Select Committee on Communities and Local Government Committee Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 220-228)

MS ALISON SEABROOKE AND MS MELANIE BOWLES

22 APRIL 2008

  Q220  Chair: The initiative comes from groups out there deciding whether they wish to put an application in?

  Ms Seabrooke: Yes.

  Q221  Chair: You do not go out and say there is a need in this particular area for this particular activity?

  Ms Seabrooke: No, we do not. If we felt that we had expected applications to come from a particular region or sub-region and we have not received any, we would look at that, and certainly when you look at the distribution of funding as well, we want to make sure that there is a good cover from region to region. We would be concerned if we only got applications from one particular part of the country.

  Q222  Anne Main: You talk about tensions between migrants and the settled community. I would like to hear a little more about the settled community because one of the things that came loud and clear to us was that it was not that there was any form of anti-migrant view, but members of the ethnic settled community felt that the pace of changes were very difficult for them to adapt to the rapidity at which their community was changing. How do you react to the pace of change? A lot of communities said to us that they felt things were lagging behind. Do you react to the pace of change and how have you done it?

  Ms Bowles: The proactive part of our work as the Community Development Foundation is not so much waiting for the grant funding, it is identifying practice issues, thorny difficult problems in communities and community development practice—and cohesion and conflict is one of the areas that we have been proactive in and looking at.

  Q223  Anne Main: What do you think is causing the conflict? You did mention that you accept there are tensions and conflicts. Would you like to say what you think is causing the conflicts in communities?

  Ms Bowles: We ran a seminar about cohesion and conflict and we brought together community leaders, activists, councillors and community development workers to think about conflict between communities, conflicts within communities and conflicts between communities and authorities, and the primary source of conflict that people identified was resource competition and perceived unfairness, so the sense that a settled community feel that they have been badly served, they have experienced disadvantage or they feel that they have been underserved by public services. The perception then arises that new migrants are receiving preferential treatment. That was the primary cause of conflict.

  Q224  Anne Main: Did you get any sense that it was the rapidity by which those things were happening that you have outlined rather than just the fact that they were happening?

  Ms Bowles: I am sure that it is the rapidity with which it is happening and the resource lag; I am sure that that it is the case. The concerns are probably legitimate that people feel that they have been underserved by public authorities but the hostility and tension tends to be focused on the incomer rather than on the authorities that may not have served the settled community so well in the past. That is where we are linking the cohesion with empowerment, that if people feel that their participation in communities and community organisations, in community debates, discussions, dialogues will have an impact on resourcing decisions and on service provision, then they will participate. If they feel that their participation will not alter anything, then they will be disaffected and more likely to exacerbate cohesion, tension problems and aim conflicts at other people in their communities.

  Q225  Chair: What further do you think the Government should be doing to help community cohesion?

  Ms Seabrooke: We would like to see a cross-government community development strategy which recognises the particular skills that are required in terms of bringing people together, preparing both the receiving community in terms of migrant communities and the local public sector in terms of what they may expect and the difficult questions they may need to address. We would like to see the recognition of the certain skills that are embodied within what we call real community development but it is what is actually being expected of every public sector frontline worker at the moment. We have quite a lot of problems in terms of the measurement aspect because the drive is for very objective measurement rather than some subjective incremental developments that take quite a long time in terms of building trust within communities; that is trust within the public sector, the communities themselves and the individual citizens and then the trust between the public sector and those various groups. That is quite a long process and what we have found is that you just get a good dialogue going within a community but, if it is short-term funded and resourced, then it disappears as soon as it has started.

  Q226  Chair: Can I touch on one area where you seem to have a difference of opinion with the Commission on Integration and Cohesion which is this issue about single identity groups. Why is it that you think that single identity groups can play a positive role in cohesion while the CIC seems to think the opposite?

  Ms Seabrooke: Partly from the evidence we have from the programmes that have been delivered about the nature of the organisations that may have a single group identity, but the number of different identity groups that they actually work with or bridge between, the make-up of those single identity groups may be quite varied, although they fall within a particular category. Our concern with that recommendation was that it would provide a very narrow focus if people are unable to interpret the breadth of the single identity work, then it could mean that some of the resources to very marginalised groups—groups that legitimately need space to work within their own identity group before they can move on to make those bridges with other identities and communities—all of that needs to be recognised.

  Ms Bowles: The term itself is a bit misleading. Single identity groups usually comprise multiple and complex identities within that group. We have experienced through successive regeneration programmes that people need to belong to something in a community in order to become involved in wider community level debates and discussions. People would not put themselves forward to be representative on a panel if they did not belong to a community organisation and have some sense of belonging to a community. We are applying that to the single identity issue as well that, if people have a stake in a community, they are more likely to engage in wider discussions about future aspirations of that community.

  Q227  Anne Main: In respect of needing to belong within a community and seek an identity, that actually flies in the face of what we were told by the community groups who said the exact opposite; that by actually focusing on single groups in some way shape or form you are enshrining the difference rather than integrating people into the community. Do you not have any concerns at all that that may be part of what you are doing?

  Ms Bowles: The second part of what we wrote about—the single identity funding issue—is that it is important to look at the activity itself. If you are saying that single identity groups can be a force for community cohesion, you look at what activity they are proposing to do and whether you think that is an outward-looking, cohesion-making activity, or whether you think it is something that is insular and putting up barriers.

  Q228  Andrew George: It is all terribly theoretical the line that you have used so far. Give an example of work with a single identity group. How do you define what that single identity group is and what are the benefits of working with them?

  Ms Bowles: The controversy that has followed the recommendation about single identity groups is exactly around that issue of what is a single identity group? If local authorities have decided you are a single identity group, hence you are not eligible for funding, that is why the kind of uproar has started. Typically it might be a women's group, and it might be an Asian women's group, which sounds like a single identity, but if you can imagine the different nationalities, religions, different immigration, legal status that might be involved in an Asian women's group, you are talking about lots of identities.

  Ms Seabrooke: And the need for those women to meet because of their particular beliefs that they have to have that grouping and it cannot be expanded into other areas. They would just not want to meet. It is that first stage of integration.

  Chair: Thank you very much indeed.






 
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