Examination of Witnesses (Questions 500-508)
27 JANUARY 2004
MR GARETH
DANIEL AND
MS JOYCE
MARKHAM
Q500 Mr O'Brien: What about community
centres provided by the local authority?
Mr Daniel: The local authority
funds community centres, which are accessible to all groups in
the community, and they are promoted to all groups in the community,
but they are not the property or the possession of any one particular
group.
Ms Markham: I have to say, that
mirrors the situation in Harrow as well. We do not have the funds
to provide centres for all the groups that want them, but we do
promote, through the use of our own premises, whether it is libraries
or schools, a comprehensive letting process which enables all
communities to share the facilities and maximise the facilities
that are there. I would add also that, in Harrow, just before
Christmas, our Hindu and Muslim communities signed a friendship
protocol about joint work they wanted to do to benefit their communities
and share facilities. I think there is a huge amount of positive
work going on between those communities, some of which comes from
the communities themselves, and all we do is provide them with
some facilities so they can formalise that.
Q501 Chris Mole: Has the Race Relations
(Amendment) Act 2000 made any difference to the way the councils
in your partnership treat race issues?
Ms Markham: I have to say, I think
not. Because of the complexities of our communities, it is an
issue which has to be at the front of our minds all the time,
and, whilst we have done a lot of work ourselves, with our local
CRE, and nationally with the CRE, to use the legislation to check
our forward procedures and policies, in terms of the way we interact
with communities, I do not think there will be any discernible
difference. If I may say so, what is a little more concerning
to us is, whilst there are many good things happening now, particularly
between ODPM and Home Office, in a joined-up approach, there is
still a lot of split language used. Very recently, the Home Office
have used social cohesion, community cohesion, civic renewal,
there is a whole variety of language there, I think, which is
making some of these issues very difficult to deal with practically.
Q502 Chris Mole: What is your view of
the hypothesis that councils are still focused on the equal opportunities
agenda rather than the community cohesion agenda?
Ms Markham: That paints a picture
of local authorities as they were 20 years ago, but every local
authority that I have worked in, in that period, has moved well
into the diversity agenda, and a lot of them now are embracing
community cohesion wholeheartedly, so I do not recognise the picture,
I am afraid.
Q503 Christine Russell: How serious do
you think the problem is that people do not really understand
what community cohesion is all about? Is that a real problem?
You seem to be hinting that it is. If it is, what are you doing
to improve the understanding, particularly perhaps with young
people, and what more do you think the Government should be doing?
Ms Markham: I think it is a piece
of language which has not been helpful to us with our Pathfinder,
quite frankly. At the very early stage, we got signed up a definition
and a vision of community cohesion, but most people at least nod
and say, "Yes, we can see this," but then we have moved
people into saying "This is more about a concept and a series
of commissions to move into things," which is where we started
to get some enthusiasm going. I am afraid we recognised we had
a problem and we parcelled it up and slightly pushed it to one
side, because it is an incredibly complex issue for people to
get their minds round, and frankly we did not want people worrying
about that. I did not want people worrying about that in our Local
Strategic Partnership. Last night, they signed up very readily,
as part of their work programme for next year, to needing a community
cohesion reference group to check out some of the work that is
happening through that. I was very pleased that 12 months' plugging
away, thinking about community cohesion and its issues, did not
flag up the question on what is that now, because I had forgotten.
At least I think some of the concepts in it are starting to embed,
but I think it is a very difficult issue, but we should not shy
away from difficult issues, I think.
Mr Daniel: In terms of your question
about what more the Government could do, could I just add, the
issue about the language and the terminology is an important one,
but I do not think it should distract us from the bottom line,
that what we are trying to do is build successful, prosperous
and harmonious multi-racial communities. If you have all of those
things in place then you will get community cohesion. I think
sometimes the language is a barrier to popular understanding of
what it is we are trying to achieve. We are trying to ensure that
all members of the community, regardless of their race, gender,
religion, background, sexual orientation, or whatever, feel fully
engaged in the community of which they are a part and in which,
for the most part, they are taxpayers and council taxpayers. In
terms of Government initiatives, I think we welcome the fact that
the Home Office and the ODPM and others are putting an emphasis
on community cohesion. Probably what we do not need is too many
more 18-month, bolt-on programmes which tackle issues in a rather
short-term way. Most of what local authorities do all of the time
is about community cohesion. I work in a borough where there is
an ethnic majority population and we are the only local authority
in the country which has an ethnic majority workforce. I think
that is contributing as much to community cohesion in the borough
as any nationally-driven programmes. I think we could always do
with a little bit of extra money as well.
Q504 Mr O'Brien: Further to the previous
question about social cohesion in your boroughs, how are you measuring
what you do in terms of promoting social cohesion? The Home Office
issued some directive on this. How are you doing that?
Ms Markham: I think there are
three aspects to this. In terms of the local indicators that the
local authorities are using, we have started to put some emphasis
on looking at different communities and their attainment levels
in schools and their take-up of particular programmes, and whatever,
I think as described by the delegation from Coventry. We have
been working on that. If you have only some short-term issues
to deal with, in terms of the Pathfinder itself, in achieving
the objectives of the Pathfinder, in our case these are linked
very strongly to the communications theme and to embedding things
in a sustainable way into mainstream work. The third area is,
and I think this has been touched on by other evidence you have
heard this morning, this is a long-haul issue and it is about
a lot of very small steps. As a previous witness feared, I have
a lot of reservations about the Home Office guidance on collecting
information about community cohesion.
Q505 Chairman: Alright. The Home Office
have got it wrong, what will be the alternative?
Ms Markham: I think we need a
far more sophisticated series of measures about different communities'
access to services, funding, their attainment, about how local
authorities are going out and talking to communities.
Q506 Chairman: That is about them getting
equality of service, which obviously is important, but I thought
the idea was to see how cohesive a community is, so surely that
must be the interaction between those communities?
Ms Markham: I agree. It is about
the interaction of those communities, but I think you can get
a lot of sense of these indicators from looking at the pattern
of school admissions, school selection procedures, selection procedures
in a whole series of other things, if you want to try to collect
hard information. As other witnesses have said, I think some of
the key indicators here are some of the soft indicators about
what is happening out in communities and listening to those communities.
Q507 Chairman: Briefly, regeneration.
Plus or minus for social cohesion?
Mr Daniel: It is a very definite
positive. Over the years, I think, all the West London authorities
have accessed every conceivable competitive funding regime which
has ever been invented by the United Kingdom Government or the
European Commission. We are experts at putting together these
perverse beauty contests, where we try to demonstrate how really
awful it is living in our communities, in order to access the
money that we need. Because we do not have the residential segregation,
there is not in West London generally, I think, an issue that
some communities feel left out and other people are benefiting.
Because we have very mixed communities anyway, that means that
poor people live side by side with poor people of different colours
and races, as well as affluent people living side by side with
people of different backgrounds. There is not the same competitive
edge, I think, that you have identified, and which Ted Cantle's
Report identified in some northern communities, where there was
a feeling that some people were being left out. There is a real
issue though, and this is where the community cohesion agenda
is particularly important, about recognising the needs of disaffected
white communities, particularly on some of the more marginalised,
more peripheral council estates, where I think there is a real
issue about ensuring the community cohesion initiatives tackle
the entire needs of the community and not just the perceived disadvantaged
minority.
Q508 Chairman: All these special funds,
is that much better than giving local authorities a bit more to
start with?
Mr Daniel: We would prefer the
money through our main programmes, thank you very much.
Chairman: On that note, can I thank you
very much for your evidence. Thank you.
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