Examination of Witnesses (Questions 180-199)
17 SEPTEMBER 2003
PAUL SHEEHAN,
RODNEY GREEN
AND BEN
BROWN
Q180 Chairman: Is that realistic?
The Chancellor has to make a budget speech twice a year now and
he has to have little goodies to stick in, does he not? Are you
not always going to get these little schemes coming along rather
than being able to get back to a good level local authority funding
that would cover everything?
Mr Green: I think you are right
but I think there is a trend that needs to be halted and reversed
to some extent because these small sums of funding are very labour
and leadership intensive, and in terms of the main spend, the
hundreds of millions that we spend, the disproportionate amount
of time in bidding and then failing to win and so on, one is bound
to ask how effective they are. Having said that, I do believe
that community cohesion is about a continuous stream of initiatives
and activity to show that this agenda is alive, and well, it has
not just been parked in this establishment box.
Q181 Chairman: So a few sweets dangling
is quite useful rather than telling you that you have got to take
it out of your weekly food budget?
Mr Green: Initiatives like the
Community Cohesion Pathfinder from the Home Office, small sums
of money which are never going to make or break an authority,
allow imaginative and creative experimentation and that can have
a power that is way beyond the sums of money that are involved.
Q182 Mr Clelland: Mr Sheehan touched
before on the question of segregated housing areas. I got the
impression you were saying let the communities decide. Do we think
that they should or could there be anything done to deal with
the question of segregation in residential areas?
Mr Sheehan: Yes. I would commend
choice and choice has historically tended to lead to concentration
of minority groups in certain areas. I do not think society has
the right to regulate where people live but I do believe we have
a responsibility to facilitate the opportunity to live in other
areas, so we have supported over a number of years the Nayshaynan
Housing Association which seeks to provide opportunities for people
from minority ethnic communities to live in different places than
they otherwise would do. They have adjusted the way that they
operate because people still want to live near their support mechanisms,
their food supply and religious support and so forth. I support
choice and individual freedoms but we as a local authority and
as a series of public sector organisations have a responsibility
to facilitate choice wherever we can and we seek to do that in
a whole range of different ways. I would commend to you that there
is a new kid on the block in terms of economic regeneration and
housing and the Committee might well put some time into it on
another occasion, and that is the role of the regional development
agencies in funding these kinds of things. We are pushing to make
sure in our case that Yorkshire Forward has cohesion as an issue.
Its role is job generation. Its targets from central government
do not include community cohesion. Its targets from central government
all talk about generating jobs. Jobs are generated in large numbers
in cities and on greenfield sites on the edge of major cities
with good motorway access. That does not necessarily help the
people of Halifax.
Q183 Chairman: So are you giving
Yorkshire Forward a thumbs-down?
Mr Sheehan: It is early days.
The jury is out.
Q184 Mr Clelland: Local authorities
have a planning role and a strategic housing role. They less and
less have a direct role in the provision of housing, so they all
can have a tremendous influence over this. Should they be exercising
that influence and, if so, how?
Mr Sheehan: We look at the way
that we have development throughout the borough. We will seek
wherever we have got either brownfield or greenfield development
from the commercial sector to have affordable housing built into
that and affordable housing of a type which is suitable for the
kinds of communities that we are trying to serve. We will therefore
try to make opportunities available to people to move. We have
housing association allocation rights and we use those in areas
to facilitate people's move from the areas of traditional concentration,
if that is something that they would wish to bring about, and
it happens to an extent, but in Halifax, as in other parts of
the country, we still have largely segregated communities.
Mr Green: Can I just endorse that
with a very quick comment? I was hoping at the end to have the
chance to suggest three things that the Government ought to be
doing to promote this agenda. One of them is to recognise that
much of this agenda, although not all of it, is around urban deprivation
and the importance of providing incentives for development in
brownfield areas lies at the heart of this. If you do not look
at taxation and fiscal and other ways in which you can promote
brownfield development, you are taking one of your arms and tying
it behind your back, so incentives for urban regeneration on brownfield
disadvantages need to be looked at.
Mr Brown: There are some real
issues for us in terms of how segregation is caused and the effects
of it. One of them is the fact that we as a London borough are
perhaps one of the cheaper London boroughs in terms of housing
and therefore there is a tendency for others to place people within
Haringey and we have no control over that. Certainly one of the
things we would like is much more control over that and over who
can or cannot place in and use Haringey properties. There is only
so much it can take. Tensions will grow and are growing because
of that. For example, with asylum seekers again, the National
Asylum Seeker Service allows people just to be placed in Haringey
and they will make that choice. That means that we are getting
a lot more than perhaps we should. Other local authorities will
also place within Haringey because it is cheaper for them to do
so. That again adds to our problems, and they will always be in
the more deprived areas like the east of Haringey, Tottenham and
what-have-you. That is where we will therefore get a lot of our
problems, and it is harder in those areas to convince people about
the benefits of regeneration, what we can do within the areas,
when we have this going on.
Q185 Mr Clelland: When you say that
other local authorities are placing in Haringey, in what way do
they do that? Are they buying up properties in Haringey?
Mr Brown: For example, NASS has
something like 200 properties.
Q186 Mr Clelland: Are you talking
about the asylum seekers?
Mr Brown: That is one area, but
again we have homelessness; we have a problem there. We have 4,000
waiting to be housed on our homeless list and a lot will come
in from outside. We do not know them. They will just turn up;
they will be there and they are taking properties all the time.
The private rental market will always take them on because people
are willing to pay and we are not, or we want to barter them down,
and they can get a higher price somewhere else and they will do
that.
Q187 Mr Clelland: I thought the point
you were making was about other local authorities placing in Haringey
but this is specifically the asylum seeking problem you are talking
about there?
Mr Brown: In the main it is an
asylum seeker problem but it is other local authorities placing
asylum seekers within our area.
Q188 Dr Pugh: Many people would look
at Haringey and say that you have a problem with social cohesion.
If you throw in asylum seekers you just have more of the same,
but what you seem to be saying is that it is a qualitatively different
problem and I would like you to extend those thoughts a little
bit.
Mr Brown: People would say it
is more of the same but it is not. It is bigger. Just as a starting
point, we have something like 190-odd languages spoken in Haringey.
Q189 Dr Pugh: This may be one of
the reasons why asylum seekers would come there, because there
is some language support for them there.
Mr Brown: Most definitely, and
in terms of communities that have been there a long time, like
the Turkish/Kurdish communities, they have been with us for a
long time, so those coming from Turkey and the Kurdish Turks as
well will make their way to Haringey. I do not know why we started
off getting as many Kosovan Albanians as we have got, but there
are very significant numbers there as well. There again, there
are major problems because of the dissimilarities between the
groups. A lot of racism, for example, will come from Kosovan Albanians
against other black and ethnic minority people within the communities
and will be very blatant because they are quite naive about it,
and so you have to be particularly patient and you have got to
work particularly carefully in addressing that as an issue. The
problems are in some ways the same but we are getting more of
them and there are some differences in terms of the effect, as
I said earlier, on the black and ethnic minority communities who
are now well established, who will turn round and say, "Stop
bringing in all these asylum seekers". It is not just the
white local groups; it is the black people who have been there
since the fifties.
Q190 Dr Pugh: Are there white indigenous
groups, if I can put it like that, capable of differentiating
between, say, a long established black group and asylum seekers?
Mr Brown: Certainly in terms of
some of the groups. For example, we have a lot of Kosovan Albanians
who are travelling families and they are very identifiable as
such, so people will recognise and single out that particular
group to be negative about.
Q191 Dr Pugh: Finally, you have mentioned
your discouraging experience with the National Asylum Support
Service. Have you taken these issues up with them, because they
are quite clearly bringing severe problems to you?
Mr Brown: We keep taking issues
up with them and we will continue to do so. The way in which we
try to do that is by being diplomatic and sensitive as to what
their problems are. We feel we have to be. It sometimes gets quite
difficult. We have made gains. For example, I managed to convince
the Director of Finance of NASS to come out and visit us, and
he did. He came and spent quite a period of time with us and that
really improved the relationship between us. I think there is
a need for us to try and work closely together by doing that all
the way down the line because you just get a sense that you will
get a different answer depending on who you go to in NASS at any
given time in seeking an answer that will deal with issues across
the board.
Q192 Mr Clelland: Leicester is a
pathfinder authority and Calderdale is a shadow pathfinder authority.
How do you find this scheme? Is it proving helpful?
Mr Green: It is very helpful for
us. As I said earlier, if this agenda is not to get tired and
predictable it needs constant innovation and creativity and it
needs small sums of money. Programmes like this enable us to experiment.
We are doing some really imaginative things with the pathfinder
scheme which we probably would not have done unless we had had
this additional money.
Q193 Chairman: Such as?
Mr Green: We focused it entirely
on youth because we are a young city. Fifty per cent of our population
at the younger age range are already black and ethnic minority.
Leicester will become Europe's first majority black city, so all
of that money is going to youth. I can give you three or four
examples. One is about media skills. All the media—newspaper,
print, radio and television—are working with us to help
young people learn how to communicate their aims, their objectives,
their aspirations, in a way that is sensitive to other cultures,
and we are hoping they may spill that over into training reporters
as well because they have got a thing or two to learn in this
area. A second example would be in conflict resolution. The voluntary
sector are getting training in how to resolve conflicts and tension
which arise because, as we have said, the fact that we are a beacon
does not mean we do not have tensions and difficulties. We are
trying to foster—(and this is my second point that I think
the Government really needs to focus on; this is a tiny project
but it is a huge issue)—the Federation of Schools in much
closer curriculum management and leadership links where you are
building really close allegiances between this school and its
governors and its community and teaching and the curriculum with
that school in a totally different community. So I am not just
seeing boys and girls at a dance once a year; I am being taught
with them maths and history and English and so on. We are trying
to do some experimentation both within Leicester and between Leicester
and Wigan, which is a very mono-cultural city and very different,
to see what will emerge from those kinds of things. A fourth area
is street culture. White working class people are proud of their
street culture. At my age I am not even sure what street culture
is but it needs to be celebrated and understood and we are using
pathfinder to do that as well. It is very helpful on a small scale.
Q194 Chairman: Is it pathfinder or
should it be trailblazer? Are you trying to encourage other local
authorities to follow you or, because you have got some money
to do it, are other local authorities going to find it difficult
to follow you because they will not have the money to do it?
Mr Green: That may well apply.
My view in life generally is that if schemes are really imaginative
and they are good ideas, they will happen. People will find money;
they will find ways of dealing with it. The idea around the Federation
is so important that I think it is probably the single most important
issue that I would want to bring to this table, trying to facilitate
and fund these federations of schools that really bring children
together right the way through their schooling. That will require
a little bit of funding but some of these things will not happen
because they are not going to be successful. This is what experimentation
is. They just do not work very well. The better ideas they will
take on.
Q195 Chairman: Shadow or in the shadows?
Mr Sheehan: Meaningless. It does
not provide anything of substance. It is not a bad thing.
Q196 Chairman: So it was not a consolation
prize; it was a booby prize?
Mr Sheehan: Your words exactly,
Chairman. It is nothing that we would not already be doing. I
set up a network in the Humber on community cohesion two years
ago and that shares good practice. We do not need to be shadowing
another single authority. There is no money in it that enables
us to implement these things. It is not a bad thing but I do not
see, and neither do my staff see, any significant benefits from
that. On the issue about mainstreaming, I agree with Rodney that
one way or another the very best ideas will be funded, but there
are so many things that we are trying now across a range of different
communities and a range of different services that we will not
be able to mainstream because increasingly mainstream local government
budgets are constrained by the requirements of central government.
That is a good thing; I am not complaining, but there is not the
flexibility to mainstream the really good stuff and then roll
it out through our local districts. It is okay having pilots,
it is okay having pathfinders, but there simply is not the resource
to mainstream the things that really do work. It may be different
in authorities with more generous funding regimes than we have.
We perhaps do not have the problems that some of those local authorities
have but we simply cannot mainstream the really good ideas because
there are so many of them out there. We do not have the dosh.
Q197 Mr Clelland: So are you getting
the type of support you require from the Government in terms of
the pathfinder areas?
Mr Green: It is good and they
are giving good support. It is small beer; I do not want to exaggerate
it, but sometimes these small acorns turn into big trees and I
think the work around the Federation could be really significant.
I am never going to be negative when somebody is giving me even
a small amount of money.
Q198 Mr Clelland: Can we turn to
the Race Relations Act 2000 which places a duty on local authorities
not only to eliminate unlawful race discrimination but also to
promote good relations between people of different races? What
difference has this made to the treatment of race issues by local
authorities?
Mr Brown: In terms of Haringey,
Haringey has had to deal with issues of race relations for many
years. What we are finding in terms of the Race Relations (Amendment)
Act is that it is placing a bit of an onus on us in terms of the
work that we need to be seen to be doing as opposed to what we
are doing. We believe in it, we want it, we want the Race Relations
Act to work and we certainly would use it as a way of improving
relationships between all groups. What we want to be careful about
is that it does not become too top-heavy in terms of having to
produce information and records that may well be meaningful to
others but are not as meaningful as what is actively going on
on the ground. It is important, yes, but I would want to say that
the history of Haringey shows that it has really been taking on
the issues of improving race relations for as long as I can remember.
Q199 Mr Clelland: But is that concentrated
on equal opportunities or on community cohesion?
Mr Brown: No. It is literally
in terms of issues around race, in terms of trying to ensure that
we properly represent people and that people have an equal chance.
The make-up of the council is something like 33 per cent of black
and ethnic minority groups in terms of members and that shows
a willingness on behalf of Haringey to ensure that they do embrace
and bring in people from minority ethnic cultures to be part of
the council and to represent their communities as well as others.
Mr Sheehan: It is a good thing;
it is onerous in terms of the documentation and so forth that
has to be prepared. That is a challenge, but it raises some interesting
things that we have not faced yet but I anticipate we might do
because the more public we are about what we are doing for minority
ethnic communities the more it will raise a bias question in the
minds of those who would have such things raised. It needs to
be done with wisdom and some skill and simply pressing publicly
always to justify it raises the potential for cohesion issues
to arise. It is a good thing, challenging, but it needs to be
done with great sensitivity.
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