Written evidence submitted by Locality
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.
May 2011
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