivering failure; a place where a few residents come to complain,

where council officers make promises they can’t keep and where

councillors try to keep the peace.

The people who attend the Ward Forum, whether residents, coun-

cillors or officers, are actually deeply concerned about the neigh-

32 People Before Structures An entrepreneurial model of involvement 33


Jean was a young single parent with two children. She cared for

her disabled mother, alcoholic father, and brother with learning dis-

abilities. She also supported two other brothers. She lived in damp,

inadequate housing and was poor; then she developed cancer.

Jean found it difficult to interpret the words of the professionals

who cared for her and was unable to advocate for herself. As a result

she slipped through the net of statutory care. The story of her illness

and eventual death is one of neglect, incompetence. It was driven by

the disintegration of care systems in which various professionals

viewed her from their professional boxes and failed to recognise or

deal with the interconnectedness of her different needs.

The compartmentalisation of Jean’s care, the paranoia with which

information was guarded and the lethargy that seemed to paralyse

individual workers within the system were all symptoms of institu-

tions overwhelmed by problems and yet unable or unwilling to relin-

quish control. In the end, while the professionals squabbled over

who was responsible for what, Jean’s death was made dignified and

meaningful by care from staff and volunteers at the centre, who

formed a community around her to meet her needs.

Four key problems facing local people had already emerged from

those who used or volunteered at the centre. These were poor pri-

mary health care, lack of safe public spaces, isolation and lack of

effective access to local services. Jean’s death gave focus to these

problems and the derelict park became the opportunity to address

them in an integrated way. The solution that emerged was to con-

struct a new GP and primary health care centre on a corner of the

park and to redevelop the rest it to include:

● a community garden that would provide common ground for

isolated individuals and groups to meet naturally

● a children’s play park

● a recreation area, and

● some high quality homes for people with learning disabilities,

developed by Look Ahead Housing Association.

The aim was to develop an integrated approach to regeneration that

would draw together the separate professional categories and set

them in a community context, offering a holistic response to peo-

An elderly woman on one of the estates articulated very clearly

this sense of misappropriation. ‘The neighbours and I used to keep

these flowers lovely’ she said, pointing to some rubbish-strewn

patches of bare earth and dying scrub beneath the windows of her

f lat, ‘but then the council took over. Now they don’t do anything but

we’re still not allowed to look after them.’ Nobody had told her that

she wasn’t allowed to tend the borders, it just seemed that way.

Councils are not the only institutions to have accidentally stolen

public space from the public. In many of our most disadvantaged

neighbourhoods, education is owned by failing schools and health is

owned by disintegrating GP surgeries. Those desiring education or

good health find their options limited. This is because the most

important dimension of the public space that has been stolen from

them is intellectual. They have lost a space in which to hope and

dream and change things for themselves.

The government’s current proposals for involving communities in

neighbourhood renewal, outlined above, will do nothing to change

this dynamic. Public space will remain in the hands of public insti-

tutions, no matter how joined up they are, no matter how much

money is thrown at them and no matter how many residents are

allowed as supplicants into their meetings. Some neighbourhood

forums and boards may work in the early months and years, but

most won’t.

B o b ’s park and neighbourhood re n e w a lHow can we create a win-win position for Bob’s Park and other dis-

advantaged neighbourhoods?

The way forward for Bob’s Park emerged unexpectedly. It arose

from the reflection of community members on the death of a

young woman in Bromley by Bow. Jean was a volunteer in the com-

munity care project of the Bromley by Bow Centre, a community

centre situated in old church buildings on the edge of the park.

Members of the community care project had designed and main-

tained a small garden around the edge of the buildings. Through

this and other activities the project provides a route for vulnerable

local people to gain confidence and experience by working alongside

other local people with physical or learning disabilities, and then to

benefit from training, employment and enterprise opportunities.



returned with detailed plans for further comment. Local people

then built and planted the garden, buying-in professional help

when it was needed. A professional willow weaver was hired to

teach people how to construct the ‘walls’ of the garden from

live willow sticks. The experience gained enabled some people

to gain training and qualifications in horticulture and led one

person to start her own willow-weaving enterprise.

● Planning of a children’s play park with the theme of the

healthy body began with a visit by a g roup of local young peo-

ple to a medical research laboratory to gather design ideas f rom

scientists, and continued with a visit to the innovative Parc de

la Villette in Paris. The young people worked with professional

designers and engineers to design the play equipment. Other

young people designed and installed parts of the park’s cobbled

path and helped to establish in the minds of other young peo-

ple that the cobbles were not intended to be missiles.

● Planning of the health centre required the centre to commis-

sion high quality professional research into the health needs of

Bromley by Bow.14 This was conducted by a team from the

London Hospital Medical School, who spent time not only with

health care professionals, but also with users and volunteers at

the Bromley by Bow Centre, including some of the most vulner-

able groups. Indeed, the whole of the park regeneration process

was heavily influenced by people with physical and learning

disabilities and by people with mental illness of varying sever i-

ty – the very people who are most excluded from traditional

means of community consultation and involvement and who

are often seen as being disruptive to traditional methods such

as public meetings.

● The park was opened with a large party, designed to show that

it now belonged to the whole community, and not just to the

centre. It was attended by over 1,000 people.

Some months after the health centre opened, when the develop-

ment of the park was well under way, the Corporation of London’s

Bridge House Estates Trust gave the centre a grant to pay off part of

the loan, releasing a revenue stream that was earmarked to provide

a salary for a park development worker. The job went to a man who

ple’s needs. In particular, the new community health facility would:

● bring together the statutory services with each other and with

the community and private sectors and allow people’s needs to

be addressed in an integrated, holistic way

● be a space in which to explore new kinds of partnership

between unlikely groups of people – where physical and intel-

lectual public space would be allowed to become shared space

between professionals and their vulnerable clients

● be a very high quality environment, in sharp contrast to the

very poor quality environments traditionally provided to east

Londoners by the public sector, particularly in GPs’ surgeries.

As part of an early experiment in local service delivery, which had

the political backing of councillors and the active support of some

chief officers, the council agreed to sell part of Bob’s Park to the

centre for a peppercorn sum. The centre designed and built a £1.2

million health centre on the site with a £500,000 grant from the

health authority and a £700,000 bank loan, to be paid back over 30

years with rental income from the GP and primary health care team.

Since the centre is owned by its members, including many local peo-

ple, through a development trust, this was the first example in the

country of a health centre where the GPs paid rent to their patients.

The council granted the centre a 30-year lease to manage the rest

of the park and transferred to the centre its annual budget for man-

aging the park. In parallel with the design and construction of the

health centre, work began on developing the rest of Bob’s Park. The

Centre did not set up a Park Development Committee or a Park

Forum, but provided leadership and space for local people to get

involved in many different and very practical ways. Consultation

and implementation used a range of tools designed to raise people’s

expectations and enlarge their sense of what was possible. For exam-

ple:

● Planning of the community garden began with a meeting of

potential users at which a professional garden designer and an

internationally known garden author presented ideas. The

designer took the fruits of the discussion away with her and



of making things happen. It also had to apply pressure on the health

authority through government ministers, including the then secre-

tary of state for health. For an entrepreneurial model of neighbour-

hood renewal to work it will be essential to encourage and support

‘civic entrepreneurs’16 within public institutions as well as ‘social

entrepreneurs’17 living or working in the neighbourhoods them-

selves.

In spite of the difficulties, the relationships between the players

were not mediated around a committee room table. The regenera-

tion process created a network of people and institutions that did

business with each other. The park ‘neighbourhood’ became a kind

of market place of opportunities; a shared public space in which the

players could choose and develop their own roles, rather than be

typecast into roles dictated by a structure. Indeed, the park became

a community ‘forum’, not in the neutered contemporary sense of

the word as a talking shop, but in its richer classical sense.

The physical developments were accompanied by a process of

community development that directly involved a very large number

of local people, including those from the most vulnerable and dis-

advantaged groups in the neighbourhood. This process involved

local people in ways that have provided training, jobs and opportu-

nities to set up small businesses. Recent research has highlighted the

extent to which local people are engaged with the centre:

● Over 1,000 different people attend the centre each week.

● The GPs’ list has g rown in two years from 1000 to almost 4000

people.

● Twenty community enterprises were established last year, rang-

ing from Bandhobi, a catering business specialising in Sylheti

food, to Green Dreams, a garden design and maintenance busi-

ness, to Desai, a computer recycling business.

● Twenty-three per cent of households on the two nearest hous-

ing estates have one or more members who take part in regular

activities at the centre. A further 12 per cent of households, at

least, have direct contact with the centre less regularly.

● of the centre’s 84 staff members, 48 per cent live in Bromley

Ward, 64 per cent live in Tower Hamlets and 80 per cent live in

east London. Over a third were first involved as users of ser-

had first got involved in the centre as an unemployed volunteer

escort on the community care bus, who trained in horticulture dur-

ing an earlier phase of the park’s development and who had devel-

oped a passion for the park.

Through these kinds of processes, the vision grew organically as

the project developed, rather than being imposed from outside. By

the time the health centre, park and community garden had

become a reality, there was a new phrase in the vocabulary of a new

government – ‘healthy living centre’15 – which described what had

been accomplished. Nobody had started out to build a healthy living

centre in Bromley by Bow, but it turned out that one had been built,

and this now presents a new set of opportunities.

In particular, the approaches used successfully to involve local

people in the development of Bob’s Park are now being used to

develop the public spaces on local housing estates and to explore the

idea that teams of local people could undertake practical tasks in

the maintenance of local housing estates. These approaches are

being developed in part n e rship with the Poplar Housing and

Regeneration Community Association (Poplar HARCA), a new £200

million local housing company which owns and manages 4000

households on seven estates in Poplar. These estates also provide a

new market for services provided by local people working in com-

munity enterprises and an ‘incubator’ in which to build the capaci-

ty of such enterprises for taking on work from elsewhere in the

future.

The regeneration of Bob’s Park and the construction of the health

centre needed a wide range of players to work together: local people,

the council, the health authority, the government, funding agencies

and others were all involved. In particular, the council took the bold

move of transferring a capital asset (some land), some control over

public space (a 30-year lease) and a revenue budget to the communi-

ty-owned centre. Each of these steps enabled the centre to draw in

more capital and revenue resources.

Relationships between the players were not always easy. For exam-

ple, while officials in one part of the health authority were facili-

tating a £500,000 grant, there was direct conflict over the scheme

with others. The centre had to find individuals within public sector

institutions who were prepared to think creatively and to find ways



Z e n i t h ’s small villageZenith Rahman is a Bangladeshi woman who lives in Bromley by

Bow and has been working at the Bromley by Bow Centre for the past

ten years. She has devoted herself to reaching out to the many local

Bangladeshi women who are isolated in their flats on the surround-

ing estates, and to helping them gain the confidence to come out of

their homes, to meet together, to work, to train and to set up com-

munity enterprises.

From nothing, Zenith Rahman, her colleague Lilu Ahmed and

their team have established a network of 300 to 400 Bangladeshi

people – each block on the estates surrounding the centre has a

‘leader’ who is a kind of gateway between the centre and the fami-

lies in the block. Zenith began by visiting families in their homes,

taking toys to help build friendships with children and their moth-

ers – ‘my bag was my office, toys were my reference’. From this work,

piece by piece, arose a toy library, then a women’s group, then a

crèche, then a sewing class, then a cooking group. Zenith and her

growing team took women to the supermarket, on the bus, on the

tube, to the doctor’s surgery – broadening horizons and building

confidence. Language and literacy classes, welfare and benefits

advice, homework clubs, interpretation and translation services, and

training in nursery work and community development work were

developed.

When the centre went into partnership with Poplar HARCA, a

housing surgery developed. Over 50 local Bangladeshi women have

got jobs in local nurseries, community centres and other organisa-

tions through the work of Zenith’s and Lilu’s teams. Continued

home visiting alongside the development of the centre’s partner-

ships with the council’s social services department and with the GP

and primary health care team led to ease of referral for families in

difficulty. The sewing class became a sewing and craft enterprise,

the cooking group became the Bandhobi restaurant, which provides

high quality Sylheti food for community consultation meals, corpo-

rate receptions and parties. The parties spawned Rhangdanu, a

Bangladeshi performing arts community enterprise. A men’s lan-

guage class resulted in the development of Green Dreams, a park

and garden maintenance community enterprise. This year fifteen

local Bangladeshi women gra d u ated with Higher Nat i o n a l

vices, then as volunteers and finally as employees. Sessional

staff at the cent re are also overwhelmingly local people.

● the ethnicity of the centre’s users, volunteers and staff closely

matches the ethnicity of the local population.

Locally-based power and decision-making in this context is not

exercised through a committee-based system of local representation.

Rather, the Bromley by Bow Centre provides a framework within

which local people are encouraged to take responsibility for practi -

cal tasks or projects. A well-developed outreach programme offers

opportunities to people, who earn the right to become involved in

decision-making by getting involved with others in practical tasks

and projects, rather than by being elec ted to positions on a commit-

tee. Local people are supported to develop the confidence to become

entrepreneurs who make decisions about the future of their task or

project, without constant reference to a management committee.

Given appropriate support, even the most excluded and vulnerable

of individuals can play important roles.

Rather than setting up a structure for local representation and

expecting people to fit into it, this approach starts with people

where they are, takes account of the details of their situations and

finds ways for them to participate in decision-making.

Accountability is exercised at many levels. For example, an indi-

vidual project worker would find that they were accountable to

users of the project, to other members of the project team, to a line

manager and to those involved in other projects. Since so many vol-

unteers and staff members are local people, and since there is a blur-

ring between the roles of ‘client’, ‘volunteer’ and ‘staff member’, the

result is a rich network of local relationships based on mutuality

and trust.

One consequence of this approach to governance is that formal

reporting structures are less important than informal consultation

and discussion, and bureaucracy is minimal. This means that effec-

tive decisions can be made quickly at whichever level of the organi-

sation is appropriate, but that there is also a high degree of trans-

parency across and beyond the centre’s activities.



step and to apply this model of community-driven regeneration in

the context of two large housing estates in Bromley Ward, linking at

the same time to Poplar HARCA’s community centre hubs on five

other estates across Poplar. In particular, local people will now begin

to influence the development of public spaces on the estates and the

management of the estates, at the same time obtaining extra

resources for these tasks.

Lessons learned in that context will in turn inform plans for com-

munity-driven regeneration initiatives in the wider Poplar and

Leaside sub-region. They have already contributed to the award of a

£20.7 million Single Regeneration Budget Round 6 grant to a part-

nership comprising Leaside Regeneration Limited (a private sector

regeneration company), Poplar HARCA, the Bromley by Bow Centre,

Tower Hamlets Council and others. This Communities in Business

programme will enable local people to shape and to benefit from the

substantial economic development that is now beginning to take

hold in east London, by bringing together the public, private and

community sectors in a way that was inconceivable when the rede-

velopment of Docklands began twenty years ago.

Achieving scale will not be easy, however, because there is con-

stant pressure to revert to failed methods of community involve-

ment. This pressure comes both from large public institutions and

from sections of the voluntary sector. In order to achieve these out-

comes at large scale, smaller organisations like Bromley by Bow will

have to develop networks which focus on learning and the exchange

of knowledge, rather than grappling with the institutional tools and

mechanisms of local authorities, government departments and

regeneration programmes.

There is a danger that New Labour’s emerging approach to neigh-

bourhood renewal will actually hinder the ability of social entre-

preneurial organisations across the country to achieve the scale of

work that is required.

Certificates in Public Arts Management, delivered at the centre in

partnership with Barnet College. Two years ago the Bangladeshi

women’s team began a similarly successful programme of outreach

to an even more isolated group – the newly arrived families of

Somalian Muslims – and now the team’s sights are now set on out-

reach to the Vietnamese, Chinese, Kurdish and other very small

minority groups who have made their homes in Bromley by Bow.

Zenith and Lilu’s work sometimes throws up unexpected insights

into how best to deliver ser vices on the local estates. For example, it

recently emerged that housing management staff are spending a lot

of money hiring a company to clear drains that have become

blocked by rice cooked by Bangladeshi women residents. Rather than

continuing to spend money on unblocking drains, it might be better

to spend the money on increasing the size of Zenith’s outreach team

– they could persuade people to be more careful about what they put

down the sink while providing all sorts of other support.

Zenith and Lilu are entrepreneurs who have transformed an inner

urban wasteland of i s o l ated and excluded Bangladeshi and

Somalian women into a vibrant and growing network of confident,

socially engaged and economically active women. In Zenith’s own

words, ‘we were isolated and scattered but now we are a small village

… this work is slow, detailed and intricate, and cannot be done by

newsletters and leaflets, even in Bengali’. It is an example of how to

renew a neighbourhood, by enabling vulnerable and isolated people

to grow in confidence through practical involvement in delivering

services and goods to each other and to other people in the locality.

Achieving scaleSmall entrepreneurial organisations like the Bromley by Bow Centre

and entrepreneurial individuals like Zenith and Lilu can be helped

to grow their work if their early successes, achieved with small

resources, are recognised and then backed with larger resources.

Community-driven regeneration in Bromley by Bow began on a

small scale in the Bromley by Bow Centre itself. Lessons learned were

then applied on a larger scale in the neighbouring park, resulting in

development of the Healthy Living Centre, as described above. The

more recently established partnership between the Bromley by Bow

Centre and Poplar HARCA provides an opportunity to take another



Recognising that local people may be unable to operate effective-

ly when placed on LSPs alongside senior managers from public sec -

tor institutions, some have suggested that a Neighbourhood Board

consisting entirely of local people should be set up alongside the

LSP, with cross-representation. At least one nascent LSP is on the

brink of adopting this model and of establishing sixteen new com-

mittees to develop neighbourhood management across an area in

which just 20,000 people live. It is hard to see how this Sargasso Sea

of committees will give local people the impulse to get involved in

their communities. Rather, it is almost certain to alienate people still

further from local democracy by making it even more difficult for

them to locate who has power and who has responsibility. Similarly,

private sector partners who may wish to play a part in generating

solutions or supporting entrepreneurship in neighbourhoods are

unlikely to be attracted by the prospect of endless committees and

representative boards.

In this context, it is critical that a different approach be piloted

alongside Neighbourhoods in Commit tee. Neighbourhoods in

Business should not start by spawning dozens of new committees

and other representative democratic structures. Instead, they must

seek to establish and grow a participatory democratic framework by

identifying and supporting individuals and groups who can provide

entrepreneurial flair and leadership and be catalysts for sustained

change in their neighbourhoods.

Neighbourhoods in Business pilots should have three primary

objectives:

● seeking more effective ways to spend public money and to

involve local people in this task

● focusing hard on enabling local people to move from dependen-

cy on benefits into employment and self-employment

● enabling voluntary sector and community groups to move from

grant dependency into more sustainable means of funding

based on enterprise.

One objection frequently made to the social entrepreneurial

Neighbourhoods in Business approach is that it is ‘unfair’ because it

focuses resources on some individuals or groups at the expense of

5. Piloting Neighbourhoods inBusiness alongside Neighbourh o o d sin Committee

The gov e rnment is commit ted to developing a series of

Neighbourhood Management pilots in deprived neighbourhoods

across the country. As we noted earlier, the recent announcement of

a Neighbourhood Renewal Fund (NRF)18 reinforces the fear that New

Labour does not know how to deliver on its rhetorical commitment

to stimulating vibrant, entrepreneurial community life in these

neighbourhoods. If the Government’s proposals are adopted as they

stand, NRF money will be placed entirely into the hands of local

authorities and community involvement will centre entirely upon

representation on ‘Local Strategic Partnerships’ (LSPs).19

Pilots in this form could legit i m ate ly be described as

Neighbourhoods in Committee. Practical experience suggests that

they will fail to engage the interest and involvement of people living

in disadvantaged and excluded communities. There is also a real

danger that they will focus too narrowly on the delivery of services

to local people. If they do not take account of the community devel-

opment potential of local service delivery by local people,

Neighbourhoods in Committee pilots will simply provide a few local

people with new opportunities to engage in the management of

their own poverty.

The local response to the government’s consultation on neigh-

bourhood management to date, esp e c i a l ly in re l ation to Local

Strategic Partnerships, is already illustrating the dangers ahead.20

Local institutions and individuals have been driven to obsess about

the types of representative structures that will be most appropriate,

rather than focusing on what such representative structures will

actually aim to achieve on the ground.

44 People Before Structures Neighbourhood pilot schemes 45


already building with a private sector regeneration company, a fur-

ther education college and community sector organisations.

Another pilot might be grown outwards from a small group of

energetic and committed f riends who have vision and ambition for

their estate but have barely begun to learn how to realise these.

Another pilot might be grown outwards from the successful busi-

nesswoman who has returned to the city of her birth to devote her-

self to the redevelopment of a community centre on a run-down

estate.

Another might revolve around a company that wants to find ways

of developing the entrepreneurial potential of its staff, and recog-

nises the impact of a specif ic social or neighbourhood problem on

its core business.

In each case, the pilot would make the social entrepreneurs – the

school, the healthy living centre, the group of friends, the busi-

nesswoman – the legitimate leaders of renewal in their neighbour-

hoods, rather than the inappropriate thorns in the side of the local

authority and other public institutions. Their legitimacy would be

based on a range of factors, such as their track record in delivering

excellence, the strength of the networks they had established both

between local people and between the neighbourhood and the out-

side world, and their access to local knowledge and information. As

discussed previously, such individuals and groups could be backed

initially with small resources, with success being recognised and

backed with increasing resources

This approach would differ from that of the Communities in

Committee pilots which will start with an artificially assembled

array of partners sitting around a table because they ought to be

there – the local authority, the housing company, the police, the

health authority, the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker and

a few ‘community representatives’.

It would also differ f rom Communities in Committee because it

would not attempt to make progress at the same rate in every area of

service delivery – education, health, housing, policing, social ser-

vices and so on. It would be much more opportunistic. Renewal in

each neighbourhood might focus on one or a few service areas by

identifying and building on local strengths and local opportunities

and by developing exc e l l e nce in part icular areas. Ne t wor k i n g

others. When better, therefore, to set up some Neighbourhoods in

Business pilots than at the moment Neighbourhoods in Committee

pilots are set up? Locality-based pilot schemes of any kind are inher-

ently ‘unfair’ because the extra resources that they bring to chosen

localities result in improvements that other localities have to wait

for. It is to New Labour’s credit that it has consistently championed

the idea of piloting new ideas and rolling out the lessons learned,

rather than always spreading a thin layer of jam across the country.

Sadly, of course, there are some examples of locality-based pilot

schemes that have been unfair to the chosen localities because the

schemes weren’t very good.

The crit ical role for gov e rnment is to name the possibility th at

s o m e thing diffe rent from the f l awed tra d ition of re p re s e n t at i v e

local democra cy might be allowed to take place, and to back some

e x p e riments in st i m u l ating a local democra cy based on part ic i p at i o n

and pra ct ical action. Both central and local gov e rnment must gra n t

a ‘lic e nce to innovate’ and release the energies of their own ‘civic

e n tre p re n e u rs’ to work as part n e rs alongside social entre p re n e u rs.

W h at would the inst itutional landscape look like in a

Neighbourhoods in Business pilot? Unlike the uniform structures of

Neighbourhoods in Committee, there would be no one correct

answer to this question.

One pilot might be grown outwards from a school, whose entre-

preneurial head teacher has harnessed the energies of disadvan-

taged and demoralised parents, who has recognised how critically

the students’ educational ach i evement depends upon effe ct i v e

health care and social support and who has begun to forge links

with the health authority and the social services department of the

local authority.

Another pilot might be grown outwards from an entrepreneurial,

community owned healthy living centre that has recognised the

connections between health, a high quality environment, good

housing and access to education and has begun to make successful

partnerships with other local institutions.

Another pilot might grow outwards from a private sector local

housing company like Poplar HARCA, based on the connections it is

already making between housing management and community and

economic development and on the practical relationships it is



online.org.uk – now used by over 400 members. In a partnership

with Ruralnet, CAN has also created Networks Online (www.net-

worksonline.org.uk) allowing six other groups to use the technology

platform and bringing another 1,000 projects on to the system. CAN

has now begun to build an on-line market place that will enable

members to trade products, knowledge and skills.

New technology is one way to link social entrepreneurs, but CAN

also recognised the need for a place where entrepreneurs from busi-

ness, public and social sector backgrounds could share space, devel-

op relationships and opportunities, and mix and match their skills.

This began at Panton House in Haymarket, London, a derelict short-

life office building originally given to CAN by Royal and SunAlliance.

In 2000 CAN and fourteen partners moved into 13,000 square feet of

new office space, on London’s South Bank, deliberately designed to

facilitate this new ent repreneurial ‘people’ based culture.

By travelling the country and spending time spotting the right

people CAN has now stimulated eighteen similar cent res across the

UK, from Inverness to Portsmouth and Enniskillen to Haverford

We st. The CAN centres will be entre p re n e u rial hubs th at

will support and facilitate practical, cross-cutting action in neigh-

bourhoods.

Although a large number of social entrepreneurs clearly do exist,

it will not be trivial to identify and support sufficient numbers to

address the problems of all the disadvantaged neighbourhoods in

the country. Hence the need to begin with a number of

Neighbourhoods in Business pilots and to grow from there. Of

course, the task of identifying a neighbourhood manager and neigh-

bourhood management team to establish Neighbourhoods in

Committee for each of the country’s 3,000 disadvantaged neigh-

bourhoods will not be easy – a fact sometimes overlooked by devo-

tees of this approach. Interestingly, even some of the government’s

more modest regeneration schemes – the rhetorically bottom-up but

in fact heavily top-down Sure Start programme for example – are

already experiencing difficulties in recruiting people with appro-

priate professional skills. It may be that there will simply prove to be

too few professional managers to manage the 3,000 most disadvan-

taged neighbourhoods in the country – even if we search through

every town hall in the land.

between pilots would later permit sharing of best practice across ser-

vice areas.

Neighbourhoods in Business, like Neighbourhoods in Committee,

is a fifteen-year project. Running both types of pilot in parallel

would enable comparisons to be made over time and lessons learned

to be transferred between the two types of pilot.

How could a series of Neighbourhoods in Business pilots be estab-

lished across the country? In particular:

● Are there enough people and groups capable of providing such

leadership – enough social entrepreneurs – in disadvantaged

neighbourhoods?

● How would they be identified and who should identify them?

● How would they be supported and funded?

● How would they become accountable to the wider community?

● How would such an approach be monitored and evaluated?

How many social entre p re n e u r s ?As a ge n e ral rule, the answer to this qu e stion if you sit in a gov e rn-

ment office and worry about it is ‘not many’ or ‘not enough’. In pra c-

t ice, if you go out and look it is not difficult to find such people in

even the most disadva n t a ged of neighbourhoods. Indeed, a number

o f e xa mples are cited in the Social Exclusion Un it’s own re p ort

Bringing People To gether: A national st ra tegy for neighbourhood re n ewa l.21

O th e rs have also gone in search of social entre p re n e u rs. For exa mp l e ,

a syste m at ic at te mpt across the UK has been made by the Community

Action Ne t work (CAN ) .2 2 Founded in 1998, CAN has already est a b-

lished a network of s ev e ral hundred social entre p re n e u rs.

The pro j e ct began with the simple idea of identifying 2,000

social entre p re n e u rs across the UK and backing them. Over the two

ye a rs it took the gov e rnment to develop its national strategy on

p a p e r, CAN has built a network of social entre p re n e u rs and st a rte d

to fashion a new entre p re n e u rial envi ronment in the social sector.

Rather than hiring academics or consultants to make sense of th e

p ict u re, CAN has focused on the pra ct ical know l e d ge of e x p e ri-

e nced social entre p re n e u rs, and on developing a new stru ct u re

th rough trial and error.

This approach has led, in two years, to an ICT network – www.can-



Who supports and funds social entre p re n e u r s /N e i g h b o u rhoods in Business pilots?In Neighbourhoods in Committee pilots, extra resources will be

placed in the hands of local authorities from the Neighbourhood

Renewal Fund. In Neighbourhoods in Business pilots, extra resources

should be placed in the hands of the local social entrepreneurs, to

pay for the core costs of developing their social businesses in appro-

priate ways.

Neighbourhoods in Business pilots will need access to main-

stream funding pro grammes, to gov e rnment re ge n e ration pro-

grammes and to a Neighbourhood Innovation Fund set up exclu-

sively for their use. Above all, however, they will seek ways to gener-

ate sustainable income by selling goods and services. To support this

activity they will need access to loan capital, both through existing

routes and through new forms of community finance.

Mainstream funding programmes.the Neighbourhoods in Committee

pilots will aim over time to gain increasing access to and control

over mainstream budgets. Similarly, the aim should be that each

Neighbourhoods in Business pilot grows and develops so that as

time passes it gains increasing access to and control over main-

stream budgets currently administered by local authorities and

other institutions. For example, a successful community-led healthy

living centre might begin to grow by gaining control of the local

community health care budget, as is becoming possible through the

Personal Medical Services Scheme, and by gaining control of local

authority budgets for community education and community-based

social services. Similarly, a community-based landscaping and

grounds maintenance team, like the one involved in developing and

maintaining Bob’s Park in Bromley by Bow, might become responsi-

ble for developing and maintaining public spaces on the local hous-

ing estates where the team members live.

In principle, the Best Value regime for provision of public services

provides a climate conducive to the provision of local services by

local community enterprises. It allows local authorities to include in

its calculations not only the economic value but also the social and

political value of engaging a particular service provider. For exam-

ple, the involvement of local people in delivering care services to

Who identifies social entre p re n e u r s /N e i g h b o u rhoods in Business pilots?As noted above, a range of organisations have gone in search of

social entrepreneurs in the United Kingdom, including the Social

Exclusion Unit,23 Demos24 and CAN.25 Among these are individuals or

groups that could form the basis of a number of Neighbourhoods in

Business pilots.

There could be a role for local councils in identifying and nurtur -

ing social entrepreneurs at a neighbourhood level, for example

through a revitalised ‘community leadership’ role for local council -

lors, who are subject to a robust and enforced code of conduct to

guard against croneyism. Alternatively, social entrepreneurs could

be identified and validated by other social entrepreneurs. For exam-

ple, a series of Neighbourhoods in Business pilots could operate

within a framework provided by a newly constituted Centre for

Social Entrepreneurs similar to the one established by CAN in

Waterloo, London. Social entrepreneurial organisations, or consortia

of such organisations, could be invited to bid for the task of running

the Centre for Social Entrepreneurs. A key feature of such a centre is

that it is itself a partnership between the public, private, voluntary

and community sectors.

The centre would be a mutual learning and support network run

by social entrepreneurs for social entrepreneurs. In the context of

neighbourhood renewal it would:

● identify existing social entrepreneurs and promote an increase

in their number

● raise their profile

● improve the quality of their work through training and support

● assist them to find and develop partnerships with public, pri-

vate, voluntary and community sector organisations

● assist them to develop trading relationships with each other

and with other organisations, for example along the model of

CAN’s ICT-based virtual market place that enables members to

trade information, contacts, services and goods.26



tion programmes such as Sure Start and the Single Regeneration

Budget. At present, in spite of all the rhetoric, the assumption is usu-

ally that such programmes will be led by the local authority or some

other large public sector institution. That a voluntary sector organi-

sation or a small institution such as a school might take the lead in

developing such programmes is f requently seen as somehow odd or

inherently risky. The experience of many such organisations is that

when they try to take a lead they are discouraged or obstructed or

made to feel like intruders.

A Neighbourhood Innovation Fund.Neighbourhoods in Business pilots

should be accompanied by a new Neighbourhood Innovation Fund.

The aim of this fund would be to support innovative developments

in Neighbourhoods in Business pilots and to experiment with inno-

vative ways of running a funding programme to support social

entrepreneurs. One source of money for this fund could be the

National Lottery funded New Opportunities Fund (NOF). Indeed, NOF

could become the Neighbourhood Innovation Fund. This would be

highly appropriate because NOF owes its existence entirely to the

weekly decision of millions of people to take a risk with their

money. What better institution could there be to take risks, not only

by supporting innovative projects but also by experimenting with

new ways of granting funds and of monitoring and evaluating the

projects supported? By making NOF subject to all the usual con-

straints of g ov e rnment funding age ncies, the gov e rnment has

missed a major opportunity to create a funding programme that

experiments with new ways of supporting real innovation. Turning

NOF into a Neighbourhood Innovation Fund for Neighbourhoods in

Business pilots would provide the government with an opportunity

to rectify their error.

If the government were to set up a Neighbourhood Innovation

Fund its reflex would probably be to have it run by the public sector

or by a consortium of voluntary sector umbrella organisations, care-

fully chosen for their prudent track record. Rather than this, bids to

run the fund should be invited from social entrepreneurs or consor-

tia of social entrepreneurs that should also include public and pri-

vate sector partners. The contract should be awarded to the appli-

cants displaying their ability to run an efficient, transparent and,

people with physical and learning disabilities in Bromley by Bow has

economic value in that it provides training and employment oppor-

tunities for unemployed local people. It also has social value in that

it enhances a sense of community solidarity, improves relationships

between disabled and other local people and demonstrates the con-

siderable contribution that disabled people are able to make to com-

munity life. It also has political value in that the task of caring for

local disabled people has come to be seen as the shared responsibili-

ty, and joy, of a wider community, rather than being the sole respon-

sibility of the council, with local politicians being blamed for any

inadequacies in the ser vice.

Similarly, the involvement of local people in developing and

maintaining Bob’s Park has economic value, in that it provides

opportunities for training and employment, social value in that it

has turned a derelict space dominated by vandals and drug addicts

into an attractive and busy shared community space, and political

value in that it has made the park the responsibility of a wider com-

munity. Local politicians can now take credit for enabling the park

to be redeveloped rather than the blame for its dereliction.

The key point is that it is possible to use local service delivery as a

community and economic development tool – as a tool for neigh-

bourhood renewal.

Local authorities have scarcely begun to appreciate, let alone

explore, the possibilities that the Best Value regime affords for com-

munity and economic development and neighbourhood renewal,

and there will no doubt be difficulties in pushing the boundaries of

Best Value in this way. The Neighbourhoods in Business pilots will

therefore be critical arenas in which to experiment with these

aspects of Best Value. In Neighbourhoods in Business, ongoing pro-

grammes of local service provision and one-off regeneration pro-

grammes will be closely examined for ways in which they can be

used as tools for community and economic development by involv-

ing local people practically and by providing them with opportuni-

ties for training, employment and enterprise.

Government regeneration programmes.In a Neighbourhoods in Business

pilot area the assumption will be that social entrepreneurs will lead

on the development of new projects within government regenera-



Neighbourhoods in Business pilots would also provide a national

framework in which to devise and test the changes to benefits rules

that are still required to enable people to move confidently from

benefit dependency into employment and, even more pertinent,

i n to self-e mp l oyment. David Robinson of C o m m u n ity Links in

Newham, east London, has been arguing for the establishment of

Social Enterprise Zones (SEZs) in which to test changes in benefit

rules and other rules and regulations that hinder regeneration, just

as the Business Enterprise Zones tested ways of encouraging indus-

trial and commercial development by removing or relaxing finan-

cial, town planning and other regulations.27 Neighbourhoods in

Business pilots could provide a framework for testing many of the

ideas of the Social Enterprise Zone.

In parallel with measures to enable individuals to move from ben-

e fits dependency and into emp l oyment or self-e mp l oym e n t ,

Neighbourhoods in Business pilots could also te st measure s

designed to wean voluntary and community sector organisations off

of their dependence upon grants and on to more sustainable means

of financing based on the acquisition of an asset base and on the

sale of goods and services. Again, there is a need for financial prod-

ucts to provide the capital for such activity. Community financing of

this type is available on a small scale through organisations such as

the Local Investment Fund but there is now a need to increase its

availability.

How would social entre p re n e u r s / N e i g h b o u rh o o d sin Business pilots be monitored and evaluated andaccount to the wider community?It is clearly very important to know how well things are going, and

monitoring and evaluation of performance is crucial. The govern-

ment is right to emphasise the need for robust and trustworthy

means of monitoring and evaluating performance. Unfortunately,

this is also an area in which New Labour is in danger of becoming

locked into a highly bureaucratic and rigid approach that has an air

of authority but little real substance.

For example, a very large number of Best Value and Audit

Commission Performance Indicators measure different aspects of a

local authority’s per formance – from the length of time taken to

above all, innovative fund. It could be run by a newly constituted

Centre for Social Entrepreneurs, bringing together the skills and

experience of the public, private, voluntary and community sectors.

In fact, some innovations would really not be that innovative. For

example, a major innovation in this sector, which is established prac-

tice in research science funding programmes, would be to introduce

a transparent system of peer review of grant applications by other

practitioners – other social entrepreneurs. This would replace the

current, opaque, review processes, which appear to involve civil ser-

vants and committees of the great and the good but few, if any,

experts. Applicants would have increased confidence that their

applications were being read and judged by people who understood

the issues and practical realities of the work. They would also bene-

fit from intelligent feedback.

Peer review would also raise the interesting question of who the

peers are. In scientific research, peers can be spotted because they

have doctorates and chairs as well as track records of successful

research. This provides at least some basis for having confidence in

their decisions about which science to fund, although this is of

course not infallible. Social entrepreneurs also have track records

that need to be recognised by public institutions, and perhaps some

thought needs to be given to other more formal means of recognis-

ing their achievements in order that they might be perceived as

trustworthy peers in advising on the distribution of public money.

Employment, enterprise and community financeOne key goal for Neighbourhoods in Business pilots would be to sup-

port residents in the move from dependence upon state benefits into

employment or self-employment. The move into self-employment

must be supported by new types of financial product that provide

capital for business start-up or development to individuals or groups

who are unable to secure credit through the normal routes because

they lack a track record or the necessary collateral. There are many

small schemes of this type but, as Rosalind Copisarow of the micro-

finance organisation Street-UK has argued persuasively, it is now

time to develop micro-finance products on a national scale and to

replicate in the United Kingdom the success that they have achieved

internationally.



central government rather than for the communities they are

meant to serve. Thus, the public accounting system is designed in

such a way that the programmes must expend enormous amounts

of time and energy in collecting, recording and reporting large

amounts of primary data that are distilled into progressively small-

er volumes as they pass up the budget line through the accounting

officers of successive government departments until they reach the

Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee. Ben Jupp contrasts this

Treasury-driven system of vertical accountability with systems of

h orizontal accountability of the type developed by the New

Economics Foundation and others, which involve local people in

establishing frameworks for collecting, analysing and recording

local information and reporting it to local partners and local people.

Neighbourhoods in Business pilots will therefore be given per-

mission to develop their own approaches to monitoring and evalua-

tion and to experiment with models of horizontal accountability.

These may include a mixture of quantitative indicators, such as

existing Best Value Performance Indicators and newly devised per-

formance indicators that are relevant to a particular neighbour-

hood, but they will also include a range of qualitative indicators. For

example, important indicators of the way a community feels about

itself are to be found in the stories it tells about itself, whether in the

gossip in the streets and shops or more formally through writing or

the visual or performing arts. Neighbourhoods in Business pilots

will develop this kind of richness in their qualitative and quantita-

tive performance indicators. They will also set milestones and targets

that are locally determined and appropriate.

Once again, this is not unusual or novel in other walks of life. For

example, it is again interesting to reflect upon the methods that are

used to monitor and evaluate publicly funded scientific research.

This might be expected to be the province par excellenceof dull sta-

tistics. In fact, it is only in very recent years that the government has

begun to monitor the performance of research scientists by means

of statistical performance indicators. Performance continues to be

monitored primarily, as it always has been, by means of the stories

that scientists tell, either through the written arts in research

papers, or the performing arts in research conferences and seminars.

The role of the local authority or central government would not

perform housing repairs to the number of books issued from

libraries to the length of time taken to answer the telephone. Local

authorities are now required to set targets for a basket of eleven of

Best Value Performance Indicators and will be expected within five

years to reach the level of the current top 25 per cent performing

local authorities. Councils that fail to achieve this will be penalised.

One might expect these eleven indicators to have been selected very

carefully, even scientifically, to reflect key activities across a breadth

of Council services. In fact, they are a rather bizarre rag-bag, per-

haps the most amazing being ‘the percentage of items of equipment

costing less than £1,000 provided within three weeks’ by social ser-

vices departments to their clients. This may be a carefully researched

proxy measurement for some of the more important things that

social services does, such as protecting abused children, but I doubt

it. It is more likely that these eleven indicators have been selected for

a much more prosaic reason; that they are the only things that all

councils measure in the same way.

The good news is that poor people across the country who are in

need of beds and fridges and cookers will find that they get a deliv-

ery service unrivalled by Harrods, at least for the next five years. The

bad news is that this slightly daft performance monitoring system is

being treated with deadly seriousness by council officers and coun-

cillors across the land. The difficulty that the Government has in

establishing a credible system for monitoring the performance of

local authorities is not in itself objectionable – everybody recognis-

es that this is difficult territory. It is objectionable, however for the

government to promote and impose this incredible system as if it

had real meaning and to give it an authority that it does not deserve.

The real danger is that the spurious authority given to this kind

of approach stifles the development of other approaches to moni-

toring and evaluation that might be more relevant to the neigh-

bourhoods in which council services are delivered, or indeed that

might arise f rom the experience of communities themselves.

In another Demos pamphlet, Ben Jupp has described the heavily

bureaucratic systems of reporting on financial performance, out-

puts and outcomes that are imposed by the government upon the

deliverers of regeneration programmes.28 These systems, too, are

devised for the benefit of the monitoring and evaluation teams in



6 . A new type of local democracyand a new role for localg o v e rn m e n t ?

The present crisis in local democracyThis paper has argued that a key problem for local democracy is the

way in which public space has been misappropriated by public sec-

tor institutions, so that citizens inhabiting that space do so as aliens

who feel unwilling or unable to take control or responsibility.

This might not be such a problem if public sector institutions had

shown themselves able to manage public space effectively and in the

interests of all citizens, but they have not. The legacy is a degraded

public realm, at its most visible worst in the most disadvantaged

neighbourhoods around the country.

This is not to place the blame at the feet of public sector institu-

tions. We have asked them to do an impossible job. Why would we

think it possible for public sector institutions to manage public

space effectively without the active and enthusiastic involvement of

the citizens inhabiting that space?

In recent history, the main mechanism used by local government

offer the chance to take control and responsibility for public space

has been the ballot box. Other public sector institutions such as

health authorities, health trusts and the police have not even

offered this tiny opportunity for civic engagement. Small wonder

that these institutions seem distant and unresponsive to the great

majority of citizens, and small wonder that the great majority of cit-

izens do not take even the tiny opportunity for local democratic

engagement that is provided by voting.

Local democracy has therefore suffered from a chronic, low-level

crisis of legitimacy that is steadily worsening. The response of both

Conservative and New Labour governments to this crisis has been to

be to impose performance indicators and targets, but might be to

ensure that processes are in place for adopting or devising indica -

tors, for setting milestones and targets and for monitoring progress.

Alternatively, these functions could be given to the newly constitut-

ed Centre for Social Entrepreneurs, which would spread horizontal

accountability yet further by reporting performance against targets

and by telling stories to its network of national and international

social entrepreneurs.

Consultation with local people is another important means by

which local authorities and other institutions seek to be account-

able. As discussed previously, one of the problems with the way in

which much consultation is carried out is that local knowledge is

under-valued and bought cheaply by well-paid professional consul-

tants. Neighbourhoods in Business pilots will experiment with ways

in which the value of local knowledge held by local people can be

acknowledged and paid for, either directly or indirectly. For exam-

ple, when it was first established a couple of years ago, Poplar

HARCA performed a door-to-door, face-to-face survey with residents

of all 4,000 of its properties, in order to inform its strategy for com-

munity and economic development on its estates. To do this it

trained local young people in interview and survey skills and

employed them to carry out the survey. Using the experience and

skills they acquired, some of these young people went on to form a

team of community health networkers, working alongside a GP and

primary health care team to broaden access to primary health care

among the local Bangladeshi and Somali population. Others will

shortly join a pool of community consultants to be employed by

Agroni, a local business set up recently to supply bilingual inter-

viewers and researchers to organisations undertaking consultation

exercises in east London.

These are good examples of local knowledge being valued as a

commodity that can be sold by local people and contribute to the

local economy. Effective consultation requires a pooling of resources

between different groups of people and a mutual respect for each

other’s knowledge.

58 People Before Structures Local democracy and local government 59


that public institutions extend invitations to engage downwards on

their own fixed terms and with strings attached. Instead, they would

invest in the capacity of individuals and groups in disadvantaged

neighbourhoods to engage on their own terms with each other and

with broader horizons and larger institutions. They would seek to

give people living in those neighbourhoods the power to re-appro-

priate both intellectual and physical public space, leading to control

over their own prosperity and the renewal of their neighbourhoods.

Such a project would yield important information about how to

revitalise local democracy in all neighbourhoods, just as the story of

Bob’s Park shows that vital knowledge about how to stimulate regen-

eration Bromley by Bow came from detailed reflection on the lives

and experiences of some of the most vulnerable local residents.

The story of B o b ’s Park demonstrates th at people who most ly don’ t

vo te in local elections and who most ly wo n’t join commit tees are will-

ing and able to enga ge in re ge n e ration and service delivery in many

d i ffe rent pra ct ical ways if th ey have the opport u n ities and pra ct ic a l

s u p p ort to do so. This pra ct ical invo lvement gives people a level of

c o n trol and re sp o n s i b i l ity which is simp ly not ach i evable on such a

scale th rough tra d itional re p re s e n t ative democrat ic stru ct u res. It is

this kind of model of p a rt ic i p ative democra cy th at central gov e rn-

ment must re fl e ct upon, support and re s o u rce on a wider scale.

This and similar stories help us to discern some characteristics of

a new local democratic landscape. New Labour can help to shape this

landscape if it chooses, but it will not do so by spawning hundreds

of neighbourhood committees. Instead, it must stimulate entrepre-

neurial community groups and organisations which can operate in

the neighbourhood ‘market place’ alongside the public and private

sectors.

In this new landscape, the idea that public space is the sole

responsibility of public sector institutions will recede. Citizens will

come to recognise that ‘there is no distant ‘they’, government or

market to blame for the mistakes we make in common. There is only

us’.30 Responsibility will come to be shared by a wider network of

individuals, community groups and organisations, public sector

institutions and private sector organisations.

In parallel with this tra n s fer of re sp o n s i b i l ity, and crucial to it s

re a l i s ation, the public sector will give inc reasing control over local

try to improve the relationship between individual citizens and pub-

lic sector institutions in ways that define the citizen as customer.

John Major’s citizens’ charters and New Labour’s listening days, focus

groups and household surveys are all driven by the idea that the role

of public sector institutions is first to find out what the customer

wants and then to keep the customer satisfied, either by improving

their own service delivery or by finding organisations in the public

or private sec tor that can deliver services more ef fectively on their

behalf.

None of this gives citizens any direct control over or responsibili-

ty for public space – their only legitimate means of action remains

through the agency of public sector institutions.

Where voluntary sector organisations, community groups or com-

munity sector organisations have sought to break this mould and to

take control over degraded public space, they have found that it is

hotly contested by public sector institutions, even where those insti -

tutions are unable to renew the space themselves. With enormous

effort and with the support of key individuals working within the

structures of public sector institutions – ‘civic entrepreneurs’ of the

type described by Leadbeater and Goss29 – it has been possible to

make some progress, but the environment for this remains general -

ly hostile.

New Labour’s drive to turn a few more citizens into politicians by

making them representatives on partnership boards will not change

the essentially dysfunctional relationship between citizens and pub-

lic sector institutions. Indeed, it may make things worse by masking

the reality that control over public space remains in the hands of

public sector institutions.

In short, existing local democratic arrangements offer citizens

only very limited and constrained opportunities for civic engage-

ment, which leave control and responsibility for public space in the

hands of public sector institutions.

Glimpses of a new local democratic landscapeA key feature of Neighbourhoods in Business pilots would be to

explore models of local democratic involvement, decision making

and accountability which are shaped around the interests of people

living in disadvantaged neighbourhoods. They would reject the idea

60 People Before Structures Local democracy and local government 61


p u b l ic space to community groups and or ga n i s ations. This will

i nclude both phy s ical space, such as a park or community care centre ,

and inte l l e ctual space such as the shaping of a vision for the neigh-

b o u r h o o d’s fu t u re. This will invo lve the tra n s fer of re s o u rces, inc l u d-

ing capital assets and revenue budgets, and heavy inv e stment in dev e l-

oping the capacity of c o m m u n ity groups and or ga n i s ations to deliver.

Problem solving would become the collective task of all those

engaged in the neighbourhood. The different groups would form

close networks with each other, linked in turn to other networks in

the wider locality, across the country and beyond. There is a funda-

mental dif ference between the ‘joined up’ working of institutions,

organisations and individuals which associate freely within such

networks and do business with each other to achieve specific goals,

and the regimented, forced ‘joined up committees’ envisaged by the

Strategy for Neighbourhood Renewal. It is also important to note

that unlike these ‘joined up’ committees, such networks cannot be

set up across the country overnight. However, central and local gov-

ernment can do a great deal to create the conditions in which they

can grow and prosper.

These changes will be accompanied by a move away from a situa-

tion where public sector professionals officially possess all the

knowledge and information required to regenerate and manage

neighbourhoods. Institutions and citizens know that this is not the

case. It would be a burden released if both were allowed to admit it.

Rather, it would be acknowledged that all the players in the neigh-

bourhood hold particular sets of knowledge and information that

must be brought together, that even when this knowledge and

information is pooled there are large gaps and that the players must

learn together in order to succeed.

The new local democratic landscape will therefore be charac-

terised by participation, networking and learning.

This type of local democratic ‘learning community’ has reso-

nances with the idea of ‘politics as mutual education’, developed by

David Marquand and others, with its vision of a local political cul-

ture in which citizens can ‘listen to, argue with and persuade each

other as ‘equal citizens’ so as to find solutions to their common

problems’.31 It has its roots in ancient Greece, where the ideals of pol-

itics and education were directly connected, and participation as a


citizen was understood as a form of self-improvement. Marquand

has argued that to achieve this will require much wider access to

political education. This, coupled with his personal background as a

university teacher of politics has led critics to dismiss his ideas as

the politics of the university senior common room – as a cerebral

activity that is no more enticing to the mass of people than is voting

for councillors once every four years. These critics, and possibly

Marquand himself, have missed the point that for most people learn-

ing happens as a result of intensely practical activity. People learn by

doing things together as well as by talking and thinking together.

For example, if members of a community are given the opportu-

nity to take control of the regeneration and management of a local

park they will begin to learn about a whole range of regeneration

and management issues. They will also begin to learn how to engage

with the neighbourhood’s disaffected young people, how to use pub-

lic space for community celebration, to generate income for local

people and how to address a range of other problems that face the

neighbourhood. They will do this through acting, talking and think-

ing together and with partners from other community groups and

from the public and private sectors.

Far from being distant and alienating, this type of mutual learn-

ing through practical activity has practical and positive results for

local people, their families and their neighbourhoods. It is a pro-

foundly attractive way for people to become engaged with their com-

munities.

Interestingly, in Bromley by Bow it has stimulated the develop-

ment of a learning community that feels strangely similar to the

learning community of a university senior common room or an

Oxbridge college fellowship, despite the vast difference in formal

educational qualification between the two learning communities.

Both are characterised by networks of people who between them

have a breadth of interest and knowledge and who pursue their var-

ious projects with talent, creativity, energy and passion. It is perhaps

not surprising to find that whatever their formal educational

achievements, people have an appetite for understanding and shap-

ing their world, once they are given the opportunity to do so.

Local democracy and local government 63



N o t e s

1. Speech by the Prime Minister onM o n d ay 2 June 19 9 7, at th eAy l e s b u ry Est ate, South w a r k

( h t t p : / / w w w. c a b i n e t -o ffic e . g ov. u k / s e u / i n d e x / m ore . h t m l )

2. New Deal for Communities: Phase 1P roposals: Guidance for Pa t h fi n d e rA p p l i c a n t s. DETR, 19 9 8

( h t t p : / / w w w. re ge n e rat i o n . d e tr. g ov. u k/ n ew d e a l / 3 . h t m )

3. S i n gle Re ge n e ration Budget Round 5:Bidding Guidance: A Guide fo rPa rt n e rs h i p s. DETR, 19 9 8

( h t t p : / / w w w. re ge n e rat i o n . d e tr. g ov. u k/ s r b 5 / 16 . h t m ) .

4. M o d e rn Local Gove rnment: in to u chwith local people. DETR, 19 9 8( h t t p : / / w w w. l o c a l -

re g i o n s . d e tr. g ov. u k / lg w p / 1.htm). 5. ibid.

6. National St ra tegy for Ne i g h b o u r h o o dRe n ewal: a consultation document.Social Exclusion Un it, 2000

( h t t p : / / w w w. c a b i n e t -o ffic e . g ov. u k / s e u / 2 0 0 0 / Nat _ Strat _ C o

n s / d e f a u l t . h t m ) .7. Prime Ministe r’s sp e e ch, op cit .8. National St ra tegy for Ne i g h b o u r h o o d

Re n ewa l, op cit .9. The Neighbourhood Re n ewal Fu n d.

DETR, 2000 (http://www. l o c a l -re g i o n s . d e tr. g ov. u k / c o n s u l t / n rf-c o n / 01. h t m ) .

10. Local St ra tegic Pa rt n e rs h i p s. DETR,2 0 0 0

( h t t p : / / w w w. re ge n e rat i o n . d e tr. g ov. u k/conindex.htm). 11. M o d e rn Local Gove rn m e n t, op cit .

12. New Deal for Communities, op cit .13. L e a rning Lessons: National St ra te g y

for Neighbourhood Re n ewal: Re p o rt of

Policy Action Team 16. Social Exc l u s i o nUn it, 2000 (http://www. c a b i n e t -

o ffic e . g ov. u k / s e u / 2 0 0 0 / PAT 16 / d e f a u l t.htm). 14. National St ra tegy for Ne i g h b o u r h o o d

Re n ewa l, op cit .15. Our Healthier Nation: A contract fo r

h e a l t h. Department of H e a l th, 1998. 16. Civic Entre p re n e u rs h i p. Leadbeate rC and Goss S, Demos, 19 9 8 .

17. The Rise of the Social Entre p re n e u r.L e a d b e ater C, Demos, 19 9 7.

18. The Neighbourhood Re n ewal Fu n d,op cit .19. Local St ra tegic Pa rt n e rs h i p s, op cit .

20. Ibid.21. Bringing Britain To gether: A national

st ra tegy for neighbourhood re n ewa l.Social Exclusion Un it, 1998. 22. Community Action Ne t wor k

( h t t p : / / w w w. c a n -o n l i n e . or g . u k ) .23. Bringing Britain To ge t h e r, op cit .

24. The Rise of the Social Entre p re n e u r,op cit .25. Community Action Ne t wor k

( h t t p : / / w w w. c a n -o n l i n e . or g . u k ) .26. Ibid.

2 7. Social Enterprise Zones: buildingi n n ovation into re ge n e ra t i o n. Ro b i n s o nD, Dunn K, Ballintyne S, Joseph

Row n tree Fo u n d ation, 1998. 28. Working To gether: Creating a bette r

e n v i ronment for cro s s - s e c tor part n e rs h i p s.Jupp B, Demos, 2000.29. Civic Entre p re n e u rs h i p, op cit .

30. The Unprincipled Society. Marqu a n dD, Jonathan Cape, 1988.

31. Ibid.

Notes 65

New roles for local govern m e n tFar from calling upon local government to ‘get off the backs of the

people’ this new local democratic landscape would require local gov-

ernment to play two critical new roles.

First, it would be the role of local government to provide the con-

ditions in which entrepreneurial community g roups and organisa-

tions could be born, grow and flourish.

Second, rather than being the sole possessor of public space, local

government would become the guarantor of public space. It would

become responsible for naming the possibilities of what could hap-

pen in the public realm. It would have the task of giving people

licence to innovate. It would be like a skilled circus ringmaster, hold-

ing open the ring so that amazing things can happen inside it.

The stakes for central government at this point in its history are

therefore high and the prize is very great – a new groundswell of

community and of local democratic engagement, beginning in the

most disadvantaged neighbourhoods in the country and spreading

to the most affluent. The beauty of the situation for New Labour is

that it does not have to drop any of its current plans for neighbour-

hood renewal based on Neighbourhoods in Committee approach. It

s i mp ly has to have the coura ge to allow a parallel series of

Neighbourhoods in Business pilots, in order to deliver on the

rhetoric of community renewal with which it came to power.


people before structures - demos · movers and shakers. the strategy for neighbourhood renewal...

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