The CSR - It’s not just about cost, it’s about cost benefit

Posted by Ben Lee, NANM Director

The most pressing CSR challenge to weigh up not just the raw costs of a service, but to hold those against the benefits – so even if new aircraft carriers were a ‘good deal’, they can only be justified if they bring the desired benefits (i.e. protecting us from the most likely threats). But in a growing number of councils, community and neighbourhood initiatives are being assessed only on their costs - which are modest, and not on their benefits - which are significant. And the reason for this is simply that they are seen as ‘extra’ or ‘additional’ to the mainstream effort making them an easy target for councils who have retreated into ‘last in/first out’ logic.

The past two decades have seen hundreds of community and neighbourhood initiatives lead a quiet revolution in local public services across the UK. Locally they are usually known as ‘neighbourhood management’, ‘locality teams’, or ‘ward-area forums’. Nationally they are referred to as examples of ‘co-production’, ‘community empowerment’, and ‘localism’. But jargon aside, these small collaborations of public service staff and local residents working as a team have been turning public services on their heads. Most of all they treat local communities as partners not passive recipients, and prioritise action around what communities say they want, rather than what senior managers think they need - from street cleaning, to employment advice, to reducing youth offending. Some of the results have been remarkable, but despite this, the reliance on short term funding has made them an easier target in spending cuts than the mainstream services which in many cases they out-perform.

Some areas like Bradford, Hartlepool, Haringey, and Salford are protecting neighbourhood working (albeit with inevitable budget reductions) as an essential service which takes preventative action, supports the most vulnerable, and enables community action. They calculate that without it would face bigger costs and problems elsewhere. But in many councils, neighbourhood teams are being scrapped, or put under threat (like in Coventry, Burnley and Westminster) because only the costs, and not the benefits, have been considered.

We have a decade’s worth of evidence showing neighbourhood teams with high levels of autonomy and strong community empowerment skills saves money both in the short and long term – in the basics like crime and street environment and around more complex outcomes such as job brokerage. The consistent message is that top-down one-size-fits-all service models are inherently wasteful; a bit like a garden sprinkler – and what neighbourhood management offers in a time of drought is the equivalent of lots of watering cans.

And the body of evidence continues to grow. New work by Localis, NESTA, the Chamberlain Forum and DEMOS all urge public services to consider the benefits of closer collaboration with citizens at the neighbourhood level, and to do so as the answer to the spending crisis not something done in spite of it. The same message was also echoed by the Office for Civil Society in last week’s civil society white paper.

So as the cuts bite and the internal discussions get more febrile, we urge councils to look at the evidence and ask yourselves – Which really brings more benefit pound-for-pound? Old style top-down services, or new style bottom-up?…