Memorandum by the London Borough of Barking
and Dagenham
The Council has focused its response around
the terms of reference of the inquiry, as follows:
1. The effect of recent inward migration
on community cohesion, and public concerns about this effect
Barking and Dagenham has the fastest changing
demography in the country. This is not simply as a result of migration
from outside the UK, but also resulting from the move eastwards
of multicultural London in pursuit of (relatively) affordable
housing to buy.
In 1991, only 6.8% of the borough's population
was non-white: this had risen to nearly 15% by 2001, and is now,
it is estimated, approximately 25%.
PLASC data provided by the Department for Children
Schools and Families shows that Barking and Dagenham had the greatest
percentage increase in the country of pupils whose first language
was not English between 2003 and 2006: an increase of 10 percentage
points, from 14 to 24%.
This pace of change in a borough which had previously
seen itself as removed from the challenges of urban living, has
led to strong, yet unfounded, concerns amongst many white residents
that public services disproportionately favour black minority
ethnic residents as well as new arrivals to the UK.
While members of BME communities are generally
optimistic and positive about living in the borough, white residents
were pessimistic in a recent survey, seeing the area as "getting
worse". Some reported that they aimed to leave the borough
as a result.
There are therefore significant implications
for community cohesion as a result of migration into the borough,
whether from outside or inside the UK.
2. The role, responsibilities and actions
of different bodies on community cohesion and migration
The Council clearly understands that it has
a number of roles in relation to community cohesion and migration:
— Service provider: the Council
has a legal obligation to provide services to those who are entitled
to receive them. Clearly, the more people living in the borough
who have this entitlement, the harder the task of matching demand
and need, if resourcing does not follow the pattern of new arrivals.
— Community leader: the Local
Government White Paper, Strong and Prosperous Communities,
(2006) proposes changes which will enable local government to
"use its role as community leader to champion the interests
of those who are disadvantaged and discriminated against".
The Council has an important role, as community leader, in ensuring
that all those living in the borough are able to live free from
fear of discrimination.
— Wellbeing: the Local Government
Act 2000 gives local authority the power to do anything which
they consider will achieve the promotion or improvement of the
economic, social or environmental wellbeing of the area. This
Council believes that the promotion of community cohesion is included
within this definition.
— Race equality: the Council
has specific legal duties, both as an employer, and also as a
public authority, in relation to ensuring and promoting race equality.
3. The effectiveness of local and central
government action and expenditure in promoting community cohesion
and responding to inward migration flows, with particular regard
to:
— Areas that have experienced rapid
increases in new inward migration.
— Areas that have a lack of experience
of diversity.
— Areas where new migrant communities
mix with existing settled migrant communities.
The second scenario most closely represents
Barking and Dagenham's experience: while change has been rapid,
there has not been a sudden influx of one non-UK community, as
has been the case elsewhere.
The Council has worked with the rest of the
Local Strategic Partnership to develop a community cohesion strategy,
based on extensive local engagement, which articulates the main
actions it can and will take to promote community cohesion. It
is confident that its actions will be effective because they are
based on a detailed assessment of local needs and concerns. Actions
include:
— Delivering excellent services which
are most important to local people, thus removing cause for antagonism
between communities due to perceived competition for resources.
— Demonstrating that it is a listening
Council which responds to people's concerns and needs.
— Giving people opportunities to influence
decision-making and get involved being part of the solution in
improving the local community, via our new, borough-wide neighbourhood
management service.
— Demonstrating that improvements are
happening at a local level, where people can see the evidence
for themselves, again, via neighbourhood management.
— Creating and supporting the development
of opportunities for people from different backgrounds to come
together (encouragingly, local research demonstrates that people
are keen to see the provision of such opportunities).
The Council would argue that central government
has not responded as effectively as possible to inward migration
flows, as set out in more detail at 5, below.
4. The role of the English language as a
tool in promoting the integration of migrants
This Council believes strongly that English
language skills are an essential component in enabling new arrivals
in the borough to integrate in the community, and has been alarmed
to see a reduction in government funding (via the LSC) for this
important activity. The Council has been encouraged to see more
positive recent announcements in relation to funding for English
as an Additional Language and looks forward to these being followed
by appropriate funding improvements.
5. The impact of recent migration on local
communities, including the impact on housing, education, health
care and other public services
A major issue in relation to inward migration
is the disparity between official population statistics and the
actual numbers of population in local authorities. This exacerbates
the impact on local public services.
The Council believes that the Office for National
Statistics (ONS) has undercounted the borough's population significantly.
The ONS data for the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham's
population in recent years is as follows:
| 2001-02 | 165,851
|
| 2002-03 | 167,302 |
| 2003-04 | 165,862 |
| 2004-05 | 164,572 |
| 2005-06 | 164,521 |
These statistics suggest that the borough's population has
actually fallen by 1,330 since 2001-02. In that same time period,
a range of other statistics suggests that the borough's population
has been rising. For example:
— National insurance data in Barking
and Dagenham shows that there were 2,600 registrations in 2004-05
and 3,200 registrations in 2005-06. This compares to in-migration
figures from ONS of 1,906 and 1,910 for the respective periods,
suggesting a significant undercount for the ONS data;
— PLASC data from 2003 to 2006 demonstrates
that the proportion of white British pupils in schools fell from
72.2% to 61.6%, suggesting significant migration into the borough
(the school roll increased by 760 in that period). The percentage
of black African pupils increased from 8% in 2003 to 15% in 2006;
— since 1999, the total people on the electoral
roll has grown from 115,000 to over 119,000 in 2004/05;
and
— the number of people on GPs registers in
2003 was just under 170,000, by 2006 it was in excess of 176,000.
None of these datasets on their own provide sufficiently
robust data to estimate the borough's population. The ONS, and
Department for Communities and Local Government from which the
funding is provided, argue that the ONS data is the most accurate
source of information available.
However, all of the data for Barking and Dagenham, as shown
above, with the exception of the ONS estimates, show that the
overwhelming trend is that borough's population is rising. Against
this backdrop, the ONS data increasingly seems to lack credibility.
The key implication for local authorities of this inaccuracy
is that population statistics feed into the grant that the Council
receives from central Government (via population projections),
with approximately £500,000 received by this Council for
every 1,000 resident population. If the borough's population was
undercounted by 10,000, this would mean the Council is receiving
at least £5,000,000 less grant than it is entitled to per
annum.
Many of the implications of population increases in terms
of service delivery will be invisible, until the increase becomes
so great as to provoke a crisis. Greater and greater weights of
rubbish will continue to be collected. However, a more accurate
method of recording population and of relating grant funding to
it, would ensure that the risk of crises occurring is greatly
reduced.
In 2006 London Councils commissioned work by the LSE to study
how local communities are affected by population movement (Fairer
funding for councils with population mobility). The Council
endorses the findings of that report. The issue of public assistance
costs for migrants with no other means of support is a particularly
significant one in this borough.
Mental Health is a particular area of concern as a result
of changing demographics. People from BME communities (a) are
greatly over-represented within those using hospital and specialist
mental health care generally, (b) experience different healthcare
outcomes compared to other ethnic groups eg—BME clients
receive more and high dose psychiatric drugs and are more likely
to be involved in control and restraint and (c) far fewer BME
clients get easy access to mother tongue counselling and psychotherapy
than would be expected for their proportion in the population.
All London mental health services, particularly in the Barking
area, are reporting step change demand for post-traumatic stress
disorder in the full range, often relating to adult survivors
of abuse, torture, family separation in relation to war zones
etc. Some of this talking therapy is highly specialist in nature—for
example we have developed intercultural therapy. More and more
people of Eastern European origin are coming to our attention
via their homelessness, sofa-surfing and mental health needs/welfare
needs. We are observing solicitors acting for asylum seekers/refugees
awaiting repatriation, raising mental welfare as a human rights
issue and demanding that we provide treatment prior to any deportation.
The Council is encouraged that work is underway by the ONS
to improve the quality of their statistics, by looking at extending
samples within the International Passenger Survey (which informs
migration estimates).
However, attempts to address the implications of new arrivals
saying, on arrival, that they are going to settle in one area,
but going somewhere else, give this Council more concern. This
has been done in London by taking the ethnic make-up of London
boroughs in the 2001 census, and using this as a way of distributing
international migration across London. This raises serious concerns
for Barking and Dagenham, as the data above, particularly the
PLASC data, demonstrates that the ethnic make-up of the borough
is fast changing, and is almost unrecognisable since 2001.
Work by ONS also does not take into account short term migration,
indeed, the DCLG grant calculation does not take into account
any short term migration. This is an increasing funding issue
for areas such as London since the accession of a number of Eastern
European states to the EU in 2004.
Further, the grant figures currently have no mechanism for
addressing the funding implications of the estimated 300,000 to
500,000 illegal immigrants in the country.
A final concern is that the grant does use "population
projections" when calculating three year settlements. However,
it uses historic data rather than data projected forward based
on, for example, new housing developments. This penalises boroughs
with an expanding population, even if the Councils are supporting
the Government's Building Sustainable Communities agenda, as is
the case in the Thames Gateway and Barking and Dagenham.
The scale of this increase can be demonstrated by a recent
study which has forecast an increase of 11,595 additional primary
aged pupils over the next 10 years: this is an additional 55.21
forms of entry. Planned new housing developments in the borough
are the largest factor contributing to this high demand. Over
the same period, 2,875 secondary aged pupils, or over 19 forms
of entry are forecast.
In conclusion, while the Council supports the work that the
Office for National Statistics is doing to improve the country's
population statistics, the work currently underway has addressed
very few of the critical issues that Councils up and down the
country face.
6. Actions to take forward the Commission on Integration
and Cohesion's recommendations relating to migration
The Council welcomes recommendations in Our Shared Future
in relation to migration, specifically:
— The creation of a national body to manage migration.
— The provision of English classes for all new migrants.
— That ONS should co-ordinate migration statistics
with the new Migration Impacts Forum.
The Council, with its partners, is strongly committed to
a challenging programme of work designed to build community cohesion
in Barking and Dagenham. The recommendations of Our Shared
Future will support this work, but needs to go further, to
address the concerns raised above.
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