A new role in community action

The Sustainable Communities Act has great potential for parish and town councils. The Act is a radical new “bottom-up” process that allows local people – for the first time in this country’s history – to drive central government action to help their local communities.

Up until now, parish and town councils have been excluded from this process. This was totally unacceptable. Parish and town councils should be at the forefront of driving government action to help communities. Well after successful campaigning by the National Association of Local Councils, County Associations, Local Works and local councils, this has all changed.

The campaign for the Sustainable Communities Act arose out of the very concerning problem of community decline, which can be seen in the national decline of everything from small shops and Post Offices to green spaces and recreational facilities. This decline has huge and worrying social, environmental and democratic implications. People see their community dying around them, feel powerless to do anything about it and so disengage from democracy and their community.

At the heart of the Sustainable Communities Act is this philosophy: citizens and communities are the experts on their problems and the solutions to them. They therefore should drive the help and actions government takes to reverse community decline. The Sustainable Communities Act sets up a ‘bottom up’ process that does just that.

Here’s how it works: the Act allows people – through their councils – to suggest ideas to government and government is obliged not only to respond, but to “reach agreement” with a totally independent panel on which of the ideas that come forward should be implemented. This is a radical idea – it is about turning government upside down and allowing local people to drive the agenda, reversing decades of “Whitehall knows best” dogma.

Since being passed in 2007, the Act has achieved some notable results. In Sheffield for example, the Act has been used to help save post offices from closure and to boost their revenues. The Act has also been used to encourage renewable energy and close a loophole that allowed gardens to be used for development.

Up until now though, parish and town councils have been excluded from the process,

Parish and town councils are the most local part of government and the body most closely connected to the community. Their connection with local people and their knowledge of the local area means you are ideally placed to make use of the Act. No one knows the local community like they do.

There will be issues in your local community that the Act could assist with. Perhaps you want to be able to promote renewable energy schemes in your area but lack the means or knowledge to do so. Or you want to help increase the amount of recycling in your area but there are rules and regulations that prevent you from doing so. Or perhaps you think government should do more to promote woodland and have ideas for how they could do so.

For more information on this please visit:www.nalc.gov.uk or http://www.barrierbusting.communities.gov.uk.

Connecting citizens by a game

Community PlanIt is a game about the issues that face local government, designed to get people (especially young people) more involved and understanding of what goes in to managing their communities.

Anyone who has sat through a community planning meeting knows--well, they’re not always exciting, and not always terribly involving. The traditional civic decision-making process can be a turn-off, even if you care deeply about the issues involved.

The goal of Community PlanIt--a game built around local issues that’s now been played in several cities--is to engage people more, challenge them for their thoughts, and bring new residents into the process.

It works like this: A group--say, a planning commission or small business--puts up a few hundred dollars for community investment. Players register on the Community PlanIt platform, and take part in three "missions." To win pledgeable "coins," they complete "challenges" within each mission. Then the projects with the most pledged coins get real cash to spend.

Although this was developed in the USA it does not mean it cannot be transferred to the UK and lessons learnt. And let us hope the game makers will be hitting our shores soon.

For further information:http://www.communityplanit.org/

Can rural areas be engines of economic growth?

What is ‘the rural economy’?

Land management industries are important to us all – we depend on their provision of food, timber, water, energy and other goods – but the rural economy reaches far beyond this in terms of jobs, enterprises and output.

The rural economy can contribute to all the economic sectors, and is affected by all of the pressing challenges (infrastructure, planning, finance etc) that feature in national and local growth strategies, yet its contribution is often handled separately and focused on farming or tourism:

— Manufacturing, wholesale and retail, construction,

education and health, public administration and

professional and business services sectors flourish in the

countryside and many leading global, European and

national businesses operate from rural areas.

— Land management provides a wide range of ecosystems

services, including not only production of food, timber and

energy, but also provision of clean water, leisure facilities,

carbon storage and flood management.

— Rural areas display high levels of entrepreneurship, with

more businesses per head of population than in England’s

towns and cities.

— Most city economies are well supported by commuters,

businesses, consumer and environmental services from

neighbouring rural areas.

Just as firms vary across towns and cities, so the mix of business sizes, sectors and performance varies across rural areas:

— Manufacturing and professional firms are more likely to

be found in and close to rural towns in less sparse areas.

— Micro-businesses, social enterprises and self-employment

make a more significant contribution to rural employment

and services than those in urban areas.

— The high levels of entrepreneurship are partly driven by

large numbers of home-based businesses, (especially those

run by women), by self-employment and by incomers.

Why are rural economies important?

Cuts in public spending and the need to rebalance the economy reinforce the need for economic growth and innovation to come from all areas and sectors, not just from

urban centres.

Rural businesses already make a significant contribution to economic growth:

— They currently represent around 28% of England’s firms.

— Rural areas contribute at least 19% of Gross Value Added

to the English economy.

— Healthy environments are known to make critical

contributions to economic growth and society’s wellbeing.

Stewardship of the rural environment is central to achieving

this balance between economic growth and environmental

and societal wellbeing.

— Rural economies have demonstrated their potential to

provide more growth and employment if given appropriate

stimuli and support from national and local business leaders

and policy makers.

Rural Economy and Land Use Programme

Rural areas contribute at least £211billion a year directly to theEnglish economy but have great potential to achieve even more.

During the decade to 2010 our countryside and smallest settlements achieved higher rates of growth in numbers of businesses and jobs than any other settlement category in England.

Cuts in public spending and the need to rebalance the economy means that our expectations of what private and social enterprise can achieve in employment, wealth creation and service provision have increased.

We must, therefore, see growth across the whole country rather than only in certain cities or sectors. The distinctive characteristics, business and employment structure and past performance of rural economies mean that they are well placed to meet this challenge

How does the rural economy offer opportunities for growth?

Rural areas have a number of dynamic features that enable economic growth:

— Rural areas have more business start-ups per head

of population than many urban areas.

— Firms started by people moving into rural areas are more

likely to sell their products and services on national and

overseas markets, thus earning revenue beyond the locality.

— Many manufacturing businesses are located in rural areas

and this sector provides a higher proportion of rural jobs

than are supported by urban manufacturing firms.

— Rural economies have pioneered privatisation and

community provision of many local services, fuelled

by a combination of delivery and access difficulties and

the distinctive nature of rural demand.

— As the economic value and potential of ecosystems

services are recognised these will offer increased

opportunities for growth.

What barriers are holding rural economies back?

There are also some key weaknesses to be found in rural economies:

— Low densities and dominance of very small firms,

especially in sparse and peripheral rural areas, can lead

to a poorer choice of local employment opportunities

for rural residents.

— Lower business revenue and lower productivity in some

sectors leads to many rural jobs offering lower pay.

— Affordable housing for employees is limited in many areas.

When combined with poorer public transport, greater

distances between firms, this presents employers with

difficulties recruiting or retaining staff, and adds to

higher average living costs than for workers who are

residents in towns.

— Fuel costs are high for firms and for employees who need

to commute.

— Lower levels of local authority funding are available for

spending on consumer services and economic support.

For more information: Rural Economy and Land Use Programme

Centre for Rural Economy

School of Agriculture, Food and Rural Development

Newcastle University

Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU

Telephone: 0191 222 6903

Fax: 0191 222 5411

Email: relu@ncl.ac.uk

www.relu.ac.uk

Youth and participation

I do not want to get into the trials and tribulations about individual young people's social media accounts, as witnessed recently of the now former Kent Youth Crime Commissioner.

But the importance of involving our youth in decision making that effects their lives cannot be overstated.

NALC has done some work encouraging local (parish and town) councils to set up youth councils. More information: Create a Youth Council

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child provides the framework for children's rights globally. Article 12 provides for the right of children and young people to participate in decisions that affect them. The UK signed up to the Convention almost 25 years ago. Each of the four nations has a Children's Commission tasked with ensuring implementation of those rights.

Across sectors agencies are on a journey; working hard to build a culture of youth participation and leadership in our organisations and in public life. On that journey we have had fun, insight, innovation, trials, tribulations and disagreements, learning copious lessons along the way. All the time trying to make sure that participation is meaningful for both young people and the organisations they are influencing to create better outcomes for individuals and communities.

The work of youth parish or town councils have  challenged some established organisational orthodoxies, habits and priorities. It hasn't always been easy or comfortable but it has always been constructive, rewarding and ultimately positive.

Managed well, putting young people at the heart of decision making in organisations and systems influences better outcomes. Participation and leadership has the potential to influence traditionally adult led structures, systems and approaches in ways that can really improve them for young people. Inevitably creating shifts in cultures will bring some challenges as well as opportunities. We must learn from the good, the bad and the ugly. But we have to make sure we learn the right lessons.

We all live and learn, we all make mistakes and we must all be allowed to learn from them. As adults we must search for and ask the right questions about how to make youth leadership work in order to take the right learning from this and other situations. Those questions that need asking may not be the obvious ones - they probably need to focus as much on adult responses as they do on recruitment processes.

Finally I hope that an aversion to risk does not limit creativity in this domain of public life. I hope that it makes us more determined as adults and young people to continue enjoying developing ways of working together to make a difference for all young people. And absolutely most of all I hope young people will not be put off coming forward to get involved because they think adults are hypocritical and worry we won't keep them safe.

 

Planning a victory in localism

The Government has finally got something to smile about with its localism programme. Upper Eden has become the first community to have a neighbourhood plan approved. Is it a victory in localism in action? Simple answer is yes.

Upper Eden, http://uecp.org.uk/, is the first community in the country that has passed all stages, including an independent examination and referendum, to put in place a neighbourhood plan to shape the future of the area and help improve the lives of local people.

The plan was approved by over 90% of the voters, with 1,310 votes in favour and 138 votes against. The naysayers are complaining that the turnout was low and hardly a vindication of the neighbourhood planning process. Yes the turnout for the referendum was 34% but this matches turn out local council election these days and smashes the turnout for Police Commissioner elections, which averaged at around 15%

The plan has been worked up by the Upper Eden Community Plan Group, which represents 17 Parish Councils across the Upper Eden area, and includes policies on encouraging limited new development to help local people meet their own housing needs, as well as policies on housing on farms, housing for older people and broadband connections.

Upper Eden is the just the tip of the iceberg with to date nearly 400 areas have applied to formally designate their neighbourhood planning areas, the first formal step in the process, while 20 draft plans have been published for consultation, before being independently examined and then put to referendum.

However not everything is perfect in these community planning schemes. A £20,000 neighbourhood plan for Dawlish has been rejected as "unsound" by a public examiner. For more information please visit: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-18392014,  
 
Then in The Guardian on Saturday 9^th March, we heard about how Haredi Jews face off against other residents of Stamford Hill in London in a battle for control of planning rights. http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/mar/08/hackney-planning-row-orthdox-jewish 
But in the same article we heard how in “some areas, such as the Somali area of Spring Boroughs in Northampton, the process of drawing up a neighbourhood plan has brought immigrant and indigenous communities together for the first time”.

This all goes to show how when there are properly local democratically elected bodies, like parish and town councils, you are hearing the true voice of the community in neighbourhood planning as opposed to those who shout the loudest and factional in-fighting.

 
 

Connected Communities

We all belong to communities - at home, in our neighbourhoods, at work, at school, through voluntary work, through online networks, and so on. Communities are vital to our lives and wellbeing. But their importance means we need to understand their changing place in our lives, their role in encouraging health, economic prosperity and creativity, their history and their future.

The AHRC (Arts and Humanities Research Council) is leading on Connected Communities, a cross-Council programme designed to help us understand the changing nature of communities in their historical and cultural contexts and the role of communities in sustaining and enhancing our quality of life.

The programme seeks not only to connect research on communities, but to connect communities with research, bringing together community-engaged research across a number of core themes, including community health and wellbeing, community creativity, prosperity and regeneration, community values and participation, sustainable community environments, places and spaces, and community cultures, diversity, cohesion, exclusion, and conflict.

A growing body of work under the programme is exploring the temporal dimension to communities, while other clusters of projects are exploring issues such as cultural value in community contexts and 'community and performance'. Another strand of research is exploring the potential for arts and humanities to support approaches to engagement with communities to active participants in the research process, through the creative arts and media, narratives, crafts and by enhancing consideration of issues such as ethics, power and voice. 

For more information please visit: AHRC 

Hearing the voices of the unheard

Towards the end of last month, I attended a meeting of the Participatory Budgeting Network, hosted by the Centre for the Study of Democracy at the University of Westminster.

The PB Network is a newly formed body advocating for and leading new learning and innovations in PB. It takes over from the work of the PB Unit, which sadly was forced to close due to lack of funding in mid 2012. The PB Network has a small volunteer steering group and aims to put on learning events, publish policy related papers and stimulate debate on where PB might go next.

You can receive updates of the network via Twitter, Facebook or
LinkedIN

and find resources on PB on the PB Unit’s now archived website: http://www.participatorybudgeting.org.uk

These are my notes from the opening panel session, titled “Hearing the voices of the unheard”. The issues of inclusivity and equality in democratic participation are something that, like many others, we at Involve are very concerned with. The following thoughts from the panel, which I’ve recorded as faithfully as possible, include a range of useful observations, arguments and reminders for anyone interested in democratic participation.

Here are five things that particularly hit home for me:

Participatory processes can achieve as much, if not more, through their ability to bring people together to discuss, share and take action, as their impact on decision making (though the latter must not be forgotten). PB should be about building a democratic movement – not the distribution of small grants.

Process design is all-important for ensuring people are able to speak and be heard. Effort and resource is required to ensure that power imbalances are overcome.

It’s important to be aware of who the unheard voices are in different contexts. There may be some surprises.

We should be mindful of and challenge participatory processes that are being used to control and appease people, rather than hand over genuine power.

If PB, or any other democratic innovation for that matter, is to make a real impact on power balances, they must be focused on core issues (and budgets) – not scraps on the edges.

Professor Yves Cabannes

Professor Yves Cabannes kicked off the session. He has a large amount of practical experience of participatory budgeting, including as senior adviser to the Municipality of Porto Alegre, Brazil, where PB was first developed.

Yves began by noting that the vast majority of participatory budgeting processes are either thematically or territorially based, and advocated the use of actor based participatory budgeting instead, to hear the voices of the unheard.

Listening to the voices of the unheard, Yves says, can lead you to projects that are very different. For example, he spoke about his experience of a PB process with young people in slums in Brazil who identified that the short length of time school buses would wait at a stop for them to get on meant that the younger ones were pushed and shoved by the older ones to get on. Negotiating a longer stoppage time with bus companies meant the young people arrived at school in a much better state of mind – an outcome that could not have been anticipated before the process.

Yves also spoke about PB being a means rather than an end. For example, he spoke about PB being a pretext for bringing together migrants in Spain, giving them a place where they could speak to and learn from each other.

However, Yves noted that there are a number of ongoing challenges and issues relating to hearing the voices of the unheard through PB. For example, he noted that very little progress has been made on increasing women’s voices in PB, and suggested more effort is required to break the power imbalances.

He also noted that just because people are present at a PB event, does not mean their voices will be heard. It’s therefore important that we create the right conditions for people to feel comfortable to speak.

Another challenge, according to Yves, is to include the voices of the unheard in the implementation of a project as well as the initial decision. The risk is that in the transformation into a project eligible for PB, an idea becomes coopted by those with power. Too often, according to Yves, people are not empowered fully and others take over.

Yves went on to talk about the importance of deliberation in a process, arguing that one of the duties of PB is to open up an opportunity for people to speak and exchange their opinions. For Yves, the deliberative quality of a PB process determines its success. He therefore said he was reluctant about the use of electronic voting in PB and also commented that while technology can be useful, deliberations can be difficult, especially for the unheard, if not face-to-face.

Finally, Yves spoke about the risk that PB is used to keep people in “their ghetto”. PB can maintain segregation and just as well as it can lead to people voice and power. For Yves, PB needs to give people power in their city, not just in their neighbourhood.

Professor Graham Smith

Next up was Professor Graham Smith, a specialist in the theory and practice of democratic innovations at the University of Westminster’s Centre for the Study of Democracy, who responded to Yves’s remarks.

Graham agreed with Yves on the importance of how PB processes are designed; it’s not just an issue of wanting to hear the voices of the unheard, but also about how it’s done. It’s one thing to have people in a room, but it’s another for them to have a voice, and another for them to be heard. Therefore, for Graham, the issue of institutional design has not had enough attention paid to it.

He spoke about how the clever separation of different types of voice that can be found in the Porto Alegre process have been collapsed in the UK; for example, there is no separation between where demands and decisions are made. The best PB processes, according to Graham, are those where somebody has thought very carefully about what space they are creating and why. Asking the question, “how do we design this in order that the voices of the unheard will be heard?”, because it won’t happen by accident.

Graham finished by commenting that we still have a lot to learn from Latin America about willingness to take a risk on different types of institutions.

Cllr Simon Henig

Simon Henig is Leader of Durham County Council. He spoke about County Durham’s experience of implementing PB via its area partnerships.

Simon began by commenting that the formation of the new unitary authority in County Durham in 2009 presented an opportunity to change the way in which public engagement was done. He noted that, in common with other councils, there was a great deal of cynicism from residents about how decisions were made.

The newly formed authority set up 14 area partnerships based on geography decided by local people. Each partnership was given a devolved yearly budget to spend and some chose to hold one-off events with local residents to decide how it was spent. He referred specifically to one area, with a relatively poor population, in which they were surprised by the level of interest: 800 people turned up to the event in the first year and many stayed until the ballots were counted and results announced – something he noted never happens for councilor elections.

Simon also spoke about a process whereby local people were consulted on County Durham’s overall budget, including which services should be protected and which should be saved. While by law the decision has to be made by a full Cabinet, he highlighted that the eventual decision went with what the public had voted for. This, he said, effectively meant that County Durham’s £500 million budget had been allocated by residents.

However, he also noted that only 10-15% of the money spent within an area, is spent by the local authority.

Finally, Simon suggested that there currently exists a political opportunity to embed PB as all of the main political parties have expressed a desire to empower the public and acknowledged problems with the current political system. On the other hand, he recognised that getting politicians to give up power can be difficult and anyone with a budget at the moment will be loath to give it up. However, he also suggested that at a time of austerity, it is perhaps easier to get PB implemented as, for a politician, it is potentially easier to say “because we’ve got difficult decisions, let’s make the public make them”.

Shazia Hussain

Finally, Shazia Hussain, currently service head for localism at Tower Hamlets Council, spoke about her experience of developing and leading the UK’s largest PB process – You Decide! – in Tower Hamlets in 2008 and how they are continuing to develop PB now.

Shazia began by commenting that the unheard are often thought to include the young, BME communities and women, but in Tower Hamlets they had experienced the opposite: those not turning up were white men.

PB has achieved support from politicians across parties and officers alike in Tower Hamlets because it’s been shown to give people an opportunity to be heard. Shazia later commented that when people go into the room and see people engaging in the PB process, then they get it.

For Shazia, PB is not about consultation; it’s about people’s ideas and how to grow them. The question they are seeking to answer in Tower Hamlets is “how do you get people to influence and co-produce on core services?”, recognising that they need citizens to help tackle gritty problems. They are therefore moving from a large to a smaller pot of money, but one that impacts core services.

Finally, Shazia highlighted that working with councillors was key to success, in part because councilors have the networks into local groups and communities.

by Tim Hughes — tim@involve.org.uk

Tim leads Involve’s research into how and why citizens engage, and what participation looks like from their perspective.