Community Budgets

Written submission from South Somerset District Council (CBud 09)

 

1 Introduction and summary.

 

The paper is submitted by South Somerset District Council, in the light of its experience of over 20 years of investment into multi-agency collaborations, community development and community-led planning for social, economic and environmental well-being.

In summary our evidence is:

· Transforming public services through a ‘Total Place’ and community budgeting approach requires understanding and investing in community development.

· This is knowledge driven work to solve complex social and economic problems, where existing and future power relations are highly relevant.

· Families living in rural areas also experience multiple problems, and this is made harder to address through isolation and poor access. The future ‘Total Place’ / community budgeting model should also enable innovative solutions for deprived families in rural areas where service provision may lose the economies of scale of more urban areas.

· Keep it simple.

2. Background

South Somerset is one of the largest districts in the country accounting for nearly a third of the county’s area (370 square miles) with a population of around 160,000. The district has a population density of less than half the national average, yet is a fast growing district – population growth being twice the national average over the past ten years or so.

Over 40% of the district’s residents live in settlements of fewer than 2500 residents, with a higher proportion of older people than nationally. The most prevalent form of deprivation in South Somerset relates to barriers to housing and services – a feature of many rural areas.

Although generally a healthy district (when viewed through district-wide statistics that can mask pockets of deprivation), several wards in Yeovil and Chard are in the most deprived 20% in the UK. 12% of the population live in the most deprived 25% Super Output Areas in England and 11% of children under 16 live in low-income households.

According to the Annual Survey Hours and Earnings 2011, the average annual pay (gross) of Somerset residents is £23,079, down 2.6% on the previous year’s survey. This compares to an overall national increase in average salary of 1.2% over the same period.

As a whole the district is in the top 50% most income deprived districts in England. In certain rural areas the house price to incomes ratio reaches 14:1 compared to 6:1 for England and Wales.

3. Our Local Approach

SSDC has taken a leading role to develop and support a range of effective multi-agency partnerships of public, private and voluntary partners, and a significant investment into community development and community-led planning and regeneration. At a district level overarching body ‘South Somerset Together was awarded the Community Partnerships Award for best LSP in 2010.

South Somerset Together’s current intention is to seek to join the community budget programme as it develops, building on prior experience and harnessing the value of multi-agency and community collaboration to the full.

To support our work across this diverse geographic and demographic district the council established a sub-district system of four Area Committees in 1998 each covering an area of between 35,000-50,000 populations.

Within this context, our services work closely and locally with councillors for parish, district or county council, and with partnerships, organisations and individuals to help shape our communities to be better, safer places to live in, to encourage business and trade, and to help develop skills and improve the health of our citizens.

The Area Committee’s remit includes decision-making for land-use and spatial planning together with a key role to stimulate and facilitate investment from the council and in collaboration with partners directly into local neighbourhoods through high quality community engagement and involvement.

4. Our experience

 

Our experience includes an extensive range of collaborations to promote community-led action and involvement in service design and planning for environmental, social and economic well-being of local rural and urban neighbourhoods. This includes experience of working with families and individuals experiencing multiple problems often linked with social and economic inequalities, within and across neighbourhoods to seek innovative, affordable solutions.

One particular case study is the Milford Health Inequalities Project. During 2007 South Somerset Together (SST) commissioned work to assess the health and social inequalities experienced by people living in areas of Yeovil. Research showed significant health and social inequalities within a number of Yeovil neighbourhoods. In particular these wards showed higher than average levels of income support claimants, crime, numbers of lone parents, low access to cars, exclusion from school, levels of long term limiting illness and teenage pregnancies. For example Yeovil East also has more than three times the County average for teenage births and almost double the county average of Social Services clients.

One neighbourhood - Milford – was identified as having had previous community development activity, and was formed around a natural community including schools, and some - albeit limited – community facilities. It was felt this offered the best opportunity for forging closer links between services and communities – and the greatest likelihood of longer-term outcomes from this approach.

A multi-agency programme has resulted, firmly rooted in community based development work – to drive the work from within the community and centred on the locality itself - delivered in a series of approaches: -

· Community consultation leading to the development of community action plans, a needs analysis and mapping of provision and support networking currently operating in the target neighbourhoods.

· Community development techniques to establish active community champions and constituted community associations in the targeted communities and assist them to identify and meet the needs of those most in need with their community.

· Community development techniques to develop new local active recreation, training, volunteering and social opportunities.

· Development of project groups bringing together all the key partners and stakeholders involved in supporting both communities to develop one consistent partnership approach and targets to the individual projects.

Other examples of our experience of supporting neighbourhoods with multiple social and economic problems include:

· the establishment of Healthy Living Centres in market towns,

· voluntary run local information centres and public offices for multi-agency services,

· mobile and outreach housing and welfare services,

· start-up and development support for community groups,

· gypsy and traveller services, especially relating to improving health outcomes

· significant investment into locally managed community services and facilities for play, the arts, health and education.

· Support for local innovations leading to business start ups and social enterprise

· Involvement with a range of national community led funding programmes’ for example Neighbourhood Learning in Deprived Communities; Market and Coastal Towns Initiative; community safety.

· Trialing and testing a range of participatory budgeting models.

5. Our evidence

 

Our key points to submit for your consideration, based on our experience and current understanding of the challenges and changes we face in South Somerset are as follows.

a. The ‘Total Place’ approach.

First and foremost, this is knowledge driven work, and there needs to be a high value placed on community and customer knowledge, which may not be expressed in statistics. Is it also critical that the relationships between empowerment and knowledge – of individuals and communities - is understood and worked with in ways that lead to long-lasting change.

Without adequate skills and knowledge to drive the process of locally determined services to deliver real improvements, community involvement can falter. Services may be unable (or unwilling) to relinquish power in ways that can be assumed by families / communities, and communities may lack the competence or confidence to drive improvement forward. Neighbourhoods viewed as "deprived" are likely to have low aspirations and low educational attainment with individuals and families in need of additional support to make improvements happen. Those most in need can be left behind without proper support.

A foundation of continuous community (individual and group) development is a pre-requisite for effective and long term outcomes from ‘multi-agency investment to co-design. Just like any other investment, without infrastructure in place and maintained, the aspirations can remain just that.

Without a community able and willing to engage, work to develop ‘community led’ programmes can result in no more than a tick box exercise of events and poster campaigns. A community development approach requires a long term investment and a commitment to outcomes not solely measured by inputs and outputs.

Whilst new initiatives can be easy to launch, backed by development resources, communities can have high expectations – or none – and whilst this not easy to control, it does need to be managed and planned for.

Whilst clear pathways can be built between collaborative work to support and empower individuals and families and the wider development of strong and safe neighbourhoods, these pathways are not always obvious or easy to navigate, with different agencies involved and different sets of community priorities to contend with.

For example, environmental services in a neighbourhood (such as Planning and Highways) are challenging to join up coherently at a neighbourhood level alongside services helping families with multiple problems (that may include the Police, Adult & Social Care, the Youth Offending Team, Housing, Welfare Benefits, the local school, etc). This will be influenced by specific legislation/regulatory requirements, timing factors in strategic planning, resource constraints and the relationships between the agencies involved.

Long term results both for families and communities takes time. Monitoring and measuring this process can be problematic in terms of specific or detailed indicators. Recording how people feel about the positive changes in their family life and the neighbourhood is important and can inspire others. Agencies will be able to measure the financial benefits of the Total Place/Community Budget approach taken, but interestingly an additional benefit is likely to be that agency staff feel they are providing a better service to the public.

Community based / led / managed work is by its nature very ‘horizontal’, emergent and near to the ground. Clear vertical links do not just emerge yet are imperative to avoid ‘neighbourhoods’ level work existing within a bubble, whilst major strategy is planned with limited involvement. Structures for engagement to higher levels of decision making need to be clear and accessible.

Ideas for solutions do not solely come from the community itself, but are best generated into something more tangible there. For example an idea to address low employment levels in one neighbourhood was developed by the community to not simply focus on job opportunities (as first suggested by the agencies), but concentrated on opportunities to find out about learning and skills, and promoted as ‘Fresh Starts’.

Clarity of the offer, and the reality of influence – and notably the anticipated change to be felt by those participating are key. Simply reducing the costs of public services is a meaningful achievement – but the direct impact on communities may not be obvious at a local level – and without this, the benefits of continued participation can be harder to sustain.

b. Addressing needs without an urban economy of scale

The ‘geographic coherence’ of neighbourhoods and the indicated population levels of 5000-25000 may yet act as barriers to access to the benefits of the community budgeting / Total Place approach for rural communities. In rural areas there needs to be a balance between a focus on a geography which local residents immediately recognise and finding new ways of providing affordable and effective public services.

Deprivation and problems at an individual level may be extreme – and poor access to services can be an added factor. Building the confidence of small local neighbourhoods to collaborate to gain economies of scale for public services is a key challenge – and an additional investment need.

c. Administering and accounting for national funding programmes

The clear intention of the Total Place and Community Budgeting approach is to simplify complexity, making services more accountable and responsive to individual, family and community needs and aspirations. This presents an immediate challenge if the funding stream to support this work requires multiple processes to decide on investment and account. The ‘carrot’ of empowerment through community budgeting can seem less attractive if the governance appears an unwieldy stick.

Keeping it simple and integrating as far as possible with mainstream decision making processes is key. To what extent will the decision on what to devolve and what to retain for ‘strategic’ decision making to be the communities’ decision? These rules of engagement are needed from the start.

December 2011