Examination of Witnesses (Questions 490-499)
27 JANUARY 2004
MR GARETH
DANIEL AND
MS JOYCE
MARKHAM
Q490 Chairman: Can I welcome you to the
last session this morning. Can I ask you to identify yourselves,
for the record, please?
Ms Markham: Joyce Markham, Chief
Executive of London Borough of Harrow, and Co-Chair of the West
London Community Cohesion Pathfinder.
Mr Daniel: I am Gareth Daniel,
Chief Executive, London Borough of Brent.
Q491 Chairman: Do either of you want
to say anything, by way of introduction, or are you happy for
us to go straight to questions?
Mr Daniel: To questions, Chairman.
Q492 Christine Russell: Many of the West
London boroughs could have experienced the same riots and anti-social
behaviour as occurred in Burnley and Bradford and Oldham, but
it did not happen in West London. Why do you think it did not?
Mr Daniel: Perhaps if I could
start by trying to answer that question. I think the history in
West London has been very different. London itself is a different
sort of racial mix from some of the northern cities, where some
of those tensions did arise, and although I do not think any of
us would ever be so complacent as to suggest that riots could
never take place in areas like West London, I think the history
and the context are very different. West London has a long history,
going back decades, of absorbing new immigrant groupings and assimilating
them into the community, and that goes back well into the 19th
century. Over the years different decades have presented different
challenges, and currently we are facing the challenge of large
numbers of refugees and asylum-seekers coming into the area, for
example. Over the years West London, like the city as a whole,
has become an amazing hotchpotch of races and cultures, mostly
living side by side with one another. There is not the same degree
of residential segregation in London generally, certainly it is
the case in West London, as you find in those northern cities.
The borough that I work for, for example, has an ethnic majority
population, we are not talking about a small, beleaguered minority
of Asian residents in one particular section of town. In London
you can go through any street, and in West London, and you will
find probably dozens of different nationalities, languages and
religions, cultures and lifestyles living side by side with one
another. It is very much more of a racial mix, and that applies
certainly in all six of the boroughs which the West London Alliance
was set up to represent.
Q493 Christine Russell: What about the
contribution that local authorities themselves have made, what
lessons based on your experience do you think you could give to
some of the northern authorities and authorities in the West Midlands?
Mr Daniel: There are a few issues
there which I think are particularly important, and I know Joyce
can add to this. One is the issue about political representation.
I think in most of our local authorities the actual council representation
reflects, pretty broadly, the sort of racial mix of the population.
There are some groups which are clearly less well represented
than others, but in most of our local authorities the black and
minority ethnic community have got engaged with the political
parties.
Q494 Christine Russell: Do you credit
the political parties with that happening, or the offices of the
local authorities?
Mr Daniel: I think probably they
are driven by the need to win votes from the black and minority
ethnic population. Nevertheless, whatever the motivation, I think
they deserve their share of credit for being sensitive to the
needs of a multi-racial community. In my own local authority,
there are black and minority ethnic councillors in all three of
the political parties who serve on Brent Council. I think the
other issue which has been really important is that the community
leadership which the West London authorities have shown has been
absolutely crucial. We celebrate diversity in West London, we
are not frightened by it, we are not scared of it, we celebrate
it, and it is one of the strengths of the area. When you are trying
to market what is a successful and relatively buoyant economy
in West London, the fact that West London has a very multinational
workforce, major headquarters of international companies based
there, the very cosmopolitan nature of the workforce is itself
quite a compelling factor driving inward investment in the area,
and we think that is a strength. Also we celebrate one another's
religions and cultures. In Brent, for example, we celebrate the
Jewish festival of Hanukkah, we celebrate the Muslim festivals
of Eid, everybody celebrates Diwali, whatever their religion,
in West London. There is a sense in which we own one another's
cultures and we have actively provided opportunities for engagement
between communities, and that has been done actively, it has not
happened by default. I think the political parties of all persuasions
deserve some recognition for the leadership they have shown in
that.
Ms Markham: I think, as someone
who has worked in West London only recently, I have been here
for only two years, other issues have struck me, outside the political
domain. I think the councils are very well organised, in terms
of a fairly old-fashioned expression, which is community development.
They have capacity within them to go out and work in their communities,
listen to their communities and help communities become established,
as they move into the area, and link them into other networks.
I think also we have some really good issues in terms of the Education
Service, in terms of putting attainment very high on the agenda
of our schools and also putting celebration of cultural diversity
very high on the agenda, so that all children have the opportunity
to participate in a huge variety of events which represent all
the communities that we have. I know that one of the events planned
for Harrow a little later in the year is a multicultural celebration
of St George's Day. I am quite looking forward to seeing how people
come to grips with that. There is also, I think, a wide range
of co-operative working amongst the authorities. We have common
access to housing, we have common rules about accessibility to
housing, we have a common allocations policy, you can come to
one borough and be allocated housing in any of the six boroughs.
I think the boroughs are very well organised.
Q495 Chairman: You are telling us a lot
of good news, but, this sub-regional alliance, was it logical
or was it a fiddle to get some money?
Mr Daniel: Certainly, it was logical.
It was driven I think by a perception that the needs of West London
were going to be overlooked, with the emphasis which is now being
placed on the needs of East London and the Thames Gateway, so
I suppose it was a sub-regional response to protect local self-interest.
Although West London is predominantly quite a prosperous community,
I know self-interest is something which is not well understood
in political circles, but I know, in West London, there is a perception
that, although it is a very buoyant economy, we all represent
areas of very substantial deprivation and disadvantage as well.
There are a number of wards in the London Borough of Brent which
are in the top ten% for deprivation anywhere in the country, so
we have this curious amalgam of relative affluence but also deep
pockets of poverty in the area. I think there was a feeling that,
in the sharing out of the national resource cake, unless we actually
got together as a grouping to articulate the needs of West London,
the more widespread levels of deprivation that you find in East
London would probably gain greater precedence. If you are deprived
in Brent, or if you are deprived in Harrow, I can assure you,
you are just as deprived as you are in the East End of London.
Q496 Chairman: Would you recommend to
other parts of the country that these sub-regional alliances are
a good thing?
Ms Markham: I think the sub-regional
alliances are an amazingly powerful tool for, one, sharing good
practice within an area, as well as working jointly as an area
to resolve problems, and projecting an image to an area. We are
certainly working on that, for example, with the Greater London
Assembly at the moment, in terms of an economic regeneration strategy
for the sub-region, which is the most advanced piece of work of
its kind in London at the moment. I think there are very positive
benefits and I would encourage anyone to move forward in that
way.
Q497 Mr Cummings: The Pathfinder programme
was funded for only two years and really that was to develop community
cohesion within your mainstream services. Can you tell the Committee
what you have achieved so far?
Mr Daniel: The Pathfinder was
a short-term programme, you are right, but the national programme
I think runs for 18 months. The current Pathfinder in West London
comes to an end in September of this year. In a sense, we felt
strongly compelled to put a bid for Pathfinder status forward
because we felt there was a very distinct West London story to
be told, that the experience in West London was not the same as
in some of the northern cities. There are some similarities but
also there are very important differences. We did not discover
community cohesion when the Home Office announced the Pathfinder
programme, most of us had been doing community cohesion for decades.
We might use different terminology, we might call it urban renewal
or urban development or job creation or equal opportunities, or
whatever. The Pathfinder programme has not been principally about
introducing the notion of community cohesion to an area which
did not previously engage with it, it has been about trying to
ensure that we work more closely together with agencies, like
the voluntary sector. We work very closely with the police and
the Primary Care Trusts and other agencies, Learning and Skills
Councils, to make sure that they are engaged also. We are using
the Pathfinder as a vehicle to support individual projects, certainly,
but the most important part of the Pathfinder, to my mind, is
raising the issue of community cohesion on the agendas of organisations
which spend hundreds of millions of pounds a year. The most important
bits of community cohesion that I am involved with are not the
relatively, I have to say, modest sums of money being made available
by the Home Office for the Pathfinder, and we are talking about
less than a million pounds in West London, that is six authorities,
with a population of one and a half million people. The most important
bits of community cohesion are how we spend our mainstream education
programmes, regeneration programmes, housing programmes and the
community cohesion, for example, which takes place in our schools
and the mixing of cultures and the celebration of cultural diversity
and the emphasis on educational attainment to which Joyce has
just referred. That is probably the most useful thing that we
can do, by making sure that we mainstream local authority programmes.
The Pathfinder gives us a bit of an opportunity to try different
things, to engage with different partners and to do a little bit
of experimentation, but it is not the main thrust of the community
cohesion activity which is taking place.
Q498 Mr Cummings: Could you perhaps tell
the Committee how mainstream services in your boroughs are responding
to projects being developed by the Pathfinder?
Ms Markham: I think they have
responded extremely well. First of all, it has enabled the mainstream
services to refresh their thinking about the things they are doing
and to put a degree of challenge into the things that they are
doing, to say "How does this fit in with the objectives of
what we are signed up to as a Pathfinder?" I think that has
been extremely helpful. I think also it has enabled us to open
up a new agenda, in talking to our Local Strategic Partnership,
particularly partners in the private sector, about a different
range of issues which are touching on the skills agenda and skills
shortages that they are experiencing and finding some new ways
into discussing issues. I think it is an expression which brings
a very positive permission to talk about some issues which on
other occasions we have not been able to talk about.
Q499 Mr O'Brien: In both of your communities
you have a large group of Hindu and Muslim people, and each group,
I would imagine, will want their own community centres and means
of identifying their group. What are you doing to stave that off
and create community-based centres, etc?
Mr Daniel: I think that is an
issue which is very difficult in London, because, the sheer variety
of communities, if everybody insisted on having their own community
centre I think the local authority would be bankrupt pretty quickly.
As everybody knows, the Hindu communities and the Muslim communities
will know, there are factions and differences within those communities
as well as between those and other religious groupings. On the
whole, that is not a road that we have gone down, in Brent, because
we simply do not have the resources to fund that. What we try
to do is make sure that the mainstream provision, the mainstream
services that we provide to the totality of the community reflect
those needs. Investing in bricks and mortar for community organisations,
on the whole, they do that pretty well themselves, and we have
got some very famous ones. There is the big Neasden temple, the
Swami Narayan Hindu temple in Neasden, which is one of the most
wonderful Hindu temples outside of India. That was funded by the
community themselves, not by the local authority.
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