Memorandum by The London Borough of Tower
Hamlets (SOC 63)
The London Borough of Tower Hamlets is proud
to have been recognised as a Beacon Council for its work in support
of community cohesion. As set out in our application for beacon
status, we believe that the key elements for success are:
— high expectations for all communities;
— a focus on accelerating improvement
and achieving ambitious targets;
— active and involved partnership and
energetic third sector activity;
— strong and responsive communication
networks between the different agencies and our local communities.
We do not believe that community cohesion can
be approached as an "add-on" to public service delivery.
Accordingly, we have deliberately chosen not to develop a separate
strategy for community cohesion. Rather, our approaches to it
are embedded in the way services are planned, delivered and reviewed.
We also believe that community cohesion cannot
be nurtured without effective partnership. The Council plays a
key role through the Tower Hamlets Partnership (our Local Strategic
Partnership) in leading an agreed, inclusive local vision and
direction for the borough—set out in our Community Plan—and
in enabling community involvement to underpin its delivery.
Our vision seeks to accelerate the rate of improvement
in the quality of life experienced by all local people. This is
about fostering ambition and high aspirations for all communities.
To this end, the Council and its partners are fully committed
to the government's neighbourhood renewal programme and its aim
of achieving minimum standards in areas of living that are fundamental
to the quality of life—jobs, health, education, housing
and freedom from crime. We believe that improving these areas
of living for all communities is likely to lessen the risk of
social disaffection and fragmentation. This makes a focus on high
quality service delivery critical to the maintenance of community
cohesion.
Debate about community cohesion is often centred
around race. We welcome the growing recognition that the issues
are much wider than this, encompassing faith differences, gender
differences, sexual differences, socio-economic differences, and
even regional and sub-regional differences. In short, we recognise
that cohesion may be at risk wherever there is diversity. However,
we also firmly believe that diversity brings considerable benefits
to society as a whole in terms of a rich, wider understanding
of the world in which we live. The celebration and promotion of
diversity—through work in schools, and through arts, cultural
and leisure activities—for instance, is therefore especially
important in raising awareness and understanding, and in bringing
communities together. Tower Hamlets Council therefore provides
strong support, in terms of leadership, involvement and finance,
for a comprehensive range of such activities.
Approaches to community cohesion need to reflect
both the tensions and the benefits that differences between communities
bring. Maintaining cohesion therefore demands on-going sensitivity
from all service providers to the changing needs of different
communities. It also demands strong political leadership to ensure
that decision-making processes—about the allocation and
targeting of resources, for example—are transparent and
well-understood. This task is facilitated by the clear communication
of the priorities which are agreed by all stakeholders through
the borough's Community Plan. However, it also requires well-developed
communication networks between communities and between different
communities and service providers. Regardless of political party
boundaries, democratically elected local councillors, who are
rooted in their own communities but also aware of and sensitive
to the needs of other communities, need to be at the centre of
these communication networks. In Tower Hamlets, our eight Local
Area Partnerships—built on 2-3 ward boundaries and forming
the heart of our Local Strategic Partnership—provide our
major vehicle for local community influence. These bring together
people in their locality to share ideas and views about how things
can be improved and provide local people with the chance to influence
the delivery of services locally and to scrutinise the performance
of the council, health, police and other mainstream services.
Ward councillors play a key role in providing local leadership
within the Local Area Partnerships and in ensuring that there
is effective communication between residents and service and localities
and the centre.
Strong communication networks, built on local
knowledge, are clearly important in fostering an understanding
of community needs. But they are also important in their ability
to provide early warning of emerging issues and tensions, enabling
quick action to be taken to resolve them. Our Rapid Response Team,
located in the Youth Support Services of the Education Directorate,
has a specific role in engaging with hard to reach young people
who are involved in—or at risk of involvement in—street
conflicts, anti social behaviour, drug misuse or other criminal
activity. The team has developed excellent communication networks
across different communities, enabling potential tensions and
social disorder to be identified early. This means that the team
can work with key partners to intervene quickly, helping to abort
minor disturbances or prevent them from damaging community relations.
The team has been cited many times by residents as having defused
situations of potential disorder and conflict.
A responsive workforce which understands and
responds to the needs of different communities is also important
to community cohesion. In Tower Hamlets, we believe that this
means developing a workforce that reflects the community as a
whole, so that services are delivered as far as possible by local
people with an understanding of their local communities. We therefore
place a strong emphasis on supporting local people into jobs in
the public services, and indeed into local employment generally.
The employee profile across the public services provides evidence
of our success in this, and our programme for "growing our
own" staff for schools, including local progression routes
into teaching has gained national recognition.
The Council also believes that the local voluntary
and community sector has an important role to play in delivering
services to local people, helping to support both local employment
and service delivery that is sensitive to community needs. Our
Third Sector Strategy seeks to strengthen this role by working
with the sector to build its capacity to deliver not only more
but improved services.
We agree with the LGA Guidance on Community
Cohesion that faith can be a powerful factor in personal and community
identity, and that organised faith groups have a key role to play
in supporting community cohesion. Although discussion forums to
support awareness and mutual understanding between faith communities
are important, the need for involvement from the leaders of faith
communities goes beyond this. In areas where religious faith is
a strong determinant of local values, faith group leaders will
be especially important influences on their communities. In Tower
Hamlets, we have recognised that this influence can be harnessed
to support service delivery in a way that meets community needs
more effectively. Our School Attendance Project, our Forced Marriage
initiative and our Community Cohesion Pathfinder initiative provide
examples of how local public services and faith groups have been
working collaboratively together to meet local needs.
The nature of the risks to community cohesion
is likely to differ from area to area. The risks in area like
Tower Hamlets, for example, with a long established tradition
as a settling point for communities new to the country, are likely
to be different from those in areas newly experiencing the presence
of different communities. Each area therefore needs to have a
clear understanding of the local factors that can contribute to
the fracturing of communities. One-size does not fit all.
One of the particular risks in areas which are
relatively mono-cultural is that local cohesion can be cited as
a reason for resisting the presence of new communities in the
area. This is clearly more than a local issue, however, since
it highlights the differences that exist across the country as
a whole. There are transferable lessons, but there needs to be
national debate to develop a broader understanding of the rich
web of community networks that exists across the nation. Tower
Hamlets Council welcomes the fact that this debate has been stimulated
by the government's focus over the past two years. However, more
needs to be done still to move the debate beyond the potential
of transferable policies and towards a shared understanding of
the human factors underpinning cohesion and diversity issues.
To return to our starting point, we believe that public services
can best support cohesion by focusing on improving the quality
of life for all communities, not through "add-on" policies
and ad hoc actions.
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