Select Committee on Office of the Deputy Prime Minister: Housing, Planning, Local Government and the Regions Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 160-179)

17 SEPTEMBER 2003

PAUL SHEEHAN, RODNEY GREEN AND BEN BROWN

  Q160  Chris Mole: We have been struck by the geographic separation of communities here in Oldham. How widespread is the problem of parallel lives in Leicester?

  Mr Green: It is considerable and it can be also within communities. Intra-community parallel lives can be issues around attitudes to women and to children. The major challenge for us is to break down those parallel lives and create these cross-links in our schools and in culture and so on. However, the report which Ted and his team did for us—compliments to them—following the major national Cantle report is one of the most sensitive, stimulating, constructive, pungent reports that I have ever read on local authority matters. What we discovered in the research for that report was that if you speak to minority communities and ask them about their choices they will say they want unfettered choice. This is the evidence in Leicester. When it comes to issues like housing, "We want to live with people that we know and understand, next to our granny and cousins and so on. Don't call that a ghetto. That is our choice. We do not want to have that changed". If you take an issue like education, "We actually want the best school. We hope that it is nearby and it is within walking distance, but we are prepared to move and travel to a high quality school in the best interests of our children". Take a different issue like leisure and art and culture, "We want as much mix as possible. We want to be integrated and have cross-links and we actively want to promote those ourselves". There are these differentiated ways of looking at parallel lives and cross-links. It is not a homogeneous picture. Housing is quite different from sport and art and leisure.

  Q161  Chris Mole: Turning to Haringey, does the London experience differ in any way from the northern metropolitan areas?

  Mr Brown: Looking at what might be an issue about cohesion, we see the problem as being not geographical but fragmented in terms of what is going on with communities, so that in fact you have a variety of communities living in the same area but very fragmented and very much about their own particular needs at any given time, not necessarily in a negative way but again in terms of what one feels comfortable with. There are real issues around how we pull them all together and how we get them to understand that we will not go out of our way to give one without the other, that we really do believe in treating people equally, but also recognising and trying to hold on to the fact that people have different cultures and people have different needs in terms of their cultures. We must recognise that and work with that in terms of providing for them and providing for the groups as a whole. It would be wrong to say that there are not problems and those problems are intensified at the moment in terms of many new groups that we have got coming into Haringey and in trying to fit them in. At the moment we are at a point where there are real tensions within the communities and it is quite interesting to note that if you talk to black and minority ethnic groups who have been within the community now for many years about asylum seekers, they will say, "Send them all home". That is coming from black groups, not just white groups, so some of that is permeating throughout. They all see these asylum seekers as a big problem and it is an issue that we have to address and it is causing real concerns in terms of trying to knit the communities together.

  Q162  Dr Pugh: To what extent does the way a local authority is run affect social cohesion?

  Mr Sheehan: I think it makes a huge difference. If the authority is open and listening, self-challenging and self-critical, then it will fairly quickly realise that we do not have all the answers as local authorities; our stakeholders do not have all the answers; central government does not have all the answers. We are constantly searching for ways to address the issues that are arising and changing all the time. The way that they are run makes a difference.

  Q163  Dr Pugh: How big a difference? The problems could be insuperable, could they not, for any local authority, however enlightened?

  Mr Sheehan: I would suggest to you that there is no solution for a local authority alone to the issue of community cohesion. I would echo something that Rodney said. This is not only a problem, if one sees it as a problem. It is also an asset to a community and it is also something that we should welcome. Local authorities are not going to fully address the community cohesion and social cohesion issues on their own. This is a vertically integrated issue. It is one which central government is just as much engaged in, and should be, but it is not wise to be prescriptive because the differences between Haringey, Calderdale, Oldham, Leicester and everywhere else are such that local solutions are needed. What we need is local authorities that are wise enough to look for examples of good practice and constantly learn. It is not a solution for a local authority. Oldham will not solve Oldham's issues; Calderdale will not solve Calderdale's, nor any other, on their own. If they are not open to ideas and persuasion then the problem is going to get worse, not better.

  Q164  Dr Pugh: Would you differentiate between the role of yourself as chief executive of the local authority and that of the political leadership of the local authority? Do they have different roles and responsibilities in this process?

  Mr Sheehan: I think we do. It is very clear. I have never stood for election and never will. I will never have the direct mandate of the people. I am a servant of the people in a different way from the way in which politicians are servants of the people, so my authority comes from there. I have no direct authority myself. Their role in leading communities is absolute. My role is to support that. I know it is a textbook answer but sometimes the textbooks are right. It is a danger zone for officers to tread in.

  Q165  Chairman: But you have got it cushy, have you not, because you are able to say that you represent the whole of the local authority, whereas any political person in your authority actually represents a ward, do they not? Is there not a temptation for them to end up feeling their ward representation is slightly more important than their representation of the whole?

  Mr Sheehan: On election elected members are there to serve the community as a whole with particular focus on their wards, and wise ones do. I would never describe the role of the chief executive as a cushy one, but it is one step removed from the harsh reality of an election. In fact, it is completely removed from the harsh reality of election and therefore we have a role in continuity and in ensuring a moderating influence, I suppose, in that sense, but it is different from authority to authority.

  Q166  Chairman: I shall turn to Mr Green.

  Mr Green: My answer to your question is that the local authority is the single biggest player in this issue. It is the single most decisive factor in leadership on community cohesion. I will give you two political examples and then two more rounded examples, if I can use that phrase. A political example is that a democratically elected leadership has an enormous symbolism in a community which no officer can replicate. If your political leadership does not reflect the community, the messages that that is sending out will be very powerful, so Leicester for much of the last two decades has reflected its local community, has always had in the cabinet black and ethnic minority leaders and reflects about 25 per cent of the community on the council. That is an enormous symbol. That really communicates to the local electorate. The second issue—and this came out in the research that we did—is that if the leadership that members offer in their wards is partisan: "I am leading those who voted for me; I am leading those who are my colour, my race, my background", that is extremely divisive. There were criticisms in the report that we did of all three parties and of the majority as well as the minority community leadership, that it was not wholehearted enough. It was too partisan, so that is a real challenge to political leadership. Once elected you represent the whole ward, all the interests in there, and there is a powerful opportunity there. A more rounded answer, as a very judicious answer has been given by my colleague, is that the truth is that in a very well run authority the division between chief executive and the leadership should be relatively seamless unless it gets to very critical key issues which are very clearly political or professional. There are not many of those. It works best when there is a seamless collaboration. Leicester City Council spends about £650 million a year. If you understand that community cohesion is about housing, it is about culture, it is about economic performance, it is about faith issues, it is about housing and so on, the way that money is spent is bound to be extremely significant. That is why the city council is the biggest key player. The second issue is to do with partnership. We are the key link to police, the voluntary sector, the private sector, the local strategic partnership, and if we are working well in partnership with them it is not just the £650 million spent; it is the orchestrating of the other spend that can be done in a way that promotes cross-community links or inhibits them. We have a heavy responsibility.

  Q167  Mr Clelland: Quite rightly the local authority is the main player in all this, but how can a local authority engage the other partners in the voluntary, community and private sectors in this whole social cohesion agenda?

  Mr Sheehan: I do not think organisations do these things; I think people do these things. Where partnership works well it works because the individuals in those organisations trust their peers and their colleagues in other organisations. If you looked for Calderdale Council you could not find it; it does not exist. There is a town hall, there are elected members, there are officers. It does not live and breathe. People make relationships that stand. How we approach our partners, how we approach stakeholders in the community is the way that makes things work well or otherwise. You simply have to do that from something like a common agenda and that is the trick. The health sector in Calderdale probably spends more than we do as a local authority combined in all of its manifestations, so we have to have common agendas to make sure that the vast sums that we are spending are being used in a way that we all think is right. Organisations do not do that; people do that, and it is about trust between individuals.

  Q168  Mr Clelland: Is the LSP the right place to do it?

  Mr Sheehan: We are not a neighbourhood renewal authority so we have an LSP because we think it is a useful tool, not because a minister said we should do. We have had 22 years of community partnership working, the first community partnership authority in the country, so we do this because we think it makes a difference. When we recruit senior people in all of the organisations in Calderdale we do not look for people who are territorial in the way that they do these things because the boundaries between our organisations are falling all the time.

  Q169  Mr Clelland: You talk about the importance of people; that is what it is all about, so how do you ensure that the balances and strategies which are worked out at the organisational level are translated into action on the ground?

  Mr Sheehan: What we would seek to do is to thrash out simple and common aims, and from common aims action plans that mean something. Simplify and simplify again. That is often very difficult with between 70 or 80 plans required of a metropolitan authority from central government, 19 alone in education. Putting the local flavour, that trust thing, into a framework which is so heavily regulated is a challenge but it works because people are prepared to do it.

  Q170  Chairman: Do not a lot of people turning up to these partnership meetings actually think it is a chance to go and have a rest from doing the real work and are rather cynical that they do a lot of talking but nothing really happens? How do you convince them that things happen as a result of these meetings?

  Mr Green: Can I give an example of presenting this report to the Leicester partnership? The Leicester Partnership said that this was the single most stimulating report they had received since they had formed three or four years previously and we now have an action plan that we are trying to develop with the partnership. Of course, what you have said is true of some partnerships some of the time. This is just part of the life of partnerships. I would not want to convey the impression that these formal, very visible partnerships are what partnership is all about. They are part of what partnership is about, so, to answer the question that you were asking earlier: how do you know it has been translated into practice, I would want to be able to cut into any part of the life and services that Leicester produces and satisfy myself that here in this small operation of housing or education there is evidence of partnership working in engagement here on the ground as well as across the city, and in the business plans and strategy documents there is an overt and explicit commitment to trying to promote community links and community cohesion. That is the starting point. If it is not there you are not going to see it on the ground.

  Mr Sheehan: Your point is well made. There are too many partnerships. They are being required of local authorities for unreasonable reasons. Eighty-five thousand pounds a year community facilitation fund requires that the council form a new partnership. We have got partnerships coming out of our ears. The people who can do this could have done it through existing vehicles but there was a requirement to create a completely new partnership, to spend £85,000.

  Mr Brown: Can I say on behalf of our chief executive that what he would want to say is that we are very much a corporate authority in terms of the way in which we approach things. Internally we must be seen to be working with each other and actively produce something from working with each other. That is a key theme that goes right through. He believes, to use the jargon, in walking the walk and talking the talk to make sure that we get out there and meet with people. He does it himself. He is there, he meets with staff, he meets with the communities.

  Q171  Mr Clelland: What does the mainstream community cohesion mean in the context of your local authority?

  Mr Sheehan: Putting it at or near the top of all our planning processes, that it is interwoven into everything we do.

  Q172  Mr Clelland: How is it working out?

  Mr Sheehan: With larger or lesser degrees of success in different parts of the enterprise.

  Chairman: It is difficult for me to get it on record if you shake your head one minute and then nod the other to imply ambiguities, so if we could have a few words that helps a little bit.

  Q173  Chris Mole: Mr Sheehan, what could be done to reduce segregation in schools?

  Mr Sheehan: Seven per cent of our community is black and ethnic minority. They live predominantly in two wards and are served predominantly by one high school. People tend to want to go to a school that is near them, but we have found increasingly that the success of a school determines where people will want to go. Interestingly, we have got something that is working counter-intuitively. For quite a while our black and ethnic minority communities have wanted to move out of Halifax for their education into the more leafy areas. The single most successful school in terms of its improvement over the last three years has been a school that is 96 per cent Asian in its catchment and people now want to use that school. Asian parents want their kids to go to that school because it is a successful school and increasingly so. Segregation is an issue and the whole issue of parallel lives is potentially a problem. Choice is also an issue and if people vote with their feet to go to a school that is near them and is successful, I do not think I am going to be the one who says that that is inappropriate. What we are trying to do is address how people may interact in other aspects of their lives and also (a point that has been made earlier) that people have a desire to live together. My own family came from another part of the world and wanted to live where people of their like were. That is right today, it is proper today, but there have to be other ways in which people exchange and interact and we are trying to do that in a whole range of different ways. Segregating schools is not something that we do but it has happened historically and, interestingly, it has been successful.

  Q174  Chris Mole: So you do not think there is a role for looking at schools admissions policies and merging catchment areas and that sort of thing?

  Mr Sheehan: We constantly keep that under evaluation but the degree to which schools make their own decisions in these things is quite significant. It is about brokering and understanding those things. We have an excellent relationship with our schools, all of which are improving. We keep it under review but we are not proposing substantial change.

  Q175  Chris Mole: Do you have sufficient powers and flexibilities if you feel you need to do something|

  Mr Sheehan: It is about influence and brokering rather than power.

  Q176  Chris Mole: | through the admissions formal process?

  Mr Sheehan: Yes. We could bring about change if we needed to.

  Q177  Chris Mole: Coming back to what you were saying in the first part of your answer, how does the community cohesion agenda fit with the desire to improve standards overall?

  Mr Sheehan: It is not at odds with it. We have not identified any specific issue which says that improving school attainment, improving opportunities for children is something that is challenged by what we are doing or runs counter to what we are trying to do in terms of community cohesion. They are consistent. We are trying to give young people opportunities to meet people from different communities. We do that in a range of different ways, but we are still giving people choice in the schools that they would want to go to. There is not a conflict in this thing if it is planned carefully. They are consistent and contribute to each other's objectives.

  Q178  Dr Pugh: We are moving on to regeneration now. There is a lot of competitive bidding for different regeneration funds. We have received some evidence that this leads not to competition between communities but exacerbates tensions that are already there. What is your view on this? Do you think this situation has got better over the last two years or not?

  Mr Green: I would say that it has got more complex and more challenging and therefore tends to generate more conflict between different communities. We are now wrestling with this issue, and the research that we have done in Leicester indicates that over the last ten or 15 years politicians have been quite wise in spreading across all the different communities over a period of time the various pots of money that come on stream that we have to bid for and win. The community do not believe this. Wherever you go in the community they are absolutely convinced that another area has been favouritised for many years and this area has been underplayed, and so we have a constant backcloth of criticism, negativity and self-pity that regeneration has favoured all the other communities. This works particularly badly in the white working class outer estates which see community cohesion as something that has an unfortunate bias towards more recent arrivals of persons from abroad and see their own white working class culture being taken for granted, and I think if we are not careful both in the substance of deployment of regeneration resources and (just as importantly) the communication about the fairness of it to change the perception, this can turn itself into being a problem.

  Q179  Dr Pugh: Do you think it would be possible to adopt a more thematic approach to regeneration which would improve matters rather than this very geographically based distribution of funds?

  Mr Green: Thematic would help. I am biased, of course. I would say routing it through the city council which knows the area and understands the local politics and understands the wider picture is best. This is just one source of funding, so if you make decisions which are rational just in this one source of funding without taking into account many other fundings you could end up putting all the resources in a particular period in one area and that would create enormous social tensions.


 
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