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.