Local communities influencing public service delivery

Posted by Rachel Rowney, NANM programme manager

The Cotmanhay Neighbourhood Management Group (CNMG) in Erewash, Derbyshire was a resident led partnership group which was formed in 2006 to lead the development and delivery of the Safer Stronger Communities Funded Programme. Supported by a neighbourhood manager and backed by a government grant the group worked to fund local community projects and influence the design and delivery of public services in the local area.

The local authority decided not to continue to fund the neighbourhood manager post in 2010 after neighbourhood element funding came to an end. This is not a situation particular to Erewash. Lots of local authorities are vastly reducing or cutting neighbourhood management, and posts that support local people influence how public services operate.

So, what has the result of the cuts to neighbourhood management, and similar initiatives been? In crude terms communities have responded in one of two ways.

In some areas communities have built on the foundations left behind by the previous initiatives, and used the lack of central government guidance/control to organise themselves around a special interest or geographic area that they have identified and are using their collective voice to influence public services.

The Cotmanhay Neighbourhood Management Group is now Action4Cotmanhay and is being led by a group of local residents, who organised events and seek to influence local public services, including Erewash and Derbyshire councils, Three Valleys Housing Association, police and the Derbyshire Primary Care Trust.

Out of the New Deal for Communities programme local people in Bradford have established a community council. This covers the Little Horton ward, and 12 councillors represent the six mini-wards into which the area has been divided. In Queen’s Park, Westminster local people have developed plans to turn the forum that used to be funded by area-based grant into a community council.

These are great examples of grassroots community action led by local residents. Local people are self-organising and are able to do this in a way that makes sense to them. Credit should also be given to the public services that are engaging and behaving in a way which enables, supports and amplifies the impact that these groups have without creating new bureaucratic structures.

However in other areas that have cut neighbourhood management nothing has materialised in its place. Public services shouldn’t assume that groups don’t ‘pop up’ because no-one cares, or that local people don’t understand the local area, or that they don’t have suggestions for how the public sector could be changed to better suit the needs of the local area, or that local people lack social capital. It could be that public services aren’t asking local people about things they care about. So, the question is how can these communities be enabled and supported in areas where there is no longer, or never was a neighbourhood manager?

Firstly, the lack of central government guidance on what neighbourhood structures should look like should be embraced by public services. This means supporting, encouraging and enabling residents to create groups which make sense to local people, and represent the things that they are passionate about. In areas that have cut neighbourhood management the local authority has replaced it with area or neighbourhood forums or committees, often chaired by a local councillor and attended by a mixture of frontline staff and service managers. While I recognise that they have a place – they often don’t create the dynamics required that enable the conversations that result in changes to public service delivery.

Secondly, learn from others. There are a growing number of examples that focus on local people influencing public services. Looking at what worked, and what failed in the local area and further afield is an important part of supporting local people.

NANM to lead learning and networking for Big Local

Posted by Ben Lee, NANM Director

Today it was announced that the Community Development Foundation (CDF) led consortium has been confirmed by the Big Lottery Fund (BIG) as the body which will set up and manage the new independent Big Local Trust which will distribute BIG’s £200m endowment to 150 local areas over the next 10 years. The consortium has been working on the business plan for the new Trust since the start of this year. The NANM is pleased to be part of that consortium and our role now will be to help deliver learning and knowledge sharing activity for local communities.

In developing the business plan we have lucky enough to meet some of the first 50 BIG Local areas as they discussed their initial plans. Local people are clearly enthused by the programme and the opportunities to create change in their local area, and we have also re-connected with many familiar neighbourhood management faces in Huntingdonshire, South Bermondsey and elsewhere who are translating the lessons from previous neighbourhood initiatives in this new programme. Over the next couple of months we’ll be meeting again with the first 50 Big Local areas, with our learning programme due to start in the Autumn. The programme will include site visits to Big Local areas and other area-based initiatives, action learning and thematic workshops, and will seek to support local areas in generating momentum at the outset; and, encourage a spirit of internal challenge within the programme and critical thinking.

We will release more details and information soon.

Ex-Salford neighbourhood manager to star at Glastonbury

With so many colleagues currently facing uncertain futures, it’s nice to hear of someone making a positive career choice and successfully pursuing their dream. One such story is that of Tony Walsh, a former Neighbourhood Manager with Salford MBC who will be Poet-In Residence at this year’s Glastonbury Festival. Tony is 6 feet 5 inches tall and is also known as Longfella!

Tony, formerly worked in management roles in housing and community regeneration in some of Salford and Manchester’s most deprived wards, recently took voluntary severance after 18 years service and is now freelancing full-time as a poet and writer.

Tony had been working for Salford for four days per week for the last three years whilst building up his poetry CV to the point where he is now billed as “one of the Uk’s most renowned performance poets.” His role as website poet-in-residence at the world renowned Glastonbury Festival will be followed, a week later, with a co-headlining slot on the opening night at the prestigious Ledbury Poetry Festival. Tony’s down-to-earth poetry has been published on both sides of the Atlantic alongside poets including Adrian Mitchell, Simon Armitage, Roger McGough and Benjamin Zephaniah.

His impressive performance CV includes hundred of gigs around the UK, in Ireland, Berlin and at The Palace of Science and Culture in Warsaw, Poland for The British Council. Along the way he has shared the billing with numerous poetry greats including John Cooper Clarke, Patti Smith and the new poet laureate, Carol Ann Duffy who is expected to be in the audience for his Ledbury performance. Tony is a multiple winner of many high octane poetry “slam” competitions and is the reigning Manchester Literature Festival Comedy Slam Champion, and former runner-up at “The Times” UK Allstars Slam Championship.

Tony told us: “I’m thrilled to have made this move after several years of wondering how far I could take my writing and performing. I’ll be free now to bring out my debut book and cd and the diary is filling up nicely with conferences and performances, workshops in schools, colleges, universities and prisons, with commissions in community and regeneration settings and promotions for ethical organisations including the excellent charity, Forever Manchester. I’ll be performing at several big festivals again this summer and on the Edinburgh Free Fringe in August. It’s an exciting time - as long as I can keep my nerve! I was a council house kid myself and with almost 20 years of wide-ranging public service and partnership working alongside my poetry cv, I’m confident that I bring a unique package to the table as a freelance community artist, creative consultant and project manager.”

“I’m available for work nationally and beyond and would love to hear from anyone with project ideas via the links at my website. I learned a great deal during my public service and I’m really appreciative of the challenges which former colleagues are still facing and I wish everyone the very best of luck. I remain convinced that community arts can make a massive contribution to changing lives, improving cohesion and regenerating communities and I’d love to discuss any opportunities for us to work together. If colleagues could help to spread the word please then that would also be great!”

You can find out more or contact Tony in the following ways: - www.longfella.co.uk - Tel: 07811 434061 - Email: tony@longfella.co.uk - Twitter@ LongfellaPoet
- LinkedIn: TonyWalshLongfella

Why playing it safe is the biggest risk

Posted by Ben Lee, NANM Director

John Houghton has blogged here about the tragic loss of services created specifically “because the frontline public services who were paid to help these people in the first place were repeatedly failing.” The gist is that if as much passion had gone into tackling failures in local public services over the past twelve years as has been seen in fighting the cuts then the public might not be so sceptical about the value and efficiency of public services.

Similar arguments have been made by us and others - including in our previous blog. But let’s be more specific - the prime suspect is attitude to risk and the bogus distinction between ‘risky’ change, and the ‘safe’ status quo. So while there is a growing subculture of innovation in public services this is stifled by those who see change as more risky than standing still - and now this flawed risk aversion is getting ludicrous as John illustrates and that’s the real tragedy.

First there’s the basic inertia caused by flawed risk aversion. Here’s how it works in local libraries… The past decade has seen a relatively small number of libraries modernise by buying new technology, reducing staff posts in order to spend more on books, changing layouts and opening hours, and adopted new working practices. Almost all who have taken these steps have seen usage rise, and social benefit increase. But this involves significant risks - around procurement, public and political reaction, backlash from staff, and the reputation of the managers in charge. So a great many more have avoided proposing changes to working practices, see the internet as a hornets’ nest of risks to be managed, and raided the book-fund to patch and mend budget problems (because books don’t tend to put up a fuss). And the result of playing it safe? Most are are now fighting for survival…

Then add to this the sheer speed of cuts which makes carving out the time to innovate also feel ‘risky’ (where councils have refused to buy time by dipping into reserves it’s even worse). But the result of failing to find time to plan properly is going to be bigger cuts next time.

And finally there are the group decision-making layers of local public services - a group provides safer decisions than letting one person decide. And often something bad happened in the past - so another layer got added to make sure the ‘bad thing’ cannot happen again. The result of course is nothing happens…

So what can be done…? Well we should start by embracing the language of risk not fearing it. How often do you see campaign groups describing their preferred option as a gamble or a risk worth taking? So what will you say the next time someone says there’s no space or time for risky innovations - answers on a postcard.

Salami slicing versus reform

Posted by Ben Lee, NANM Director

Salami-slicing is - cutting funding for neighbourhood-based staff who carry out home safety checks for older residents, even though this is a fraction of the cost of hospital stays for older people who have accidents at home.

Public sector reform is - brokering deals in which Primary Care Trusts pay neighbourhood management and Fire Service teams set fees for each home safety visit they make which meets the full cost of those visits - and linking the budget for this to the cost of hospital stays resulting from home injuries.

Salami slicing is - placing higher burdens of proof on community sector employment support organisations in terms of impact, than the burden of proof placed on public sector teams performing a similar role.

Public sector reform is - taking the staffing budgets for the co-ordination of employment and jobs-related partnership boards where they have been ineffective, and diverting the money instead to community organisations who help people get involved in volunteering as the first step towards work.

Salami slicing is - stopping small grants for community groups who mobilise higher response rates to local planning consultations pound-for-pound than the in-house planning, consultation and communication units.

Public sector reform is - re-tasking council planning officers to reduce the time they spend on reactive tasks, and increase their capacity for outreach with community groups in poor neighbourhoods whose residents are less likely to respond and more likley to suffer a poor built environment.

Community Organisers – what could it mean for neighbourhood management?

Posted by Rachel Rowney, NANM programme manager

Locality (the organisation formed out of the merged DTA and Bassac) is now gearing up to train 5,000 Community Organisers having won the Cabinet Office contract. It is hoped that this new organisation will help realise the Prime Minister’s vision of an ‘army’ of individuals that are “catalysts of change and community action”.

But what are the opportunities for neighbourhood management teams?

In its current iteration the community organisers programme is about “catalysing community action at a neighbourhood level”. The Community Organisers are described as “well-trained and committed individuals who will work closely with communities to identify local leaders, projects and opportunities that the community then completes… They will be better able to work with others in all sectors, and better able, when necessary, to challenge others to fulfil their role locally.”

It seems to me that this is something neighbourhood managers are doing already. So, in Salford the Ordsall neighbourhood management team worked with the local community to take over an abandoned council building and bring it back into use as a community asset. The community cafe (which is more than your average cafe) is now a social enterprise that is run and managed by local people, with very little on-going support from the neighbourhood management team. The Lache neighbourhood management team in Chester challenged and helped Connexions change the way that it provided services to local Neets, so that it was much more local and suited the needs of local young people. We also know that neighbourhood agreements are being used to encourage and support citizens and local public services to be held to account and fulfil their roles and commitments to the local people – the neighbourhood agreement is a tool, but it is the neighbourhood manager that drives these conversations forward between local people and service providers.

As neighbourhood management and neighbourhood managers fall victim to the cuts the communities and the public sector will lose a valuable resource (something we want to return to in future posts) there is the risk that community organisers will be seen as a cheap replacement. During their first year community organisers are reported to get paid £20,000. In this sense community organisers do very much seem to be an affront to neighbourhood managers, and others including community development workers. Plans have already been made to train and implement the programme in Birmingham – an area that is set to lose their neighbourhood managers, but it is hard to tell whether the council took this into account when making their decisions but given the time lag between one ending and the other starting it is unlikely.

Given the reality of the programme and the obvious similarities between the job descriptions for community organisers and neighbourhood managers we’ve tried to remain positive and spot the potential opportunities for neighbourhood management:

1. For neighbourhood managers to look at whether they have the capacity to be a ‘host organisation’. In Barton Hill, Bristol it is the community outreach team and in Hull it is the Safer, Stronger Communities team. You can see a list of the hosts here and also apply to become one.

2. Identify and support local citizens to apply to become a community organiser, accessing the wider training and support now on offer from places like Trafford Hall.

NANM gets EU funding for social media project

Posted by Rachel Rowney, NANM programme manager

We’ve just found out that the NANM, along with a number of European partners, have been successful in their grant application to the European Union. Together we will run a programme supporting neighbourhoods with high levels of ethnic diversity use social media to improve communication between communities and with local public sector bodies.

Although we wrote the bid over a year ago now, in a very different political and economic climate, we actually think that this programme has become even more relevant. We know that social media is not only a relatively cheap method for communication, but is increasing the number of people - especially young people – that are engaging in civic society. It gives them access to information, a voice, a platform to exchange ideas and start conversations with each other. In some cases it has even been a means in which communities have developed solutions to local issue. At a time when there are likely to be fewer, formal support mechanisms for these communities social media has a potentially very important role to play but there are issues around digital inclusion and capacity. We have been impressed by the work being done in Lozells, Birmingham where the community are being poised to take over the local website and blog when the neighbourhood management team is disbanded at the end of the month.

So, in the next few months we’ll be looking to identify and work with a small number of neighbourhoods to help them drive forward the use of social media on the ground, and looking at how we could work with a wider group of stakeholders/neighbourhoods to develop the programme further.

A vital brokering role in the new wave neighbourhood projects

Posted by Rachel Rowney, NANM programme manager

Halifax Central neighbourhood management team have just won a well deserved place on NESTA’s Neighbourhood Challenge (out of several neighbourhood management teams who got onto the shortlist). A few months back Manton Community Alliance were selected as one of the Big Society Network’s participatory budgeting pilots. It wouldn’t be surprising to see neighbourhood management teams among the neighbourhood planning vanguards , further rounds of community based budgeting, and other new initiatives coming out of the Localism and Big Society policy push.

So despite the precarious position of many neighbourhood teams, a growing number are playing a vital brokering role in this new wave of neighbourhood initiatives, and one has to ask - if they don’t they who else would?

We’ve seen this clearest of all through our role helping establish the Big Local Trust. We’ve been able to meet some of the first 50 BIG Local areas as they to discuss their initial plans for using the £1million they will receive over the next 10 years. It is striking how many familiar faces we have come across like in Ramsey, Huntingdonshire, and in South Bermondsey, as well as fomer neighbourhood managers now taking on new roles.

But the real lesson we take from this is these new projects need people on the ground every day to facilitate and enable communities to take the initiative. It can’t be left to volunteers on their own, and it can’t be done remotely by someone at the civic centre with a loose ‘watching brief’.

And in many areas it is the same neighbourhood-based professionals who public agencies invested in over many years (and who in other parts of the country are now being made redundant) who are adding huge value in this new wave of community initiatives.

So in areas where the local authority has taken the lead on deciding how to use new funding, neighbourhood management teams have created the vital connections between the council and local community groups and activists, and increased the awareness among the wider population.

And where new programmes are being led by a community organisation - a resident group, school, faith community or volunteering organisation - the neighbourhood management team has provided expertise and routes into the local authority and other service providers.

We hope that in all the new BIG Local, Neighbourhood Challenge, neighbourhood budgets, or neighbourhood planning, initiatives where there are neighbourhood managers already on there on the ground, those links are being made.

From estates to neighbourhoods

Posted by ben Lee, NANM Director

Last week we were delighted to host the first working session of our new action team with social landlords which we’re facilitating with colleagues from New Realities. The five social landlords taking part are all in the process of developing neighbourhood agreements (or charters or whatever you want to call them) over the coming months.

We established the action team to add weight to what we view as a significant shift towards localism among social landlords, which in turn supports the case for other forms of neighbourhood working.

It has really been quite striking how many social landlords have adopted neighbourhood working of some form in the past 12 months. What is also noticeable is how many have used a neighbourhood agreement (or similar ‘rights and responsibilities’ document) as a first step, focusing energy and giving shape to their approach, and putting resident priorities first. As a measure of the scale of activity we’ve been sent over 40 examples of social housing-led neighbourhood agreements just in the past few months.

Social landlords going down this route talk of re-casting estate management as management of neighbourhoods; and explain the difference as being about more sophisticated partnerships both with tenants and other public services. Some also talk about their Big Society objectives – to involve residents more in the delivery of services. Either way, for most this is a significant move beyond their traditional role and into the domain of councils, the police, and the NHS. It also signals increased ambition among registered providers to expand their delivery and partnership role; surely no coincidence that this comes as other public services contract and retrench, leaving a vacuum.

And finally this appears home-grown within each social landlord – from their own priorities and business objectives and in our view this makes it stronger. So while the Tenants Services Authority has set out a Neighbourhood and Community Standard the uncertainty over the future of the TSA itself has meant social landlords are unlikely to have changed their approach simply on account of the TSA.

What does this mean? • For neighbourhood organisations outside housing – is this the time to build stronger relationships with your social housing partners?
• For social landlords already going down this route we’d love to hear what you’re doing so we can pass it on. • For social landlords thinking about it but not sure where exactly to start, then get in touch.

CSR cuts against localism

Posted by Ben Lee, NANM Director

The devil is surely in the detail of the Comprehensive Spending Review. However, the reaction so far from neighbourhood groups is that there is little to back up Coalition rhetoric on localism – the effect in reality may be the opposite.

Our post-CSR online poll of NANM members found only one in five thought the CSR helped localism and neighbourhood empowerment – with nearly two-thirds fearing it will mean more centralised decision-making. Three-quarters of respondents also believe the cuts will make it harder for local communities to decide how money is spent in their neighbourhoods and to instigate community-led action.

Some respondents do believe the CSR promotes neighbourhood leadership and innovation, and may be good for localism in the longer term – one was ‘surprisingly heartened’. The majority however believe neighbourhood teams will be seen as expendable and ‘the first to go’ while centralised frontline services cling on and avoid the axe. Respondents also voiced real concern about the combined impact in the most deprived neighbourhoods of cutting community initiatives, alongside welfare and benefit cuts.

When asked whether local people in their neighbourhood were likely to stage Big Society takeovers of local services, three-quarters thought not – especially if the many mothers who currently support local groups have to increase their paid work to maintain tax credits. However 20% believed they might, though as community enterprises and not as unpaid volunteers.

Views about the CSR’s impact in driving innovation and reform in public services were more mixed. Respondents were split 50/50 on whether spending pressure will speed up local public service reform or slow it down. When asked whether that pressure will also encourage innovation, around 44% thought it would.

This paints a very mixed picture. Are local public services set to change on a massive scale? Beyond doubt. But does the CSR encourage more localised decision-making, shared leadership with communities, and support for the poorest to take charge of their lives – all core pillars of the Coalition rhetoric? It looks like the Coalition have left that to chance…