House of Commons - Regeneration - Communities and Local Government Committee

Regeneration - Communities and Local Government Committee Contents

6 Promoting a localist approach

"Community-led regeneration"

113. The Government has indicated its commitment to the principle of "community-led regeneration". Its Regeneration to enable growth document is subtitled "What Government is doing in support of community-led regeneration", and speaks about its approach "putting residents, local businesses, civil society organisations and civic leaders in the driving seat and providing them with local rewards and incentives to drive growth and improve the social and physical quality of their area".[214] Mr Shapps, the Minister, told us that the document represented "a very deliberate attempt to move from the top-down, centrally driven, bluntly unaffordable and certainly unsustainable approach to redevelopment and regeneration".[215]

114. Our evidence was generally supportive of a "community-led" approach to regeneration. Igloo welcomed the move to a "more localist approach to regeneration" because it believed that "local communities contain 'locality experts' without whom regeneration will be unsuccessful".[216] Ros Groves, the Chair of a Liverpool residents' group, said that regeneration "has to be community-led, because from the community up is where it will start, and where it will pass and flourish", adding: "The community knows what is best on the ground for the neighbourhood that it lives in".[217] She also stressed that "community-led regeneration" was nothing new, saying, "We have been doing it voluntarily forever".[218] A similar point was made by Mike Taylor, Director of Nottingham Regeneration Ltd, who said, "In terms of the ideas and the revitalisation of communities, that has been very much bottom-up driven for many, many years".[219] In Chapter 4, we found that the extent to which communities had been engaged was one of the determining factors for successful regeneration.

115. While supporting the principles, the evidence raised concerns about the ability of the Government's approach to deliver "community-led regeneration". Representatives of the voluntary and community sector were particularly forthright. Toby Blume, Chief Executive of Urban Forum, said that it was "not particularly clear how [the Government was] going to marry up 'community-led' as a phrase, with regeneration".[220] John Tizard, a trustee of National Association for Voluntary and Community Action (NAVCA), said that his organisation "[subscribed] to that commitment to community-led regeneration in the title but [...] much of the content does not give us the confidence that it is going to be seen through". He cautioned: "The emphasis is on infrastructure-led regeneration and the role of the private sector [which] could, unless there are counter-measures included, exclude communities and this could then be very much about regeneration being done unto communities, rather than community-based and led".[221]

116. Our evidence expressed doubts about the role of voluntary and community groups under the new approach. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation warned that "the options or powers for communities outlined in the CLG document tend to be substantial" when "in practice, neighbourhood groups are often keen to take on smaller projects".[222] It said that when competing for rights and powers with larger bodies, community groups could often lose out, adding: "Few things will disillusion communities more than the realisation that these words ['community-led'] actually mean 'private sector led' or 'local authority led'".[223] NAVCA told us that voluntary and community organisations had "already been sidelined or overlooked completely in some of the new initiatives under the regeneration umbrella", suggesting by way of example that their involvement in Local Enterprise Partnerships had been limited. It asked us to "recommend that civil society, including [voluntary and community organisations], [be] given equal status alongside the public and private sectors in a new approach to regeneration".[224]

117. There was particular concern about the capacity of community groups to deliver regeneration, given the impact of recent funding reductions upon the voluntary and community sector. The Institute for Historic Building Conservation and Historic Towns Forum warned that "the loss of funding to the voluntary/community sector from both local authorities and the various special interest non-governmental bodies" was "limiting capacity for third sector led regeneration projects, and [seemed] to fly in the face of the Government's aspirations for The Big Society and locally determined policies and agendas".[225] Locality, a voluntary sector interest group, noted the Government's intention to provide a £100 million Transition Fund but argued that it did "not go nearly far enough in addressing the scale of the cuts facing the sector". It said that "many voluntary groups, charities and social enterprises that have in the past delivered effective regeneration programmes, now face a very uncertain future".[226] Barbara Harbinson, Chief Executive of the Halifax Opportunities Trust, a social enterprise organisation and member of Locality, spoke of the funding cuts creating "a difficulty at local level" and said: "Unless something else is put in place, I think that the mechanisms to deliver [Regeneration to enable growth] are just not there, as far as I can see it. Aspirations are there, but not the practical mechanisms".[227] Ros Groves said: "You ask us to do things, but there is nothing here to be able to implement it with".[228] She spoke about the responsibilities that had been placed upon her as a volunteer, telling us that she had been responsible for informing residents in her area, her "neighbours and [...] friends" that Housing Market Renewal funding had been withdrawn.[229]

118. We fully support the Government's commitment to delivering "community-led regeneration". We have heard strong evidence about the importance of involving local people in projects that affect their area. Witnesses have stressed that this is nothing new and that there are many existing approaches to community involvement from which positive lessons can be learned. More worryingly, we have also heard significant concerns, particularly from the voluntary and community sector, that, in spite of the Government's enthusiasm for giving communities greater involvement in regeneration, its approach will do little to enable such involvement. Moreover, there is a risk that, against the backdrop of significant spending reductions, many of the community groups most closely involved in regeneration will struggle to stay afloat. If a "community-led" approach to regeneration is to succeed, community groups need some certainty about the future. We agree that while the "aspirations" for "community-led regeneration" are there, the "practical mechanisms" to deliver it are often lacking. We recommend that the Government work with representatives of the voluntary and community sector to develop more detailed proposals for promoting the active involvement of communities and community groups in regeneration. We invite the Government to provide us, in its response to our Report, with a number of examples of "practical mechanisms" for implementing community-led regeneration, both those which are already in use and those which the Government intends to develop. These examples should address the particular concerns community groups have expressed to us about their capacity to play a greater role in regeneration, and set out how they will give such groups confidence about their future and a degree of certainty about funding.

'Strategic localism'

119. As well as expressing support for the close involvement of communities and community groups, our evidence also stressed the need for a co-ordinated, strategic approach across the wider local area. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation pointed to research which suggests that "community empowerment and community engagement, while necessary components of good regeneration, are not sufficient in themselves" but need support "from players at other levels of government". Councils and their partners, for instance, "play a key role in setting overall priorities, providing an overarching framework for planning [and] overseeing broader policy issues".[230] The Local Government Association expressed support for "a locally led approach to regeneration with decisions taken by democratically accountable local councils working with residents, local businesses, the voluntary sector and social enterprises to promote economic growth and a high quality of life locally".[231] Earlier in this report, we saw that a key lesson learned from earlier approaches to regeneration was the importance of the council providing "stewardship of place" and political leadership to bring together the range of public, private and voluntary sector organisations with a contribution to make to regeneration.

120. Lord Heseltine argued that the current way in which Government operated made it difficult for councils to deliver a co-ordinated approach to regeneration at the local level. He cited Manchester as an example:

There is no one in central Government looking at Manchester and asking what can be done to enable Manchester to excel. There are people in central Government looking at its housing, education and transport. It is all micro. I know of no other country of our sort that behaves in this way. But the staff working in Manchester respond to all of this. The power and money they have comes from the central Government in a functional route. The circulars they get do not talk about going to Manchester, they talk about a particular function of Manchester. They send the same circulars to Newcastle, Liverpool, Leeds and Bradford. There is an all-seeing, all-knowing, all-thinking functional direction from London.[232]

COMMUNITY BUDGETS

121. Time and again, the evidence we received suggested that the Community Budgets[233] initiative had an important role to play, not only in facilitating a more co-ordinated approach to regeneration, but also in ensuring the best use was made of the limited resources available. Chris Murray, Director of the Core Cities Group, said that Community Budgets "have the potential to work at a much wider level and to take in a much wider range of funding from different Whitehall Departments and resources, and to pool these at the local level". He told us that this would "do two things. It will create a massive efficiency in our view and secondly, it would create leverage on private sector investment for private sector growth".[234] CEDOS/ADEPT argued that "a genuinely localist approach would allow organisations in the local area to pool budgets for whatever purpose they choose so as to provide the best service for local people". It saw "considerable potential for this in economic development and regeneration", believing it "essential that all levels of funding and intervention are covered".[235]

122. There was also support for this initiative from the private sector, with the British Property Federation (BPF) urging Government to "fully embrace the concept of Total Place/Total Capital that seeks to achieve a more joined up approach to all funding destined for a particular area, creating shared facilities where feasible".[236] Ken Dytor, Chair of the BPF's Regeneration Committee, spoke of the need "to be getting cleverer at the way we package the cash that is coming out of Government":

I have long been arguing about the fact that there are capital cash flows going into health, education, housing, etc. We need to be looking more cleverly at how we harness those cash flows. They are in silos still, such as university funding, and there are opportunities to break down the barriers for mixed-use developments. A lot of this—universities and education—can be in areas where you need regeneration. Let us be a lot cleverer about how we use those cash flows and how the schemes are put together. The silo mentality still exists.[237]

Chris Brown, Chief Executive of Igloo, spoke about the importance of "aligning the public funding flows from all sorts of different programmes so that we can use what public money there is to attract private money".[238] We also heard from the Core Cities Group that

the principles behind the Community Budget approach [hold] out a potentially different future model for capital finance. The development and devolution of single capital budgets for economic development, housing and transport to cities and city-regions would be a significant measure to enable areas to better plan and co-ordinate development and attract private sector investment.[239]

123. When visiting Greater Manchester, we heard that local partners had developed a proposal for a single Greater Manchester Budget for economic development, housing and transport. It was claimed that this would lead to a more efficient, more co-ordinated approach, make it easier to focus on key priorities, and allow for a long-term strategy uninterrupted by changes at the national level. Private sector representatives strongly supported the proposal, arguing that it would make it far simpler for them to invest, and would improve their engagement with public sector organisations. Alongside this, there was an ambition to create a Greater Manchester Community Budget through which the local authorities and partner organisations would pool portions of their budgets. The Association of Greater Manchester Authorities was keen to ensure that Work Programme prime contractors, Primary Care Trusts and General Practitioner commissioners were engaged in the process.

124. Some witnesses suggested that a lack of a co-ordinated approach within central government was hindering efforts at the local level. Paul Evans of UK Regeneration said that it was "critically necessary" for DCLG, the Department for Work and Pensions and the Department for Education to "come together and understand how far they are releasing the boundaries".[240] Richard Summers, President of the Royal Town Planning Institute, added that DCLG and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills did "not speak the same language—it is like Latin and Aramaic—because they come from such completely different points of view".[241] We also heard from Lord Heseltine that DCLG did "not have the clout" to deliver the joined up approach he believed was needed at local level.[242] In our recent inquiry on Localism, we considered Community Budgets in some detail. We heard from the Minister of State for Decentralisation, Rt Hon Greg Clark MP, that while there was an onus upon central government to become more joined-up, local bodies also shared some responsibility for making Community Budgets work. He said that Government was establishing an "ethos [...] whereby communities themselves can suggest different ways of doing things".[243] In our report, we noted that some departments were far more enthusiastic than others, and recommended:

that the Government publish regular reports on the progress of the community budgets programme, specifically the progress that is being made by individual departments in identifying their contributions, and how those contributions match up to requests made by local authorities. This is a crucial programme that demands a great deal more concrete commitment from government departments than has thus far been demonstrated.[244]

125. Mr Shapps told us that "no Department can make it happen on their own" but said that Community Budgets were "an idea whose time has come, and we must absolutely deliver on it". He told us that it was "crazy to have so many completely unlinked funding streams, often not appreciating that the other one is there". Mr Stunell added that he did not think it "a secret that there is a silo mentality in policy delivery terms in central Government". He spoke of a "really significant challenge" but said that there was "real energy behind it both inside the Department and across Departments to make sure that we can deliver". While the initial focus would be on "quite a small number of local authorities and quite a confined set of policy areas", he believed that "very quickly we need to get that to be looking holistically at neighbourhoods and all the public funding going to specific neighbourhoods".[245]

126. Subsequent to this session, Mr Shapps wrote to us with a copy of the terms of reference for the second phase of the Local Government Resource Review. DCLG said that they demonstrated that "all of Whitehall [was] on board and taking practical steps to explore a very radical approach to Community Budgets, which will cover all spending on local public services in an area".[246] One part of the review would "involve inviting communities in two local authority areas to co-design with local services and Whitehall how a Neighbourhood Level Community Budget and Local Integrated Services approach could be implemented"; the other would "involve two areas, comprising local authorities and their partners, working with Whitehall to co-design how a Community Budget comprising all spending on public services in an area might be implemented".[247] A position statement on the Capital and Assets Pathfinder Programme, published by DCLG in August 2011, set out some of the benefits identified by this programme and stated that the Government "[wanted] local areas to recognise the potential of greater collaboration across the public sector when managing capital investment and assets".[248] In September 2011, DCLG announced that an amendment made to the Localism Bill would enable "cities to bid for new powers to spark economic growth". The announcement said that the amendment "opens the door to greater local control over investment to drive growth, for example for housing and planning, economic development, or pooling resources and effort across functioning economic areas".[249] Giving evidence to us on 12 September 2011 about the Local Government Resource Review, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, Rt Hon Eric Pickles MP, said that the previous week the Prime Minister had "put [him] in charge" of the Community Budgets initiative. Asked who had been in charge prior to him, Mr Pickles said, "I think it was the Secretary of State for Good Intentions. They were not doing such a good job".[250]

127. As part of a localist approach to regeneration, councils have an important role to play in providing a strong "stewardship of place", bringing partners together and ensuring regeneration activity is co-ordinated across their local area. The Community Budgets programme offers opportunities to facilitate this co-ordinated approach and to ensure that public money is spent according to a shared understanding of local regeneration priorities. Moreover, at a time when resources for regeneration are very limited, it is capable of generating significant efficiencies. There is also the potential to extend the initiative to explore the pooling of capital funding through a place-based approach. At a time when the lack of available capital is a major barrier to regeneration, the alignment of various capital public funding streams could play an important role in levering in private investment.

128. We have commented previously on the importance of all Government departments contributing to the Community Budgets initiative. We are pleased that some progress has been made and welcome the action proposed for the second phase of the Local Government Resource Review: it is especially promising that this will consider the possibility of Community Budgets covering the totality of public spending in an area. It is also welcome that the Prime Minister has now put the Secretary of State in charge of co-ordinating the initiative. The Government should, however, be taking the initiative forward at greater speed, particularly in places such as Greater Manchester where there is great enthusiasm amongst local partners to get on and deliver a new approach. We are concerned about the risk of opportunities being missed and money wasted, in regeneration and across public services more widely.

129. We recommend that the second phase of the Local Government Resource Review consider how Community Budgets can be used to support regeneration. The Government should ensure that areas with a clear regeneration need are included amongst those chosen to pilot the new neighbourhood level and whole area Community Budgets. These pilots should look in part at how Community Budgets can best be used to tackle issues of deprivation and disadvantage.

130. We recommend that the Government allow Greater Manchester to take forward its proposal for a single budget at the earliest opportunity, as one of a series of pilots exploring the pooling of capital budgets in areas such as housing, economic development and transport. These pilots should consider the potential of this pooling approach to lever in greater private sector investment. There is an onus upon local authorities as well as central government to make Community Budgets work. We therefore urge other councils and partnerships to come forward with innovative proposals which build on the Community Budgets model. The Government should ensure such proposals are given the necessary support.

214 Regeneration to enable growth, Introduction Back

215 Q 350 Back

216 Ev 212, para 2.0 Back

217 Q 278 Back

218 Q 270 Back

219 Q 181 Back

220 Q 251 Back

221 Q 252 Back

222 Ev 136, section 3.2. A similar point was made by Nigel Mellor, a Cheshire resident who has been involved in regeneration for many years, Ev w175. Back

223 Ev 136, section 3.2 Back

224 Ev 227 Back

225 Ev w106 Back