Memorandum by the London Regeneration
Network (UWP 38)
1. INTRODUCTION
1.1 The London Regeneration Network (LRN)
welcomes the opportunity to present written evidence to the House
of Commons Environment, Transport and Regional Affairs Committee
about the proposed Urban White Paper.
Introducing the LRN
1.2 The LRN has been convened by the London
Voluntary Services Council since 1996 to provide a voice for London's
voluntary and community sector on regeneration issues, promote
the active participation of the sector in regeneration and provide
a forum for discussion and debate on regeneration issues.
1.3 Over 400 organisations from each of
the London Boroughs and City of London are members of the LRN.
The majority of these are small voluntary and community groups
(defined as less than five paid workers) and approximately 25
per cent are black and minority ethnic led. Network members come
from an increasingly wider range of fields, indicating that a
greater range of organisations recognise that they have a part
to play in regeneration.
1.4 The LRN has been a member of the SRB
Assessment Panel in the London Region for the last three rounds
of funding which has contributed towards our knowledge and expertise
of regeneration and particularly community led regeneration initiatives
in London.
1.5 As well as aiming to influence regeneration
policy, LRN also carries out a range of activities for its members
and others. These activities include:
— the Sharing Good Practice programme
which facilitates LRN members to seek out, adapt and transfer
good practice learned from a host organisation noted for work
in a particular field;
— a programme of low cost conferences
and seminars on topics such as the emergence of Registered Social
Landlords in the regeneration game, how to involve socially excluded
people in regeneration and the role of women in regeneration;
— the Voluntary Sector Regeneration
Workers Support Forum—a network of 28 regeneration workers
who have a networking role in their borough/neighbourhood that
meets regularly to share ideas, be updated on current regeneration
issues and learn together; and,
— information dissemination through
a monthly news mailing, a quarterly publication Regenerator, a
Members Resource Pack and Directory and regular policy briefings.
Consultation Event
1.6 The LRN in collaboration with the Urban
Forum has organised a seminar for London's voluntary and community
organisations to give them an opportunity to air what they think
should be contained in the Urban White Paper. Unfortunately the
seminar takes place after the Select Committee's deadline for
written evidence therefore additional evidence will be submitted
at a later stage.
Recommendations for Action
1.7 The London Regeneration Network makes
the following recommendations for action within the rest of this
written evidence:
— That community involvement in designing,
implementing and delivering regeneration be given the highest
priority and that a framework to ensure this happens is set in
place.
— That funding programmes must be accessible
to the voluntary sector to lead initiatives and that where programmes
are led by other agencies these agencies should be required to
involve the voluntary and community sector.
— That the voluntary and community
sector be recognised as having a great deal to contribute to the
urban renaissance and often provides the most effective means
of involving the community.
— That excluded individuals and communities
should be encouraged and aided to identify their own needs and
devise solutions to address them. The voluntary sector can provide
a way of meeting the democratic deficit.
— That a Community Capacity Building
Strategy is devised which adopts an inclusive definition of capacity
building.
— That involving communities requires
resources and provision must be made to ensure that these are
available.
— That minimum standards are set for
the quality of voluntary and community sector input and not just
the quantity.
— That a commitment is made to review
mainstream funding programmes so that an individual's needs are
tackled as a whole rather than one at a time.
— That a mechanism for collecting and
disseminating good practice policies and projects be included
and a body is charged with the responsibility of promoting good
practice.
— That the mechanism to set up and
implement Social Inclusion Impact Assessments is laid down.
— That a body is given responsibility
to map regeneration activity periodically.
— That the role of Government Regional
Offices and Regional Development Agencies in the co-ordination
of initiatives and policies is set out.
— That cultural and ethnic diversity
in urban areas should be viewed as a strength.
— That there should be strong links
between the Urban and Rural White papers, made explicit in the
text of both documents, and that issues which cross between the
two are included in both documents.
— That the White Paper avoids jargon
so it is easy to understand and respond to.
— That consideration be given to how
the White Paper will be implemented.
2. GOOD PRACTICE
2.1 Since the inception of the LRN we have
come across many examples of good practice in regeneration; the
majority of them from voluntary and community organisations. More
often than not good practice policies or projects remain invisible
to public sector officers as such practice takes place at the
neighbourhood level or smaller level. In output terms the numbers
of people gaining qualifications, employment etc is small. However
the impact that such good practice has on an individual or community
is huge.
2.2 It is through recognising this impact
that the LRN decided to embark on a Sharing Good Practice programme
to facilitate the discovery, adapting and transferring of good
practice amongst its members. This programme has attracted considerable
financial support from grant making organisations and much interest
both from our members and others. Initial results on the success
or otherwise of the programme will be known in May/June 2000 once
an independent evaluation has been completed.
2.3 We would recommend that the Urban White
Paper should make provision for the collection and dissemination
of good practice policies and projects on a region by region basis
so that all sectors can avoid reinventing the wheel. In London
such a provision has been proposed by the London Development Partnership
which will encourage the establishment of a London Universities
Regeneration Network (LURN). It is intended that a School of Capacity
Building is created at LURN to gather best practice from all sectors
and ensure that lessons learnt are transferred to a disparate
range of initiatives and projects in London. There must be willingness
to learn from other agencies and sectors, for example the voluntary
sector could learn from TECs about project planning and management.
3. JOINED UP
INITIATIVES
3.1 Due to the myriad of regeneration programmes
and initiatives introduced by the Labour administration a complicated
picture of regeneration funding and projects has emerged in London
and elsewhere in urban areas which has proved difficult for all
sectors to understand. We are aware that the DETR has commissioned
research to map all regeneration initiatives across England in
an attempt to discover which areas are receiving what types of
funding and identify the gaps and welcome this move. We recommend
that the Urban White Paper charges the task of mapping regeneration
funding to the DETR or a new Urban Policy Board (see para 8.2)
on a regular basis.
3.2 The regional development agencies have
been charged with the task of preparing various strategies, including
an Economic Development Strategy. In addition, in London the Mayor
will prepare a Spatial Development Strategy amongst other things.
We recommend that the Urban White Paper sets out the role for
Government Regional Offices and Regional Development Agencies
in the co-ordination of initiatives and policies concerned with
urban regeneration in its widest sense.
3.3 Spending on regeneration initiatives
has been small relative to other mainstream budgets such as health,
education and benefits. There must be a commitment to working
together and radically reviewing mainstream programmes, for example
by pooling resources or making connections across services such
as by connecting benefits paid by housing and those paid by the
Benefits Agency. Different structures and processes to ensure
that clients are referred across disciplines and agencies will
go a long way towards ensuring an individual's needs are tackled
as a whole, rather than one at a time.
3.4 To make this happen, the actual barriers
to linking together different disciplines need to be identified,
for example health professionals tend to concentrate on clinical
factors and regeneration professionals on jobs and training outputs.
Thus connections, such as looking at the impact of poor housing
and health tend not to be made.
3.5 The role of the voluntary and community
sector should be recognised as having a great deal to contribute
to this cultural change, not only because of their grassroots
connections to people in need but because the sector is used to
working in this kind of holistic way.
4. COMMUNITY
CAPACITY BUILDING
STRATEGY
4.1 The Urban White Paper presents a strong
opportunity for the initiation of a Community Capacity Building
Strategy for urban communities. Research undertaken by the LRN
found that although many regeneration programmes have capacity
building projects they tend to concentrate on organisational development
for the voluntary and community sector and are short term.[30]
23
4.2 Such a Strategy should move away from
the deficit model of capacity building ie the belief that voluntary
and community organisations need to be brought up to the level
of "more experienced players". In a recent article,
the LRN argued that "expertise is often found in those who
are usually the targets of capacity building and we call for a
more participative model to be adopted which recognises the skills
and abilities of all sectors. Such an approach should begin with
the thoughts: what can each sector contribute to the regeneration
agenda? And what type of capacity building is needed by each sector?"[31]
24
4.3 In our report Capacity Building:
the way forward, a copy of which is attached, we defined capacity
building as a process for empowering a community—and all
stakeholders in that community—to plan effectively for its
own future. Within this definition stakeholder referred to individuals,
groups, small businesses and partnerships. We recommend that such
an inclusive definition is included in the Urban White Paper.
5. SOCIAL INCLUSION
5.1 At a conference the LRN organised at
the end of 1998 The Emperor's New Clothes? to explore the then
new area based regeneration initiatives it was concluded that
"area based initiatives do seek to tackle poverty . . . but
the needs of non-geographic "communities of interest",
such as refugees, disabled people and lesbians and gay men should
not be forgotten".[32]
These communities are some of the most excluded and should be
encouraged and aided to identify their own needs and devise solutions
to them which are then funded by regeneration initiatives. This
is an issue which has been raised by LRN's members on more than
one occasion and should be addressed by the Urban White Paper.
6. SOCIAL INCLUSION
IMPACT ASSESSMENT
6.1 A report by the Social Cohesion and
Economic Competitiveness Working Group of the London Development
Partnership (LDP) recommends that the LDP "investigate more
fully the appropriateness of developing a process of Social Inclusion
Impact Assessment, to be used in the appraisal and evaluation
of regeneration programmes and major developments which benefit
from LDP funding."[33]
26 A number of sets of indicators to measure social inclusion
already exist and have been gathered together by amongst others
the New Economics Foundation[34]
and the Scottish Community Development Centre[35].
Such an Impact Assessment will go some way to ensuring that policies
and programmes do not contribute to social exclusion. We recommend
that the Urban White Paper makes provisions for similar mechanisms
to be set up in other parts of the country.
7. CULTURE
7.1 The ethnic and cultural mix is greater
in urban areas than elsewhere, particularly in London where 50
per cent of the country's black and minority ethnic businesses
live. This diversity should be seen as a strength of urban areas
and should be acknowledged within the Urban White Paper.
8. URBAN TASK
FORCE RECOMMENDATIONS
8.1 The LRN welcomed the publishing of the
Urban Task Force's report Towards an Urban Renaissance
and felt that it presented an exciting menu of recommendations.
However, our criticism of the report was threefold:
— the recommendations and whole tone
of the report was biased towards the urban renaissance being led
by physical regeneration and design. The wider issue of social
regeneration was hardly touched upon;
— the specific problems of black and
minority ethnic communities in urban areas were hardly mentioned
even though it is widely accepted that areas with the highest
levels of deprivation tend to have higher concentrations of people
from these communities; and,
— the report lacks recognition of the
unique situation that exists in London, for example whilst demand
for housing is weak in some northern towns, in London the situation
is opposite—a point which was raised at a recent LRN conference.[36]
29
8.2 The LRN would prioritise seven of the
Urban Task Force's recommendations in their final report for the
Urban White Paper to consider:
Pilot different models of neighbourhood management
which give local people a stake in the decision-making process,
relaxing regulations and guidelines to make it easier to establish
devolved arrangements. (from Making Towns and Cities Work)
Strengthen the New Commitment to Regeneration
programme by combining government departments' spending powers
to deliver longer term funding commitments for local authorities
and their partners. (from Making Towns and Cities Work)
At a recent conference about the New Commitment
to Regeneration organised by the Urban Forum, [37]
to which the London Regeneration Network made an input, delegates
gave a conditional vote of support to the initiative in its role
of co-ordinating regeneration initiatives and funding. However,
the following improvements to present arrangements were suggested
that LRN would endorse and recommend that the Select Committee
considers:
— giving thought to voluntary sector
infrastructure and resourcing of this infrastructure so that voluntary
organisations who are represented on partnerships are enabled
to effectively involve smaller community groups and feedback to
the wider voluntary sector; and,
— setting standards for minimum levels
of consultation with stakeholders as consultation with the voluntary
sector has been patchy.
Develop a network of Regional Resource Centres
for Urban Development, promoting regional innovation and good
practice, co-ordinating urban development training, and encouraging
community involvement in the regeneration process (from Making
Towns and Cities Work).
We believe that the proposed London Universities
Regeneration Network (LURN) would undertake most of the functions
of such a centre in London. With adequate funding LURN could help
foster better understanding between sectors which will be vital
for regeneration programmes to reflect the needs of all stakeholders
and for regeneration funders to be willing to take perceived risks
by funding projects from organisations with no track record.
Establish a 10 year national programme—The
Renaissance Fund—to help repair our towns, whereby community
groups and voluntary organisations can access the resources needed
to tackle derelict buildings and other eyesores that are spoiling
their neighbourhood (from Making the Most of our Urban Assets)
Residents and workers tend to be the eyes and
ears in a neighbourhood—hence schemes set up around the
country in which people call a helpline number to report dumped
rubbish, potholes, broken street lighting etc eg Southwark Council's
Green Team operating in the north of the borough. The LRN would
welcome this type of initiative being taken one step further ie
community and voluntary organisations able to access the funding
to put right such identified problems.
Include the objective of an urban renaissance
in the terms of reference for the 2001 Comprehensive Spending
Review which will determine public expenditure priorities for
the following three years. (from Making the Investment)
As the report itself identifies, the main barrier
standing between it and the implementation of its recommendations
is public expenditure. The Spending Review for 2001-2004 begins
this year and it remains to be seen how far the Chancellor for
the Exchequer will comply.
The creation of an "Urban Policy Board,
reporting directly to the Cabinet, . . . to co-ordinate the implementation
of urban policy at national, regional and local level." (from
Sustaining the Renaissance)
In the absence of a dedicated Minister for urban
areas or a Planning Policy Guidance note for urban areas the co-ordination
of policy affecting urban areas is made more difficult. Such a
board would also help with competition between the regions.
9. LINKS WITH
RURAL WHITE
PAPER
9.1 Urban and rural areas are inter-dependent;
the activities in one affect the other. Urban areas such as London
affect rural areas both by the demands they make on it eg in terms
of water supply and repositories for waste dumping and the travel
to work areas spreading from surrounding towns and villages to
jobs in urban areas.
9.2 Within a large conurbation such as London,
the outer areas tend to exhibit a mixture of urban and rural characteristics.
One only has to visit parts of the London Boroughs of Hillingdon,
Kingston upon Thames and Enfield to confirm this.
9.3 Based on the above LRN recommends that
there be strong links between the Urban and Rural White Papers
made explicit in the text of both documents and that issues which
cross between the two are included in both.
10. GENERAL
10.1 The Urban White Paper will be the most
comprehensive Government statement on urban areas, setting out
a framework for their future in the last 20 years. As such, the
LRN would welcome the avoidance of jargon within the Paper so
that it can be understood by all. Through understanding the paper
will be used.
10.2 Consideration should be given to how
the Urban White Paper be implemented. The LRN would not wish to
see another Government statement that lacks the adequate legislation
or other means to deliver the content within it.
January 2000
30 Capacity Building: the Way Forward, Knock, M and
Zahno, K August 1999 London Regeneration Network. Back
31
Capacity Building: the Way Forward, New Start 19 November 1999,
Tarifa, G and Zahno, K. Back
32
The Emperor's New Clothes? Kamilla Zahno, January 1999. Back
33
Social Inclusion at the Heart of London's Development (draft)
London Development Partnership Social Cohesion and Economic Competitiveness
Working Group 17 December 1999 LVSC, LEPU, GLE. Back
34
Communities Count, a step by step guide to community sustainability
indicators New Economics Foundation, 1998. Back
35
Monitoring and Evaluation of Community Development Scottish Community
Development Centre, 1996. Back
36
Under One Roof an exploration of the implications of Registered
Social Landlords entering the social regeneration arena, 10 May
1999. Back
37
New Commitment to Regeneration: involving the community and voluntary
sector, 8 November 1999 (Salford). Back
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