Yesterday Ben and I presented to the Lib Dem Localism and Decentralisation working group in Portcullis House, Westminster. We majored on the delivery and accountability of local services and were asked some tricky questions about the tension between councilors and neighbourhood management boards; the benefits beyond cleaner and greener; how much it costs and – crucially - whether It saves money; and how neighbourhood management can empower local people.
The group were not only interested in the approach but seemed to appreciate its value and its potential to transform services. As they say though - the proof will be in the pudding and we’ll be checking out the Lib Dem conference in autumn 2010 when their thoughts on localism and decentralisation will be presented.
If you want to know more about the Liberal Democrat position on localism and neighbourhoods they will be speaking at the Autumn Conference – The End of Top Down Services on 19th November in Birmingham. If you haven’t already done so, click here to book a place.
Here at the National Association for Neighbourhood Management we are only too aware of the impact that the end of ring-fenced government grants can have on neighbourhood interventions. While we remain relatively positive on the future of neighbourhood management post-central government funding there seems to be more uncertainty surrounding neighbourhood warden schemes.
In the past few months we’ve seen quite a few news stories relating to the closure of warden services and PCSOs, often directly linked to neighbourhood management teams. For instance, the Central and Hindpool Neighbourhood Management team in Barrow is asking businesses to sponsor its neighbourhood wardens, while PCSOs in North Lincolnshire are at risk as Westminster’s funding for the Acorns neighbourhood management team comes to a close.
It would be easy to dismiss the loss of street wardens as trivial but the consequences of cutting these services can be severe. Coventry’s recent rise in crime has been attributed to the loss of street wardens and the recent NDC evaluation report showed that neighbourhood warden schemes had a significant impact on the fear of crime and dereliction scores. On top of this a recent report by JRF - Communities in the Recession - concludes that public service cuts may trigger a second recession unique to deprived communities, many of which are dependent on public services – “from free school buses to drug outreach services, even police community support officers – to cushion their community infrastructure.”
With the main political parties expounding their commitment to public service cuts it’s important that deprived places and the neighbourhood-based interventions are not overlooked, pulling them further into poverty and widening the gap in inequalities even more.
A new report by the Brigham Young University called the Smell of Virtue has revealed that people are unconsciously fairer and more generous when they are in clean-smelling environments.
Participants were engaged in several tasks, the only difference being that one of the rooms was scented and the other was not. The first experiment evaluated fairness - participants received $12 of real money and they had to decide how much of it to either keep or return to their partners who had trusted them to divide it fairly. The average amount of cash given back by the people in the “normal” room was $2.81, but the people in the clean-scented room gave back an average of $5.33. The second experiment evaluated whether clean scents would encourage charitable behavior. Subjects indicated their interest in volunteering with those in the Windex-ed room significantly more interested in volunteering than those in a normal room.
Katie Liljenquist, assistant professor of organizational leadership and the lead author of the report concluded that as people are more equitable and charitable when there is a clean scent in room that individuals and communities would benefit if the environment was a little bit cleaner.
The findings of this research won’t come as a massive surprise to neighbourhood management teams but will – we hope – add to the body of evidence which supports neighbourhood working. For instance we know from the CLG report into the contribution of Neighbourhood Management to cleaner and safer neighbourhoods that street cleaning services are more effective when local people are involved in service planning and service providers target interventions at the neighbourhood level, and using Liljenquist’s research we can conclude that this leads to more virtuous behaviour in neighbourhoods.
For more on this see George Kelling’s Broken Windows article and Keizer’s research entitled, the Spreading of Disorder.
Brixton has started printing its own money - the Brixton Pound (B£) - to encourage residents to shop locally and boost the local economy.
Following an online poll of local heroes the notes feature the pictures of Brixton Black Women’s Group founder Olive Morris, creator of Gaia theory James Lovelock, political theorist CLR James, and Vincent Van Gogh (who apparently lived in Brixton for 2 years). Available in denominations of B£1, B£5, B£10 and B£20 many retailers sold out just hours after being released. With 80 shops offering discounts of up to 10% and ‘2 for 1’ offers on a range of products the idea seems to have resonated with local people. But it’s not just locals getting involved. Residents from neighbouring boroughs are so excited by the idea they are travelling into Brixton to shop just because of it. The novelty is not just about the discounts though and it is widely expected that tourists and residents will keep the notes to pass onto grand-children and keep as souvenirs as they have done in other areas that have a complimentary currency.
That’s just one side of the story though. Some local people think that the very existence of the Brixton pound “is a bit parochial. A bit twee. Overtones of the League of Gentlemen, you know? ‘Don’t shop anywhere else, for that way dragons lie’.” To date the scheme has been successful in small, rural villages like Totnes in Devon and Lewes in Sussex which were designed to support local farmers and encourage suppliers to get their goods locally.
That being said in the midst of a recession any boost the local economy is a welcomed one, and on top of that – despite what the sceptics say – it has got stores working together to think innovatively about increasing sales and the speed at which the B£ sold out proved the way that it has captured the imagination of local people.
The need for greater efficiency in the public sector has moved from rhetoric into action with the launch of the Total Place initiative.
Total Place is being piloted across 13 areas, and involves adding up all public spending going into an area – through councils, police, health, benefits, courts, probation services and so on – then looking at new ways of getting the best value for that money.
Speaking this morning on BBC Radio 4’s the Today Programme Sir Michael Bichard – who invented the idea (see the Operational Efficiency Programme report) – said that while the 13 pilots won’t change the world on their own it will give local agencies the chance to work more effectively together and “feed back to government how government gets in the way.” Most interestingly – or reassuringly - for people working in neighbourhoods he said that finding a way to deliver services at less cost is more likely to be done close to clients than to Whitehall.
But it’s not just about delivering the same services for less but better services for less. By cutting out duplication, targeting efforts and joining resources clients, local people and residents will receive a better service - in fact our event next week will be touching on this idea. For example an alcoholic in Leicestershire – one of the pilot areas - spoke on the Today Programme about the number of agencies she had been in contact with because of her addiction, including the police and PCT but the difficulty she had in finding someone to help her.
While there has been speculation that some government initiatives won’t not survive a change in administration the chances are that this one’s a keeper!
On Tuesday the Conservative housing spokesman, Grant Shapps MP, addressed the Royal Institute of British Architects. He used the occassion to pick up the Control Shift Green Paper theme of devolving more power to communities.
It was the clearest sign yet that the Conservative policy machine has latched on to neighbourhood management - though while keen on the principle, they might still only have a sketchy view of what it is in practice (an opportunity for NANM members to get in quick and get them better up to speed perhaps?).
Specifically he said “Instead of regeneration flowing down through a series of complex quangos…we will encourage power to be exercised at the very lowest levels… by which I mean Parish, Ward, but also street level”.
He didn’t use the term neighbourhood management but it sounded very much like it as he advocated “the creation of partnerships with residential communities to create effective and lasting regeneration of disadvantaged housing estates”.
He also raised the age-old dilemma of the built environment and the socio-economic environment being dealt with in “near isolation” from each other - though he sort of implied this was a new revelation…
Anyway - have a glance at the speech and decide for yourselves…
Barnet council in north London has taken inspiration from budget airlines such as Easyjet and Ryanair in developing their new business model. The basic premise is that every local resident will be entitled to a core service but can access more or an improved service by paying extra. For example residents will be able to jump the queue for planning consents if they pay a charge (Easyjet’s Speedy Boarding) and increase the size of waste bins (Ryanair’s ‘carry on’ luggage only). The model, dubbed “easyCouncil”, is part of the council’s “relentless drive for efficiency” and includes cuts to services with live-in wardens for sheltered housing replaced with ‘floating’ wardens, and citizens offered more choice - recipients of adult social care will be offered a choice on how spend their care budget - a respite carer or a holiday to Eastbourne.
Budget airlines let passengers tailor their service to a budget - they can choose online check-in, priority boarding, a meal on board or to have bags in the hold. It is this concept that Barnet Council is interested - how they can stop wasting money providing services that some people do not need and/or want thereby providing more for less. As the Government is forced to cut public spending councils will have to trim their budgets in the coming years and this is going to be a major challenge for them.
Now I’m all for delivering services efficiently (check out our upcoming event titled “Can neighbourhood working deliver more for less?”) but adopting a no frills approach to public services is a rather daunting prospect. I don’t mind taking a flight on a budget airline safe in the knowledge that it’s only for a few hours and is a lot cheaper than the next best alternative but council tax is already expensive and less than a few months ago only 33% of respondents to the Place Survey agreed that the local council provides value for money, e.g. 67% of respondents didn’t think that they did. Does Barnet expect residents to pay the same for less? If I only want to access the clean streets, street lighting, and the waste collection can I pay less? The implications of this approach are huge.
That’s not even mentioning the potential impact on inequality too with the risk that poorer areas of the borough could become further removed from the more affluent ones when they can’t afford to pay for the additionality of other areas. We already know working in the world of neighbourhood management that doing things for free, such as collecting bulky items (fridges, sofas, etc) can save the council money by reducing fly-tipping and anti-social behaviour when they are set alight. Not only that but borough-wide solutions to service delivery produces disproportionately worse results for deprived neighbourhoods with more affluent ones ‘peeling away’. This was recognised in the National Strategy for Neighbourhood Renewal (2001) which cited evidence that proved “the poorest areas have often received the poorest public services” – it was this that prompted the launch of the neighbourhood management pathfinder programme. Without mechanisms for devolved service delivery Barnet will run the risk of a return to these times.
A new report from the Cabinet Office highlights international examples of citizen-empowerment and talks about the empowering effect of online data and information e.g. crime maps, school exam results, services provided by nurseries etc. We agree, and that’s one reason the NANM team are big fans of the UK’s own Fix My Street website which lets users report local environmental problems, then tracks what gets done to fix them (there’s even an iPhone app to let you report things as you’re out and about). The website automatically passes the message onto the right council and let’s you know when it’s been fixed.
Having information about public services (in this case problems in your street), being able to see real-time information (when it gets resolved, comments from other residents), and being able to interact with the information (report it yourself as fixed, or uploading a photo) – is empowering stuff for local residents and holds services to account. But isn’t it more than this?
A recent local press story got us thinking. Angus Council in Scotland are reported in their local newspaper as not too keen on Fix My Street, believing local people should use their own one-stop contact centre instead. But isn’t the independent website helping rather than hindering? This is more than just empowerment – surely it’s of direct benefit to the council too. For starters, Fix My Street’s website is taking the burden off councils and going by the number of users is doing a pretty good job - its popularity no doubt due to it being well designed and maintained. Then what about all the information being gathered? Typing in my local street (Burlington Road, New Malden – see my screengrab below) I could straight away see a hot spot for fly-tipping and vandalism – again, valuable operational info which would be costly for a council to gather itself.
Plus digging further in the user comments I noticed that there is clearly a sizeable bunch of local residents (most give their full names) who are bothered enough to act as look-outs for problems which affect hundreds of their fellow residents. If you wanted to recruit a team of volunteer neighbourhood surveyors or hold a community clean-up, then going straight to these people would be a much better start than going door-knocking or (heaven forbid!) commissioning a community engagement study!
So yes, online data is empowering and that’s important and good in itself – but far from being something for councils to worry about, these kinds of technologies can actually help public services develop models of genuine co-delivery, and crucially, deliver more with less.
