Regeneration

Written Evidence from Locality

Regeneration to enable Growth: What the Government is doing in support of community-led regeneration

A Locality response to the consultation

Background:

Locality is the nationwide movement of communities ambitious for change.

We have a membership of over 600 community organisations from across the UK and they include some of the foremost community-led regeneration organisations in the country. Our members are multi-purpose and community led. They include settlements, development trusts, social action centres and community enterprises. Our members have expertise in community asset ownership, collaboration, commissioning, social enterprise, community voice and advocacy.

Our vision is for every community to be a place of possibility.

Our response:

Our response has been informed by the experience of our members - front-line, community based organisations that have a wealth of expertise in developing innovative, community-led solutions to local needs.

Locality welcomes the government’s ambition for locally-driven growth, as outlined in the Local Growth White Paper. We believe that community-led regeneration should be the driving force behind business investment and economic growth within communities across Britain. Effective community-led regeneration helps to build greater community capability, enabling communities determine their own development. It leads to directive and resilient communities who can promote and enable local action and engagement, asset ownership/management and sustainability. We believe that this approach should be underpinned by the following factors;

Localism

· We welcome the emphasis on Localism and the recognition that communities should be more involved with regeneration at the local level.

· The government must ensure that financial investment and support to initiate regeneration projects is provided. This will ensure that community organisations have the capability and resources to take part in regeneration initiatives effectively.

· From our members’ extensive experience in regeneration and community action, it is clear to us that a ‘one size fits all’ approach does not work. Communities must be given the chance to be innovative in the design and delivery of regeneration projects.

Community Engagement and Empowerment

· We firmly believe in regeneration that places community engagement and empowerment at its core. This will be crucial to ensuring that decentralisation results in power being invested in local communities and not just in local government.

· We welcome the attempts made by the government to tackle bureaucratic barriers that hinder local ambition. Increased transparency and accountability will also increase engagement at a local level.

Financial Investment and the creation of effective support mechanisms

· Significant investment is required to simulate growth. Financial support will be needed to encourage community asset transfer and for community enterprises to play a significant role in the regeneration of their locality.

· Technical support must also be made available to ensure that community organisations can become investment ready and are able to grow to scale.

Responses to consultation questions:

1. How effective is the Government’s approach to regeneration likely to be? What benefits is the new approach likely to bring?

1.1 We welcome the emphasis on localism. Many community organisations are ideally placed to identify opportunities for regeneration due to the engagement they have with the wider community.

1.2 If implemented effectively the ‘Community Rights’ outlined in the Decentralisation and Localism bill will provide an opportunity for community organisations to play a greater role in shaping the future development of their community. Both the ‘Community Right to Challenge’ and the ‘Community Right to Buy’ are important practical and symbolic steps forward in giving greater power to communities. However the key to making this a reality will be in ensuring the regulations provide sufficient guidance and adequate support mechanisms to enable community organisations to exercise these rights effectively.

1.3 The proposed Neighbourhood Planning system should give more power to local communities, enabling them to plan for their areas according to local need and make a real difference. This should result in more effective and more responsive planning decisions. However it is important to ensure that proposed reforms are fair and do not favour those are investment ready and disadvantage those that are not.

1.4 Allowing greater local control of public finance is also to be welcomed. Providing targeted investment will be key to ensuring that regeneration schemes are effective and that growth will benefit the local population. The government should closely monitor the Community Budget pilots to ensure that they achieve the twin aims of community engagement and an integrated service delivery before they are rolled out nationally.

2. Will it ensure that the progress made by past regeneration projects is not lost and can, where appropriate, be built on?

Whilst many of the regeneration initiatives outlined in the paper will undoubtedly foster growth, there is a real and present danger that much of the progress made by previous and current regeneration projects may be lost due to disproportionate funding cuts and insufficient support mechanisms.

2.1 Many of the direct investment schemes that specifically target regeneration have been cut with little or no provision to replace investment. For example the decision to discontinue the Future Jobs Fund was met with dismay from much of our membership. This fund has re-engaged a generation of young people in danger of permanent disengagement, back into the labour market and has helped to deliver valuable social, economic and environmental projects. We would urge the government to reconsider this decision.

2.2 The £100m Transition Fund will go some way to helping civil society organisations to adapt to the hostile funding climate. However the Fund will only support 201 organisations and does not go nearly far enough in addressing the scale of the cuts facing the sector. Many voluntary groups, charities and social enterprises that have in the past delivered effective regeneration programmes, now face a very uncertain future.

2.3 There will also be indirect but significant effects felt by many regeneration projects due to the reduction in public sector spend. Private and social enterprise sectors in deprived areas often rely on secondary and tertiary markets resulting from public sector spend.

3. Will it ensure that sufficient public funds are made available for future major town and city regeneration projects as well as for more localised projects?

3.1 We believe that the approach outlined in the proposals will be more likely to favour major towns and cities. In times of reduced investment, Local Authorities and Local Enterprise Partnerships will be driven by cost efficiency and strategic planning. It is hugely important that this does not solely determine the regeneration agenda. They must ensure that the most deprived communities receive sufficient investment and that they do not favour centralised and key-site solutions.

3.2 The government has provided guidance to Local Enterprise Partnerships about the role that social enterprises and other civil society organisations can play. This guidance stresses the importance of civil society involvement in the board structures of LEPs, and we welcome this. The government should however reinforce this message and monitor whether it is being put into practice. Many of our members report that LEP’s are not currently taking the guidance into account.

3.3 Future investment needs to be better balanced in order to achieve the government’s aspirations. Of the almost £20bn of committed regeneration investment quoted in the consultation paper, around half relates to further infrastructure to support the "powerhouse economy of London" rather than transition economies currently dependent on public sector spend .

3.4 Furthermore it is estimated that a mere £0.22bn (1.1%) of the total spend quoted in the consultation paper relates directly to projects aimed at building the Big Society.

4. What lessons should be learnt from past and existing regeneration projects to apply to the Government’s new approach?

4.1 Previous regeneration projects demonstrate the need to target investment, including both capital and technical support, to the most deprived sections of society in order to rebalance local and national economies. Removing bureaucratic barriers and creating the space for growth will favour those that are investment ready. The more affluent and ‘network rich’ areas will have the capability and financial resources to play an active role in regeneration initiatives. This may result in the regeneration and growth agenda bypassing the areas most in need of development. An alternative approach to ensure this does not happen would be for the government to invest further in social finance institutions which naturally target those areas most in need of regeneration. For example, 64.6% of investment under the Communitybuilders Fund has gone into the 40% most deprived areas of England.  

4.2 The Government should be stronger in its direction to public bodies regarding the importance of social impact and the Big Society to regeneration schemes.  Locality welcomed Chris White MP’s Private Member’s Bill which was designed to achieve this in relation to public service delivery and we hope that it will pass smoothly through further legislative stages. This approach could also be applied to other decisions made by public bodies; for example in relation to planning applications where a presumption in favour of applications which deliver wider social, economic and environmental benefits could be adopted.

4.3 Key public sector assets have significant potential to revitalise communities and provide sustainable community-led regeneration through asset transfer. These benefits can significantly outweigh the benefit of a one-off capital receipt. The government has provided guidance to local authorities in this area and should follow its own guidance with reference to its own asset portfolios, particularly RDA and HCA assets.

4.4 Benefits from other existing schemes are in danger of being lost due to a lack of available public and private capital.  For example the Government needs to needs to ensure that the good progress made by Housing Renewal Pathfinders continues.  Proposals from the Empty Homes Agency to assist in the renovation and reuse of empty properties, including in Liverpool’s Welsh Streets and similar community schemes such as that in Deighton, Huddersfield, should be supported. These schemes can lever investment and also provide employment and training opportunities in deprived communities.

5. What action should the Government be taking to attract money from (a) public and (b) private sources into regeneration schemes?

5.1 The Government should recognise that residual public sector spend can still drive regeneration. The focus should be on encouraging public sector bodies to see their purchasing power as investment not spend, and they should take social, economic and environmental impact into account.

5.2 Significant sources of social finance already exist, but often remain underused due to a lack of investment readiness in organisations which otherwise have significant potential. Alongside any investment aimed at community enterprise organisations, technical development support should be made available to unlock this investment potential. The Communitybuilders programme delivered in part by Locality, supports community-led organisations to become more sustainable through a mixture of loans, grants and business support. There were initially over 1800 expressions of interest from community based organisations, however the fund worked with just over 300 organisations and were able to provide investment to only 80 organisations.

5.3 The Government should support efforts to raise direct community investment by engaging investors from within the community itself. The Community Shares programme led by Locality and in partnership with Co-Operatives UK has successfully sourced community investment into local social enterprises. Instead of turning to the private sector and wealthy individuals for support, community investment means large amounts of capital can be raised in small amounts to benefit the wider community.

5.4 In the United States the Community Reinvestment Act has created, in effect, a social contract between the banks and the people, requiring banks as part of their licence to operate to provide finance and other services equitably to all sections of the community, or if not to make amends through support for credit unions, social lenders and the like. This has produced a flow of $3trillion from banks to the poorest communities in the United States. We would call on the government to introduce a similar Act in the UK.

6. How should the success of the Government’s approach be assessed in future?

6.1 The success of the Government’s approach to regeneration needs to include measures which relate to improved equality and that complement the Government’s Big Society agenda. This should include measures that specifically address;

· Growth and increased investment in civil society organisations, particularly in more deprived areas.

· Given that the ultimate aim of the government’s approach is to achieve a rebalancing between high growth and public sector-dependent economies, wider measures of success should revolve around equality across areas in relation to a range of socio-economic indicators.

· In order to ascertain the level of localised regeneration having taken place, these equality measures should also be monitored within local authority areas as well as between them.

If you would like any further details, including case studies or evidence to support this response, please contact Sophie Marsden on 02073369437 or by email- sophie.marsden@locality.org.uk.