WRITTEN EVIDENCE
SUBMITTED BY
ACTION FOR
MARKET TOWNS
(LOCO 28)
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
(BULLETS)
Action for Market Towns (AMT) is a national membership
group that provides small towns, local authorities and others
with information and advice, examples of best practice and national
representation. With over 400 members, AMT supports local partnerships
in developing community-led plans in order to address issues from
a community perspective.
Within the context of this experience, our response
to the localism agenda builds upon the work of the Carnegie Commission
for Rural Development and the Charter for Rural Communities, which
examines the success of community empowerment as dependent upon
enabling the following three factors:
¾ Empowering
Factor 1: Growing the capacity of local
people, agencies and professionals who support rural communities;
¾ Empowering
Factor 2: Enhancing community assets of
all kinds; and
¾ Empowering
Factor 3: Effective Community Led Planning
(CLP) and stronger local governance.
Each of these factors is focussed on in more detail
within the response providing details of where these factors have
enabled successful community empowerment, and where additional
resource and support from government is required.
1. INTRODUCTION
1.1 Where the renaissance of our rural communities
has worked well in recent times, it has combined strategic understanding
and an enabling approach from the public sector, with strong local
leadership and a spirit of self-reliance and enterprise by town
and parish councils, community partnerships and business forums.
1.2 This empowering approach can provide a win-win
situation for everyone involved in championing the development
of rural communities and is an underlying and necessary first
step in addressing the issues identified elsewhere in this submission.
1.3 This stance is supported by the work of the
Carnegie Commission for Rural Development that comprised internationally
recognised rural experts from a wide range of backgrounds and
disciplines. In its final report, a Charter for Rural Communities
published in June 2007, the Commission suggested that the dynamic,
vibrant, engaged, sustainable rural community of the future would
display a number of interrelated characteristics and that empowering
local governance would be a key requisite. As part of its recommendations
to enable such empowerment, the report called upon:
¾ Government
to place a duty upon parish and community level councils to prepare
and publish a community action plan every four years and a duty
upon higher tier authorities to consider these plans in their
own strategic planning; and
¾ Local
authorities to provide funding and other resources to enable parish
and community level councils to access independent technical assistance
and capacity building support so that a community action plan
can be produced.
1.4 Such transformation of rural communities
will depend on three "empowering factors":
¾ Empowering
Factor 1: Growing the capacity of local
people, agencies and professionals who support rural communities;
¾ Empowering
Factor 2: Enhancing community assets of
all kinds; and
¾ Empowering
Factor 3: Effective Community Led Planning
(CLP) and stronger local governance.
1.5 These "empowering factors" are
considered in more detail in the sections below. In line with
the Charter for Rural Communities the first factor, covering capacity
issues, has been sub-divided to explore capacity from both a top-down
and bottom-up perspective:
¾ An
Enabling Public Sector - the fostering
of a genuinely enabling culture and approach to partnership working
by the principal local authorities and other agencies.
¾ Strengthening
local leadership and capacity - the capacity
building that needs to be achieved by recognising and supporting
strong and effective local leadership at the community level.
2. EMPOWERING
FACTOR 1: GROWING
THE CAPACITY
OF LOCAL
PEOPLE, AGENCIES
AND PROFESSIONALS
WHO SUPPORT
RURAL COMMUNITIES
An Enabling Public Sector
2.1 The Local Innovation Awards Scheme (building
on the former Beacon Scheme) was set up jointly by Communities
and Local Government (CLG) and the Local Government Association
(LGA) and is managed by the Local Government Improvement and Development
(LGID). It has highlighted valuable aspects of good practice in
empowerment as part of its wider role to share best practice in
service delivery across local government. Over the years a number
of Beacon themes have been focused on wider empowerment and particularly
CLP, including:
¾ Round
6: Getting Closer to Communities,
which as part of its conclusions stated that "a dynamic relationship
between authorities and communities requires that, on the one
hand, authorities deliver services in an effective and integrated
way at a local level, and on the other, that they support the
development of the communities' own role.
¾ Round
7: Improving Rural Services Empowering Communities,
which concluded that, "often the best services may be those
delivered locally with local commitment but "empowered"
by someone else through a process of engagement and leadership".
¾ Round
8: Promoting sustainable communities through the planning process,
which included the conclusion that, "for planning to play
its part in delivering sustainable communities people need to
see and experience planning as a system which works for them;
a system they value as something which can help them deliver their
vision for their communities - retaining what is valued and changing
what is not".
¾ Round
9: Transforming Services through Citizen Engagement and Empowerment,
concluded that "there is a growing recognition that, by working
with users, organisations can create services that are more effective
and have higher levels of customer satisfaction. This is an evolving
area, with scope for innovation and the opportunity to develop
ground-breaking approaches to service delivery and engagement".
2.2 The work of South Somerset District Council
as an empowering local authority featured in three of these Beacon
Council rounds. South Somerset displays an impressive momentum
in getting closer to communities. It is successfully supporting
a wide variety of local projects which involve and benefit residents,
and there is a sense of good organisation and positive energy.
A small establishment of District community development staff
maintains a network which has drawn in other front-line staff
from within the district, other public sector partners in the
district and from other districts in the county. A number of staff
in other disciplines have also been trained as "InterAct
facilitators", to facilitate participative community meetings.
2.3 Further examples of good practice and enabling
culture in councils are demonstrated by the Network of Empowering
Authorities (NEA) which consists of 18 councils from across the
country chosen by the Government to help champion community empowerment.
2.4 LGID has worked with the NEA to produce a
benchmark of "the ideal empowering authority", together
with diagnostic questions and best practice examples that help
authorities and partnerships to assess their performance, strengths
and areas that require further work. An updated publication (June
2010) "The Ideal Empowering Authority: An illustrated framework"
describes what "ideal" looks like and how to raise performance
to mirror that of the leaders in this field, identifying three
key "pillars" to develop:
¾ mainstreaming
empowerment and developing a business case;
¾ working
with diverse communities and neighbourhoods; and
¾ the
role of members in championing community empowerment.
2.5 The framework is key to achieving the principal
authorities needed to make localism work.
Strengthening Local Leadership and Capacity
2.6 Support for grassroots activity over the
last decade has seen the potential of a new localism that is now
widely advocated. The lessons learnt from a decade of community-led
regeneration across rural areas indicate that to be successful
some decisions and delivery need to be devolved beyond the principal
local authorities to the community level and be backed by suitable
support for community capacity building. As the Carnegie UK Trust
states in A Manifesto for Rural Communities published in October
2009:
"Although the rhetoric of governments is encouraging
a "new localism" and greater community engagement, without
sustained investment in growing the capacity of all those who
need to be involved in the process, these aspirations will not
be fulfilled".
2.7 Local people have a far greater understanding
of their community's needs and - supported and facilitated by
voluntary sector groups with the right combination of powers and
capability to help them do it - will be far more sensitive to
the value of proposed change and be able to take the decisions
and contribute their own efforts to making it happen. Success
is dependent on consistent policies, institutions and a move away
from stop-start funding that creates disparities between communities,
leads to wasted resources and weakens commitment over the longer-term.
2.8 AMT's experience of working with town partnerships
and other organisations interested in community-led development
in rural towns, suggests that different types of towns face a
range of possible futures. Our experience suggests that effective
community leadership is, and will continue to be, as important
a determining factor as governmental intervention.
2.9 Many (but by no means all) towns already
have skilled, caring and committed people living in them. There
is, of course, always room for improvement. In our experience
the key is to help local people to gain leadership and management
skills, while encouraging the development and implementation of
new models of local governance and techniques for achieving greater
strategic influence - in short, helping communities to help themselves.
2.10 One of AMT's responses to these challenges
has been the formation of a Market Towns Academy. This helps town
councils and community partnerships to assess their organisational
development and training needs and provides tailored training
courses on leadership, fund raising, financial management and
other core skills.
2.11 Town and Parish Councils, as the tier of
government closest to communities have an important role to play
in the localism agenda, yet many are simply not fit for purpose.
The Quality Parish and Town Council Scheme, was developed as part
of the Rural White Paper of 2000 with the aim of encouraging all
parish councils to reach the standards of the best and, in doing
so, to demonstrate their status as the local representatives of
their communities. The number of Quality Parish and Town Councils
nationally varies from region to region, with some areas having
as few as just 2 having met the standard. As an opt-in scheme,
and with no duty on the upper tier authorities to ensure take-up,
the scheme seems to have little chance of being a benchmark for
all lower tier councils and this needs to be addressed, through
bolstering the scheme and met with level of quality assurance
built into CLP as a delivery mechanism led by the community themselves.
2.12 Other work of note includes the Carnegie
UK Trust which has worked with a Skills Consortium made up of
academic and practitioner partners from across the UK and Ireland,
to determine the core skills, knowledge and competencies required
by rural activists, professionals and policy makers and, thinking
ahead, the requirements for communities who face an uncertain
future.
2.13 In addition both the Rural Community Action
Network of 38 Rural Community Councils and the federation of county-based
groups linked to the National Association of Local Councils (NALC)
also provide extensive training and capacity building to support
community-led action, increase sustainability and influence public
sector policies and services to achieve equity for rural communities.
3. EMPOWERING
FACTOR 2: ENHANCING
COMMUNITY ASSETS
OF ALL
KINDS
3.1 The Carnegie Commission for Rural Community
Development recognised asset-based development as a positive approach
that builds upon the things that a community has -rather than
what it lacks. Whilst not denying that there is an urgent need
for public investment in some rural areas, the Commission's model
of sustainable communities puts asset-building at its heart in
the belief that rural communities are well placed to understand
how that resource or expertise can be allied with local assets
to build economic and social success.
3.2 This comes on the back of a wider review
of community asset ownership and management completed by Barry
Quirk for CLG in 2007. This provided the momentum for increasing
the asset transfer between local authorities and communities over
recent years. His report stated: "there are no substantive
impediments to the transfer of public assets to communities. It
can be done, indeed it has been done legitimately and successfully
in very many places. There are risks but they can be minimised
and managed - there is plenty of experience to draw on. The secret
is all parties working together."
3.3 The Development Trust Association (DTA) has
been at the forefront of applying an asset-based approach across
all types of communities including rural villages and market towns.
This has included leading a consortium (funded by CLG) to deliver
Advancing Assets, a four year programme of advice for up to 110
local authorities and their partners to assist asset transfer.
In 2009 the DTA, in association with Community Matters, the Local
Government Association, and other stakeholders, launched the Asset
Transfer Unit (also funded by CLG), to provide technical advice
to community groups, local authorities and others, and to carry
out research and promote understanding of the community assets
agenda.
3.4 As communities take on responsibilities for
a range of assets, the Carnegie Commission recognised that there
needs to be a parallel growth in the provision of technical advice
services by a cadre of professionals who understand the need to
adapt and modify approaches to suit this new client group. The
DTA calls for this support to be focused on making sure that transfer
does result in long term viability rather than liability - with
a focus on a realistic business plan, and where necessary with
investment and revenue commitments or endowments alongside the
land or building.
3.5 The experiences of rural Development Trusts,
set out in their action research report "Bearing Fruit: Good
Practice in Asset-Based Rural Development" and in the National
Community Land Trusts Demonstration Project, suggests that there
is a path from good idea through to mainstreaming that has to
be supported. There also needs to be an acknowledgement that this
takes time; much longer than usual project timeframes. The constant
reinvention of funding programmes (or programme promiscuity) is
not helpful to communities who really want to make initiatives
work on the ground. "A Partnership Routemap" has been
developed by the DTA to inform all public sector, private sector
and community organisations engaged in the transfer of a building
or land to help to develop and support these essential partnerships.
3.6 The Carnegie Commission considered that Community
Land Trusts offered particularly strong opportunities for providing
affordable rural housing as a community-owned asset and called
for national and regional support to ensure that the early pioneers
will be followed by a mainstream social movement to transform
rural affordable housing provision.
3.7 Asset-based development and empowerment requires
access to a mix of capital grants and patient loan finance for
community asset purchase, refurbishment, and new-build, combined
with revenue funds for initial feasibility, project development,
and to strengthen management and financial competences. The DTA
points to the need to incentivise new approaches to finance, including
promoting community share and bond issues, with community investment
by individuals being linked to Gift Aid tax relief. The DTA also
suggests that, in recession, there is a once in a generation opportunity
for community asset acquisition in order to provide the foundation
for resilient communities. They are exploring community "landbanking"
and other fast-track mechanisms that enable a fast response to
the economic downturn.
4. EMPOWERING
FACTOR 3: EFFECTIVE
COMMUNITY LED
PLANNING AND
STRONGER LOCAL
GOVERNANCE
4.1 Community Led Planning (CLP) is about local
communities being able to have a real involvement in the way their
community is developed, and informing the statutory system. It
is a structured process, involving local community groups, activists
and volunteers creating a vision for the community and an action
plan to achieve it.
4.2 The process involves using a mix of evidence
collection, different types of consultation and debate at the
very local community level. Every citizen should have the opportunity
to participate and the resulting vision should focus on the social,
economic, environmental and cultural well-being of the community
and all those who live and work there. The process ensures that
links are made with external partners, such as local government,
so that the action plans can be put into effect. Worryingly, community
planning is often interpreted as an exercise in joining up the
policies and decisions of different government departments and
agencies (horizontal coordination) rather than linking and engaging
with local communities (vertical integration).
4.3 As an example of the reach and effectiveness
of CLP, in the East of England region since 2002, 231 communities
have created plans that contained over 9,000 individual actions
to improve their locality. 47% of these actions were able to be
taken on by the community themselves without external support.
Of the remainder, 34% required negotiation with public service
providers to bring them to fruition.
4.4 Effective tools and techniques for CLP have
been tried and tested in rural areas over the last 20 years. The
two most frequently used are Town Action Planning and Parish and
Community Planning. Whilst a framework has been developed to overarch
the two methods, ideally there needs to be a synthesis of the
CLP methodologies. Not only would this enable one common approach
among the different organisations, but it could lead to greater
efficiencies in terms of spending and support, offer a clear and
consistent message to funders and policy-makers and enable CLP
approaches in rural and urban areas to be standardised. It could
also enable CLP partnerships to share information and advice about
process, and make it easier for outside agencies to understand,
contribute to and respond to CLP initiatives and outcomes.
4.5 As a structured process, CLP can provide
an over-arching mechanism across a wide area. As such, the CLP
process can provide a first stage in planning the long-term physical
development of a community, as well as linking this to "softer"
issues such as service provision. Where major development opportunities
are identified, for example, the action planning stage would be
extended to include detailed master planning—to map a strategic
vision and plan for development. This would be followed by techniques
such as Enquiry by Design and Planning for Real to facilitate
community involvement in preparing site-specific, development
briefs.
4.6 The CLP process can also be used as a trigger
for community-led affordable housing development. The role of
CLP will be to provide "thinking time" to broadly identify
housing needs and opportunities. This will then form a basis for
determining the support of towns/parish councils and principal
local authorities for proposals, subject to more detailed work
in relation to the need, scale, viability and design. This will
be re-enforced if such recognition by CLP activity, gives communities
a clear right to initiate community-led affordable housing schemes.
CLP can also provide a first step in developing exception sites.
4.7 Whilst such CLP techniques have been valuable
in directing local delivery, their main shortcoming to-date has
been the continued disconnect between the creation of these local
action plans and local authority and other public sector strategies.
Local authorities need to be much more engaged in the production
of such plans to ensure that they can make full use of them. Effective
CLP should also provide a mechanism for uniting the strategic
knowledge and concerns of local authorities with additional local
understanding and involvement by communities.
4.8 The benefits of CLP for the community include:
enabling communities to unite behind a common vision which can
help them to strengthen their influence over decisions that will
shape their future; having, and promoting, a shared plan can enable
a community to draw down resources, that would be otherwise unavailable,
for community projects such as transport facilities, town centre
regeneration and local services; serving as a catalyst for community
action, bringing together people from the community whose passion,
skills, knowledge and expertise is stimulated by the community
planning process. These energised people working together can
drive the community forward.
4.9 CLP can also help local authorities meet
current requirements such as the duty to involve communities in
local decision making and inform Sustainable Community Strategies
(SCSs), Local Area Agreements (LAAs) and Local Development Frameworks
(LDFs). At its most basic level, CLP offers local authorities
a framework for engaging people in a debate about their local
area on terms that are meaningful to everyone involved. Not only
can this result in very high rates of participation (in many cases
up to 70%), but it can also harness the energy and commitment
of volunteers to make things happen at a very local level saving
money and resources. In addition, a wealth of evidence about local
needs and aspirations is produced which could potentially be used
to inform broader strategies and the targeting of services.
4.10 A consortium of key partners including AMT,
ACRE, Carnegie, Community Matters, NALC and the Urban Forum is
committed to further developing the application of CLP in a way
that is both empowering to communities and enabling to local authorities.
For example, AMT is managing an Empowerment Fund contract with
CLG, to test how CLP can fit better with local authority strategic
planning. As part of this, AMT has been working with Northumberland
County Council to assess how the approach can be approved to better
meet the strategic needs of unitary authorities (final report
due November 2010).
4.11 AMT, as part of this consortium and its
research into CLP on behalf of CLG, has produced a Policy Position
Statement that identifies ten key challenges to delivering effective
CLP. These include: overlapping, unaligned CLP methodologies;
a lack of community capacity (knowledge, funds etc) to undertake
CLP; difficulties in linking community led plans to local authority
plans; complexity of local government structures and levels of
representation; ensuring that community led plans are sustainable;
difficulties in accessing and reporting up-to-date data.
4.12 Government should consider the role of Community
Led Planning and how it can help to deliver the localism agenda.
Where relevant support organisations already exist to support
communities on the ground, national "community organiser
investment" might best be channelled into their work to produce
better and more sustainable value.
October 2010
| 
