MEMORANDUM BY DR SUE BROWNILL AND MR NEIL
MCINROY, SCHOOL OF PLANNING, OXFORD BROOKES UNIVERSITY
LESSONS FROM URBAN REGENERATION
1. INTRODUCTION
The Committee has asked for evidence from urban
regeneration policy and practice to assist its inquiries into
innovations in public participation. Regeneration provides some
useful examples as for the past 30 years a series of urban experiments
have led to a succession of different agencies and forms of governance
overseeing area-based initiatives. It is also an area of activity
in which participation has achieved a high profile, even if not
always matched with influence. This memorandum sets out some key
lessons from recent regeneration initiatives focusing on: regeneration
agencies (structures); the processes of decision-making and participation
and the impact of participation. Finally the memorandum considers
what lessons can be drawn from regeneration to strengthen democratic
government in other areas.
2. REGENERATION
AGENCIES: THE
STRUCTURES FOR
PARTICIPATION
Regeneration agencies provide a good example
of the implications for participation and influence of new forms
of urban governance. This section looks at the factors leading
to inclusion and exclusion of the structures of these agencies,
while the following section focuses on processes. However, we
would stress that, in practice, structures and processes have
to be looked at together.
Urban Development Corporations produced one
of the most telling recent lessons for participation in the structure
of regeneration agencies. The controversy that UDCs rode roughshod
over local interests was fuelled by the decision-making structures
of UDCs, which consisted of boards of largely government appointees
who met in secret and had no requirement to consult or seek participation.
Despite the fact that some UDCs (eg Tyne and Wear and later in
its life the LDDC) adopted processes that enabled participation,
the conclusion that effective regeneration entails participation
in decision-making structures is frequently underlined by reference
of the supposed "failures" of UDCs.
Since 1991 with the advent of City Challenge
and now the Single Regeneration Budget and New Deal for Communities,
the main vehicle for regeneration are partnerships between the
public, private, voluntary and community sectors. (The distinction
between voluntary and community has been made to separate often
funded and staffed voluntary organisations from less formal organisations
such as tenants and residents associations). There is no one set
form for partnerships, they can be committees, boards, or companies
limited by guarantee however they have to have a lead partner
to liaise with central and regional government. They contract
with central and regional government to produce an agreed set
of regeneration outputs in return for funding.
The reason for the advent of partnerships is
largely a result of central government making them a pre-requisite
for the receiving of funding under various regeneration budgets.
To be successful, partnerships also have to demonstrate that they
have consulted local interests. Many have set up community and/or
business forums to achieve this consisting of sub-groups organised
around topics (eg employment); areas or interested (eg ethnic
minorities) that feed in to the main committee. Some examples
of the structures of these partnerships are given in Annex I.
Experience from regeneration practice has shown
that as a structure for participation, partnerships demonstrate
both positive and negative aspects:
Factors enhancing participation:
— Regeneration partnerships differ
from LAs in having the community and voluntary sectors directly
represented in decision making by being board members.
— They can be led by community or voluntary
organisations, although in practice such partnerships are rare.
— A holistic focus on a relatively
small area has the potential to draw in a range of interests and
organisations.
— Criteria and monitoring required
by central and regional government focuses activity.
— Provide a useful form for the development
of innovative practices eg social entrepreneurship and individuals.
Factors limiting participation:
— Unequal partners; despite the semblance
of equality the different interests do not have equal influence
over decisions. This is returned to in the discussion of processes
below.
— Partnerships are time limited.
— Partnerships have no requirements
to ensure equality of opportunity in representation. Some sections
of the community can therefore be excluded, particularly minority
ethnic and women's organisations.
— Membership can be based on who you
know and networks rather than other arguably more democratic criteria.
— The fragmentation of governance that
partnerships represent can lead to there being a confusing array
of agencies in an area. Local interests may not know of a partnership's
existence or may not have sufficient information to distinguish
one agency's responsibilities and personnel from another's.
— Lines of accountability are largely
financial to the DETR and not down to the community.
— Are partnerships agencies of governance
or delivery mechanisms?
The structure of agencies has a knock-on impact
on attitudes to participation, another concern of the committee.
Making consultation a pre-requisite for funding undoubtedly focuses
minds in agencies and promotes consultation. However, there is
a wide variation between partnerships in terms of their commitment
to consultation. Some, particularly in the early days of SRB,
have approached consultation exercises in a fairly cynical fashion,
doing the minimum to satisfy the funding requirements. Others,
for example Sandwell, have enthusiastically embraced the notion
of participation as a process and have promoted strategies to
achieve this (see Annex II below).
Other Structures
Community Development Trusts; these are community-led
organisations concerned with achieving regeneration. An example
is Coin Street Community Builders, which has received public and
private investment for regeneration on the South Bank.
City-Wide Partnerships: some local authorities
are setting up partnerships to co-ordinate activity within their
area. E.g. Coventry has drawn up a Community Plan through such
a partnership that aims to set targets for LA and others to achieve.
3. THE PROCESSES
OF PARTICIPATION
Having the structures is only a first step:
on their own they cannot ensure meaningful participation. The
committee's concern with processes is a particularly important
area as how agencies operate and styles of working have a major
impact on participation. Seeing participation as a process is
vital in moving from consultation as an add-on extra to governance.
The following section firstly draws some lessons from the processes
of participation in regeneration and secondly sets out some examples
of strategies and initiatives that have sought to promote participation
throughout all stages of the regeneration process.
LESSONS FROM
REGENERATION
Participation takes time and costs money
One of the most important lessons from the regeneration
experience is that it is important to be clear about the limits
of influence on offer in particular initiatives. Participation
and consultation are not the same thing but represent varying
degrees of power over decision-making. Participation implies some
involvement in decision making while consultation means views
can be expressed which may or may not influence decisions. Similarly,
residents can be quick to rename consultation on decisions that
have already been made public relations. Agencies and communities
need to be open and honest about what is on offer and what is
expected. Different agencies are likely to be on different parts
of the spectrum from tokenism to community power over decisions
as can the same agency be at different times and over different
policy areas. Also what is appropriate to particular areas and
circumstances needs consideration. Some communities may not want
full participation eg some estates vote against Estate Management
Boards because they see it as the local authority's responsibility,
not theirs. Some may not have the capacity initially but aspire
to greater control in the long-term.
There are different roles which communities
can play in regeneration: representatives of opinion and consultees;
beneficiaries and users of services; deliverers of services and
outputs; sources of general activity and long-term partners in
decision-making. Ultimately all these need to be considered within
participation along with the full range of approaches needed to
achieve them.
It is impossible to talk about the community
in an area. Different interests in an area have different concerns
and can be included or excluded from participation and different
processes are needed. Conflict between the interests is likely.
Diversity can be strength, not a weakness.
Local circumstances are important. Some areas
have a long history of participation and have a strong infrastructure
of active groups (social capital); other areas may have no history
of active involvement. In some areas local and regional government
has been very active in promoting participation, in others less
so. This needs to be borne in mind when blanket recommendations
are made.
Partnerships change and develop over time; therefore
strategies need to be flexible and to concentrate on different
issues at different times.
At the end of the day it is important to be
realistic about the levels of participation which can be achieved.
The numbers of active residents and community members is likely
to remain fairly low. For some, participation represents a burden
of time and commitment that they cannot bear; for others they
feel they do not have the skills or confidence. Bad experiences
of past participation may lead others to feel that it won't change
anything anyway and finally some may feel it is not their responsibility.
Partnerships indicate a number of issues associated
with the processes associated with new forms of governance. In
terms of partnerships committees, many community representatives
have found that they have been unable to influence decisions because
they may be outnumbered or have no resources to bring to the table.
A further factor is the way committees operate which needs familiarity
with jargon, procedures and skills. Partnerships bring together
sectors with very contrasting styles of operation and styles of
power. For example, community representatives may feel they have
to seek endorsement for decisions from their organisations while
private sector representatives are used to making decisions on
the spot. Partners may also hold stereotypical views about each
other leading to a lack of trust and understanding. Looking at
implementation, new ways of working based on speed, outputs and
officer discretion (what has been termed entrepreneurial governance)
have been shown to militate against involvement, particularly
in terms of the tight timescales for bidding for funds. The result
can be paper partnerships, where the structures appear to exist,
but the reality is different.
MOVING BEYOND
TOKENISM: COMMUNITY
INVOLVEMENT STRATEGIES
The following section draws on some examples
of strategies and initiatives that have sought to ensure participation
as a process is integrated into all stages of regeneration. Such
strategies are not intended to be blueprints that all agencies
should follow but to show how barriers to participation may be
overcome. A combination of top-down and bottom-up action is needed
and any strategy should be flexible and open to change during
the lifetime of a project. Some examples are included in Appendix
2. Elements of such strategies include:
Community Profiles
One of the barriers to participation is that
some organisations are missed out of networks and the strength
or otherwise of local organisations is unknown. An integrative
approach needs to start from a sound knowledge of the local area.
Profiles can include data such as population, ethnicity, employment
but also of community activity and the local community and voluntary
sectors, the number and types of groups, how representative they
are, ethnic minority involvement, links with other organisations
are all areas needing to be explored. The way in which this information
is collected can itself be participatory.
On North Tyneside's Meadowell Estate local residents
carried out a skills survey covering over 1,000 people. In Kings
Cross the Asian Women's Hopscotch Organisation set up a course
for young people to learn community research and to use these
skills to feed information through to the council. Oxfam is looking
at translating initiatives from the South including participatory
rapid appraisal which involves facilitating local groups to define
needs and feed them through to decision-makers.
Developing a Vision and Strategy
A number of initiatives have involved the community
in drawing up an overall vision for the area using a variety of
participatory techniques as a basis for a long term strategy for
the area.
The North Hull Housing Action trust held a series
of community planning weekends including workshops; presentations,
models, drawings, displays and "planning for real".
Partnership Structures and Processes
Barriers to participation include exclusive
structures to partnerships and process issues such as lack of
skills, styles of power etc.
The Greenwich Waterfront Development Partnership
has an equal opportunities policy that ensures places on the board
for ethnic minority representatives.
JRF has published a training manual for partnership
members to build skills and develop trust and understanding between
all partners
The Women's Design Forum has produced a good
practice guide on consultation to enable partnerships to involve
a wide variety of interests in regeneration areas
Developing an Infrastructure for Participation:
Capacity Building
Lack of skills and organisational infrastructure
and poor understanding between partners has been identified as
major barriers to participation. Capacity building is seen as
one potential solution to these problems. It can operate on a
number of levels: the capacities of individual representatives
eg in terms of committee procedures, reading balance sheets and
understanding the culture of other partners; the spread and strength
of local organisations and any identified gaps; the links between
these organisations to provide networks to enable participation
and influence and the capacity of agencies to promote participation.
For the last two years partnerships have been
able to spend up to 10 per cent of SRB funds on capacity building
Sandwell MBC secured funding for a 5 year SRB
programme aimed at strategic intervention to increase the capacity
of organisations in the area. Which involves building networks,
in particular an ethnic minority forum and a women's forum, to
access decision making through identifying gaps in organisational
capacity, it also seeks to improve links between the business
and voluntary sectors.
Sandwell also has a Regeneration Division with
a Director who sits alongside other Directors in the Corporate
Management Team. The same unit oversees community development
and supports the voluntary sector in the borough.
A West Midlands Black Voluntary Sector Regional
Regeneration Network has been established to strengthen black
organisations and to influence regional and sub-regional policy
in the area.
Implementation
One of the barriers to participation identified
in current regeneration initiatives is the focus on speed outputs
and targets. Strategies have been identified to overcome some
of these barriers which have shown how these can become part of
a process and not ends in themselves.
Involving local organisations in delivering
outputs. For example in Blackbird Leys in Oxford local co-operatives
have been set up around building maintenance and providing care
to meet the regeneration targets of job creation, improvements
in housing and supporting elderly residents.
SRB partnerships are allowed a Year Zero in
which they do not have to produce outputs but can concentrate
on building the infrastructure and processes necessary to ensure
participation.
The Community Development Foundation suggests
the following in relation to consultation using targets to build
the process of consultation
Baseline survey: 4 per cent of responses to
consultation exercises are ethnic minorities; 5 per cent active
in 1+ groups; no women on the committee.
Targets set: responses to consultation from
ethnic minorities to increase to 20 per cent; 15 per cent + active
by year 5; 50 per cent of partnerships committee to be women
Implementation: community development work;
resources allocation; making information accessible; equal opportunities
policy for committee
Monitoring and evaluating participation
As with targets, monitoring and evaluation can
become a key to building a process of participation. Not only
can the use of targets assist in monitoring but also looking at
outcomes rather than just outputs and developing more qualitative
indicators and techniques is important. Evaluation needs to be
built in from the start and not left to the end of initiatives.
Government Offices for the Regions and now RDAs
have proven to be key in monitoring partnerships and encouraging
them to adopt more robust participation practices.
5. THE IMPACT
OF PARTICIPATION
While it is tempting to consider the impact
of participation largely in terms of the influence it has had
on particular decisions, experience has shown that a wider view
is important. In particular, the process of participation has
impacts linked to the development of what has been termed social
capital and of empowerment. Participation can build the infrastructure
within communities to promote involvement, widen knowledge about
governance issues and encourage individuals to get involved. At
the end of the day particular decisions may not have been changed,
but some positive outcomes have been achieved.
This is also important, as it is easy to be
cynical and say there are very few examples of where participation/consultation
on its own has had a major influence on regeneration decisions.
Interestingly many of these are in the area of housing, design
and environmental programmes, indicating that some issues which
produce immediate and tangible benefits attract greater success
than more abstract strategic discussions. In Angel Town in Brixton
and the Bloomsbury Estate in Birmingham, for example, resident
participation in the redevelopment of the estates had a major
influence on the final plans and appearance of the areas. Alongside
this has run major economic and social investment.
Participation can have an opposite effect. In
Oxford, participation has delayed one regeneration scheme as local
residents are objecting to the siting of a foyer in their area.
Raising false hopes can be another more negative impact. For example,
Oxfordshire County Council undertook nine months consultation
around an ultimately unsuccessful SRB bid in Berinsfield. Many
in the area felt disillusioned as a result, although again it
could be argued that the social capital in the area had been strengthened
Another feature is that influence varies across
policy areas. Influence is more evident in areas such as community
development and environmental improvements than eg general strategy,
inward investment and overall levels and areas of spending. This
is linked to the relative power of partners, perceptions of the
speed with which schemes need to go through.
6. LESSONS FOR
STRENGTHENING PARTICIPATION
IN GOVERNANCE
ELSEWHERE
By way of conclusion we want to draw four particular
points to the committee's attention. Firstly, experience from
regeneration has shown that the emergence of different forms of
governance has a contradictory potential when it comes to participation.
On the one hand regeneration agencies have encouraged participation
by giving interests a seat at the table, funding organisations
and building social and political capital in areas. On the other
they have restricted it through operating through networks, targets
and particular styles of operation. One important issue is about
the fragmentation of governance. Many agencies operating in one
area can be confusing if information is not made clear. Yet, focused
agencies operating in a holistic fashion can provide a focus for
participation in the way agencies with wider concerns maybe cannot.
Secondly, the role of central and regional government
has been shown to be important. The evidence from regeneration
is that central guidance has a clear role and impact. The requirement
that agencies have to consult in order to be considered for funding
has undoubtedly promoted consultation. Furthermore, both the DETR
and its regional offices (now RAS) have been concerned with promoting
the process of consultation through constant revision of the bidding
guidance for programmes and through promoting good practice. The
question of whether more central government guidance is needed
within regeneration is therefore interesting. Funding is a particularly
powerful carrot and overall, is fairly effective. The benefits
of allowing agencies autonomy to develop to suit their own local
circumstances should not be ignored. However some areas needing
further intervention include:
Thirdly, while significant barriers to participation
exist, examples form the area of regeneration show how they can
be overcome and how strategies can ensure participation is integrated
into all stages of the regeneration process.
Finally it is important for all to realise that
participation is not just about structures, but about processes
that include sharing power, building trust, managing conflict;
embracing diversity, adjusting organisational cultures and changing
priorities and timetables.
NOTES
Sue Brownill is a principal Lecturer at the
School of Planning Oxford Brookes University. She has practical
experience of community regeneration in Birmingham and London
Docklands and has recently produced a report for the Joseph Rowntree
Foundation in race, gender and regeneration.
Neil McInroy is a research fellow at the School
of Planning Oxford Brookes University. He has extensive experience
of evaluating regeneration initiatives and of cultural regeneration
programmes.
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