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The National Literacy Trust believes that literacy is central
to regeneration. Addressing functional literacy as well as
encouraging more reading and writing for pleasure can help
reduce social exclusion, promote community participation and
improve life chances and employment.
THE views of local people are being overlooked by central
Government in its attempts to reverse deprivation, a new study
suggests. Published by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the
report on Britain's first social enterprise zone (SEZ) says
that although the zone has given rise to innovative solutions
to enduring problems, the Government is failing to "make
best use of evidence from local experience".
SEZ co-ordinators say that policy design remains "tightly
controlled" by the Government, and while some proposed
changes are readily accepted, staff in other Whitehall departments
"treat new ideas as unwelcome criticism". Reporting
on the study, Regeneration & Renewal (July 23) says the
SEZ, established six years ago in the East End of London,
was meant to generate ideas among local residents and frontline
staff in agencies such as Jobcentres. But one of the study's
authors, Matthew Smerdon, comments: "There seems to be
continuing scepticism over the real value of involving people
with practical experience of services in the process of designing
policy."
Some suggestions were successfully implemented, however.
Over two years, trained volunteers at four local Jobcentres
helped more than 1,800 people to fill in benefit claim forms
correctly, reducing by 80 per cent queries about payments.
And when consultation exercises highlighted issues concerning
people who worked for cash without declaring their income,
an Inland Revenue secondee investigated barriers that prevented
such workers from moving to formal employment.
The report recommends that senior Whitehall managers take
part in "back to the floor" schemes to "reconnect"
with staff and service users.
www.jrf.org.uk
(The Times, 27 July 2004)
The National Strategy for Neighbourhood Renewal is focused on
England's 86 most deprived local authorities. Full
list of authorities
The Scottish Executive has produced guidance for local authorities
and service providers about Community Learning and Development.
The guidance sets out a long-term framework for development
and will assist the promotion of community regeneration, lifelong
learning and active citizenship.
Working and Learning Together to Build Stronger Communities
is available online. Visit www.scotland.gov.uk/library5/housing/segcld-00.asp
(NGfL Scotland, 6 February 2004)
In October 2003, a study into the working practices of England's
network of Learning Partnerships - non-statutory bodies funded
by learning and skills councils - recommended that they be subject
to greater regulation to help them develop their role in regeneration.
The report, Learning Partnerships: maximising the contribition
of learning to local regeneration, urged the agencies to
adopt accreditation and performance management processes similar
to those used for local strategic partnerships (LSPs). Produced
jointly by the Department for Education and Skills and NIACE,
it said partnerships would need greater support to expand their
regeneration remit. It also called for close integration of
their strategies with those of LSPs, local authorities and key
agencies.
(New Start, 31 October 2003)
An education charity in Leeds is to test plans to create
Britain's first community action zone - a new model of renewal
through learning. The idea is being developed by the Learning
Partnership, which already runs an education action zone and
works in three deprived areas of Leeds - Harehills, Burmantofts
and Chapeltown.
The zone will bring together five new and existing initiatives,
to build the skills of parents and carers to help support
their children's education. One of those initiatives, the
family learning support pilot, has been backed by a £42,000
DfES grant to test the viability of the zone model. The zone
is expected to commence in April 2003 after evaluation of
the pilot scheme, which will audit the education needs of
50 families and then set about addressing them. Other strands
include:
- education action zone
- investors in community learning - a new quality mark
to encourage private, public and voluntary organisations
to structure their work with the community by negotiating
and measuring outcomes
- learning grants programme - which offers community groups
advice on funding
- workforce development scheme - under which employees are
accredited for volunteering to help children learn to read
Initially the zone is expected to run for three years. But Learning
Partnership chief executive Solat Chaudhry said he hoped the
model would become the forward strategy for all education action
zones.
(New Start, 15 November 2002)
The Scottish Executive mapped out its vision for Scotland's
deprived communities in June 2002, in a programme that will
give local people a greater role in shaping their future.
Through a strategy that echoes the Government's New Commitment
to Neighbourhood Renewal launched in 2001, the Executive intends
to deliver regeneration through its existing public service
budgets. Central to the strategy is the idea that underpins
the neighbourhood renewal agenda in England, that regeneration
should be achieved by improving mainstream public services,
rather than through a plethora of special target initiatives.
Key to achieving this goal will be the use of community
planning partnerships - based loosely on England's local strategic
partnership model. Each of Scotland's 32 local authorities
will set up one of these partnerships, bringing together key
service providers in local authority areas, such as police,
health boards and economic development agency Scottish Enterprise.
Centrally, Scotland's neighbourhood renewal programme will
be coordinated by the Scottish Regeneration Centre, a new
arm of quango Communities Scotland funded by a £3 million
grant from the Executive. Communities Scotland chief executive
Bob Millar said: "With responsibilities at both local and
national levels, Communities Scotland is well placed to take
a key role in translating the statement into action."
The Executive has made no new funding available to support
the programme, bearing out its pledge that renewal should
be delivered through mainstream services. This has attracted
criticism from commentators who believe that disparities between
local authority budgets will lead to an uneven playing
field. Nick Bailey, research fellow at Glasgow University's
Department for Urban Studies, said: "Local authorities will
have different levels of resources. The strategy avoids the
fact they will all be starting from different points." But
umbrella group the Scottish Urban Regeneration Forum welcomed
the strategy. Chair Pat Ritchie said: "Placing regeneration
within the context of community makes sense. Taking this forward
with specific targeted initiatives can ensure that we tailor
approaches to meet need."
(Regeneration and Renewal, 28 June 2002)
This report draws together findings on the effectiveness
of a range of area-based initiatives (or ‘zones’)
which aim to tackle social exclusion and deliver better services
in the most disadvantaged areas. It covers, among others,
education action zones, New Start and Sure Start, and focuses
on six different areas to examine the links between the range
of programmes operating in each locality and the challenges
and processes they went through to achieve a more coherent
approach to area regeneration. The report also highlights
the changing context in which these initiatives have operated
over the two years of the study.
Key among the findings was the dominant role of both central
and local government in establishing the frameworks for all
area-based initiatives. This dominance was found to set a
firm, often inflexible, basis for local working which inhibits
innovation and new joint ways of working; pressures of compliance
with centrally set targets act to discourage initiatives from
making the links they might otherwise make. Joined-up delivery
was found to have occurred extensively, but only in an ad
hoc manner dependent on the energy and imagination of individuals.
The report recommends that more attention should be paid to
removing the obstacles and increasing the incentives to joint
working: unless there is something on offer for all partners,
they will not become, or continue to be, involved.
The full report or a summary can be downloaded from www.neighbourhood.gov.uk
This paper discusses and questions the relationship between
lifelong learning, active citizenship and neighbourhood renewal.
While the intention of the national strategy for neighbourhood
renewal is to involve communities and encourage ‘community
empowerment’, the author claims that the case for adult
and community-based learning within the strategy still has
to be made, despite the priority given to basic skills and
on-line learning in local centres. There are challenges too
for adult learning, with its current focus on individual accreditation
and progression, rather than what exactly is being learned
and for what purpose. The author argues that if the community
development traditions in adult and community education based
on participation, networking and mutual learning are followed
then lifelong learning could make a real contribution to the
development of active local communities. This is a model of
engagement that does not see learning in terms of creating
more customers for formal courses in learning institutions
but as a way of supporting local people to challenge the limitations
and to extend the possibilities of democratic activity.
Contact NIACE on 0116 204 4216.
New Deal for Communities is the Government’s pathfinder
programme for the National Strategy for Neighbourhood Renewal.
39 partnership projects have been set up in England’s
most deprived wards to work in and for the local community.
Themes common to all partnerships are improving educational
levels, increasing the number of people in work, reducing
crime and the community’s fear of crime, and improving
people’s health. The report includes a number of examples
of good practice across all of these areas. Most NDC education
initiatives fall into one of two strands: boosting schools’
effectiveness and adult skills development. Typical approaches
include professional support to help tackle the transition
between primary and secondary school, funding for family support
workers to tackle absenteeism, upgrading school facilities,
and making them available to the wider community, mentors
and investment in local training facilities to improve employment
skills, with a focus on IT. In reviewing the lessons learned,
the report highlights the importance of investing in communication
with local people as a way of involving them, though meetings,
newsletters, websites, focus groups etc. Using community artists
can help people express themselves and raise people’s
spirits and generally aim to have fun to create a sense of
optimism.
Contact the Neighbourhood Renewal Unit on 020 7944 4278.
In April 2000 the Government announced a 10-year strategy
to turn round some of England's 3,000 poorest communities
with funding to modernise homes, improve health, create jobs
and fight crime. This initiative will be combined with plans
to monitor poverty at local level using Government statisticians
to develop on-the-ground indicators of need. It is intended
that the strategy be in place by spring 2001 but the Treasury
has yet to take decisions on the range of measures put forward.
This means agencies, or councils, would be held to account
if targets for reducing deprivation are not met. At the same
time the Government announced an extension of the £800 million
New Deal for Communities programme from 17 pilot projects
on some of the country's poorest estates to seven new areas.
By the end of 2000 the Government was considering setting
up a ministerial group to coordinate policy.
The national strategy for neighbourhood renewal is based
on the most detailed analysis of poverty yet undertaken in
England following recommendations from 18 'cross-cutting'
policy action teams working under the Government's Social Exclusion Unit. They have examined ways
of curbing anti-social behaviour, creating new jobs, improving
schools and creating more demand for homes in unpopular areas.
A preliminary report from the unit 18 months earlier revealed
that the gap between the poorest communities and the rest
of the country has grown dramatically over the past two decades.
It highlighted 44 local authority districts which had the
highest concentrations of deprivation in England with two
thirds more unemployment than average, mortality rate at 30%
above the norm and three times the level of poor housing plus
a quarter of adults with poor literacy and numeracy and poor
exam results among teenagers. The unit blames the cycle of
deprivation in inner city and rural areas on a failure by
successive Governments to coordinate action by different departments
and agencies. It says power should be handed over to new "strategic
local partnerships" involving schools, businesses and residents
in drawing up coherent plans for improvement in council estates
or villages. Individual wards or estates are likely to be
given their own budgets and targets to motivate new neighbourhood
managers. The unit has drawn up proposals for reform in 18
areas of policy. The one which affects schools, Schools Plus, is summarised below.
Apart from the 18 policy areas it also contains 30 "key
ideas". Those that most directly affect literacy are
1: Making adult skills a priority in poor neighbourhoods;
2: Improving access to IT in deprived neighbourhoods;
3: Promoting arts and sports in deprived neighbourhoods;
4: Setting up Local Strategic Partnerships to oversee the
whole.
The proposals include a sophisticated system of poverty
monitoring linked to national efficiency guidelines, which
will force authorities to improve services like housing and
health before the Government pumps extra money in. Money to
improve the areas would be based on performance. This system
will be linked to a new network of local partnerships including
councils, businesses and other agencies. While local government
would be given an important role in the new partnerships,
covering areas of up to 4, 000 houses - probably overseen
by a public-private sector board - ministers are keen that
other local stake holders, particularly tenants and residents,
should play a key role. The initiative will be seen by local
government as further evidence of Whitehall tightening its
grip on town halls, with councils relegated to a secondary
role in reviving rundown estates and inner city ghettos.
National Strategy for Neighbourhood renewal: a framework
for consultation is available from the Social Exclusion
Unit on 020 7270 6315.
Jan 2001 Following
consultation, the government announced its Strategy Action Plan and PAT audit of work
completed so far.
The seven strands of the neighbourhood renewal programme
and related funding are listed below:
New deal for communities
£1.9 billion over 10 years
Applies in 39 locations
Examples: East Manchester, West Ham and Plaistow, Brighton,
Hull
Neighbourhood Renewal Fund
£900 million over 3 years
Applies in 88 local authorities with the most deprived areas
Examples: Great Yarmouth, Barnsley, Blackpool, Hackney
Fund for Neighbourhood Management
£45 million over 3 years to pay for managers in the 88 NRF
areas
20 pathfinder bidders already established
Neighbourhood and Street Warden schemes
£43.5 million over 3 years (open to any area by bidding)
To pay for wardens to discourage anti-social behaviour
Community Empowerment Fund
£36 million over 3 years
To encourage community networks in the 88 Neighbourhood Renewal
Fund Areas
Community Chest
£50 million over 3 years
Provides grants for new facilities, fact finding trips, training
etc
Skills and Knowledge Programme
£21 million over 3 years
To build skills and knowledge in the 88 Neighbourhood Renewal
Fund Areas
Source: DTLR. All schemes apply only in England
For further information see www.neighbourhood.gov.uk
As part of the Government's 10-year Neighbourhood Renewal
Strategy, schools in the poorest parts of the country will
be told to offer at least three hours of extra activities
to pupils in the evenings and at weekends alongside becoming
more involved in the local community. This is part of a plan
to turn schools into one-stop community centres offering advice
on jobs, benefits and health to parents. Non-teaching staff
will be employed in special units as part of the scheme, which
is based on American 'full-service schools'. A similar scheme
has been piloted in Scotland. Schools will also be told to
stay open longer with sports, computing, drama, music or homework
classes.
To promote higher achievement it suggests pupils at risk
of dropping out or those not long in English schools, should
be offered individual programmes of study called a Tap-in
programme. It also says the mentoring programme should be
expanded and greater use made of target-setting to raise ethnic
minority pupils' performance.
The Schools Plus policy action team's report, which makes
the above proposals, also calls for extra resources to go
into schools in deprived areas so that they can deliver them.
The report says that deprived areas have higher numbers of
failing schools and test results are well below the national
average. Among 15 year olds, only 24% get five or more higher
grade GCSEs compared with a national average of 46%. Among
11-year-olds, only 54% reached the expected standard in English
compared with 70% nationally.
A copy of the Schools Plus Policy
Action Team Schools Plus: Building Learning Communities
is available from DfES publications on 0845 602260. Its proposals
build on earlier Government initiatives including Excellence
in Cities, Education Action
Zones and Learning
and Skills Councils
(Schools Plus: Building Learning Communities )
See also: Scotland's
community school programme
Glasgow university's chair of urban studies, Duncan Maclennan,
has described the Government's neighbourhood renewal strategy
as a more of a "story" than a strategy, saying its various assumptions
and omissions mean it cannot be considered an "evidenced, general
model". Apart from its frail evidence base, a major weakness
is the scant attention paid to housing, he says.
"It is also worrisome that there is such an incomplete understanding
of the dynamics of neighbourhoods, or ways of describing how
they change," he adds. Its attempts are rubbished as "much
too simplistic", lacking clear evidence and "too glib on causes".
Professor Maclennan backs calls for community-directed local
service budgets. They would lead to better and more appropriate
services and "should be a prerequisite of neighbourhood management
and community involvement in regeneration," he says.
He also bemoans the absence of best practice examples from
Scotland, Ireland and Wales: "Glasgow, Belfast [and] Cardiff
... are all cities which have attracted international attention
and praise for their regeneration efforts," he observes.
(New Start, 18 August 2000)
Professor Maclennan's report is used
extensively in the Joseph Rowntree Foundation's response to
the Government's National Strategy for Renewal. The foundation's
response can be read by visiting: www.jrf.org.uk/knowledge/responses/docs/NeighbourhoodRenewal.asp
The LA is "impressed" with the Government's work on neighbourhood
renewal. Its main achievement is to grasp that renewal is about
"The people factor". Its plan is a "firm basis" for action.
But it barely mentions libraries. The LA's response to the plan
spells out libraries importance to all four key elements of
renewal: economies (IT, lifelong learning, business support),
communities (meeting place, civilising influence, information,
social glue), public services (if funding allows decent facilities
and access), and leadership/joint working.
(The Library Association Record September 2000)
The Government announced, at the end of October 2000, an
£800 million aid package to fight poverty in England. The
Neighbourhood Renewal Fund, publicised in London by John Prescott,
the Deputy Prime Minister, and Gordon Brown, the Chancellor,
will be channelled to the country's most deprived areas. It
will address one of the biggest obstacles to regeneration
programmes: the proximity of poor areas to prosperous city
centres.
The 88 areas that qualify for grants include the Royal Borough
of Kensington and Chelsea, West London and parts of Bristol
which, despite their reputations for prosperity, house some
of the poorest communities in the country.
Most of the regeneration aid is calculated on a regional
basis but the new fund will send money directly to the poorest
communities. Cornwall will be excluded because it is so poor
in some respects that it qualifies for European Union Aid.
Mr Prescott gave details of the fund in Peckham, South London,
the site of a £260 million regeneration project over the next
five years.
He said that is would provide extra money for local authorities
to spend on teachers, police officers, crime prevention programmes,
social services or any other services that they thought would
improve the community.
Allocation of the money, which was included in the Chancellor's
comprehensive spending review, will start next year and be
spread over three years.
Local authorities will qualify only if they carry out regeneration
schemes in partnership with local residents, organisations
and businesses in an officially recognised Local Strategic
Partnership.
(The Times, 10 October 2000)
In mid January 2001 Prime Minister Tony Blair launched the
action plan for the neighbourhood renewal fund and invited
inner city community groups to bid for over £131 million over
three years to relieve poverty. The money is additional to
the £800 million already set aside over three years for the
neighbourhood renewal fund.
Tony Blair announced a range of related targets for 2004
including no secondary school with less than a quarter of
its pupils getting five good GCSEs. Over the same period,
the Government is committed to bringing deprived areas closer
to the national average for employment and health.
The most novel initiative was to appoint neighbourhood managers
with enough clout to tackle problems in the overlapping agencies
of central and local government. Mr Blair said that the most
important aspect was the abandonment of the top-down approach
to regeneration taken since the 1950s. In future more resources
would be offered to communities that took responsibility for
how the money was spent, giving control over budgets to improve
policing, education, health and the environment.
The key vehicle for reform identified in the plan are 88
local strategic partnerships, a coalition of public, private,
voluntary and community sector organisations, covering the
most deprived local authorities. To the relief of local councils,
the action plan says that the normal presumption would be
that local authorities would lead in establishing, bringing
together and encouraging partnerships.
The partnerships, working through consensus, must set up
a local renewal strategy. Government offices of the regions
can intervene if they think a partnership is failing. The
partnerships will appoint neighbourhood managers on a 'pilot
basis'. These posts will not commence before the end of the
year and in only 15 pilot areas out of the 88 partnerships.
(Guardian, 16 January 2001)
Information on regeneration projects in America is available
at www.hopeinthecities.org
Social Exclusion Unit, January 2001
This report is the result of consultation on the National
Strategy for Neighbourhood Renewal and the 18 policy action
team reports published last April. The report sets out the
background to the policy stating the aim that within 10 to
20 years noone should be seriously disadvantaged by where
they live. The report acts as an overview of Government initiatives
to tackle education, health, employment, crime and housing
and there are 105 named Government commitments covering these
areas. For example: no schools are to have fewer than 25 per
cent of pupils getting five GCSEs at A*-C, and no local education
authority fewer than 38 per cent of pupils reaching this standard
by 2004. Every public library is to have internet access by
2002 and the new adult basic skills national strategy is to
improve the basic skills of 750,000 by 2004.
The PAT Audit is a very detailed document that tracks the
decision and implementation progress on the 600 recommendations
made by the 18 policy action teams.
http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/
Local Strategic Partnerships (LSP) are intended to be a single
body that brings together all sectors so that different local
initiatives and services support each other and work together
for the benefit of the community. They are intended to operate
at a strategic level but remain close enough to their neighbourhood
that actions can be decided upon at a community level.
By April 2002 all the 88 Neighbourhood Renewal Fund areas
will have LSPs in place agreeing spending plans for their
local neighbourhood renewal strategy.
LSP are not compulsory beyond the Neighbourhood Renewal
Fund but local authorities must produce community strategies
to improve economic, social and environmental well being and
these should be prepared through LSPs.
Membership of an LSP should reflect these areas: jobs, crime,
health, education, and housing and should include the public,
private voluntary and community sectors and member are expected
to be in positions to change the agenda of their sector in
response to the partnership's goals. The Government expects
many LSPs to be built on existing successful partnerships.
For more information visit www.odpm.gov.uk
and read Local Strategic Partnerships - Government Guidance.
(DETR update, June 2001)
The Skills and Knowledge programme, the final part of the
Government’s neighbourhood renewal programme, is a £21.6
million scheme to pay for training in the most run-down wards
in the 88 areas identified as being eligible for the biggest
share of dedicated regeneration funding.
The skills programme is the seventh in a series of regeneration
schemes grouped under the National Strategy for Neighbourhood
Renewal that together commit the Government to spending more
than £3 billion in the next ten years. Broadly the strategy
replaces the Government’s Single Regeneration Budget
programme, under which billions of pounds was spent
in deprived areas on the basis of competing bids from local
authorities.
Ministers claim that the new scheme, which largely abandons
the concept of bidding for funds, will provide a long-term
focus that was missing under the SRB, together with a way
of concentrating spending from mainstream programmes in areas
that need the most cash.
Mainstream spending programmes are being “bent”
towards deprived areas in a number of innovative ways. At
the top level, departmental public service agreements –
which set spending priorities and output targets – are
being drawn up with regeneration as a priority. For example,
the Department for Education and Skills has set a target of
ensuring that 62% of GCSE candidates achieve at least five
passes at grades A-C – which means focusing resources
on 481 specific schools. Regeneration targets are also being
made a core requirement of the new system of local public
service agreements, which by December 2001 had been signed
by 24 county and unitary councils and are to be negotiated
with 100 more.
All councils are asked to set up local strategic partnerships
to bring together local authorities and institutions such
as health and police authorities, chambers of commerce and
regional development agencies, which draw up regional economic
strategies.
All this is overseen by a cabinet committee on domestic
affairs and social exclusion, chaired by John Prescott, the
deputy prime minister, and a separate implementation committee
of departmental permanent secretaries, chaired by Sir Andrew
Turnbull, the Treasury’s chief civil servant. “This
cross-cutting element at central government level is critical,”
says Lord Falconer, the regeneration minister. He says that
there are signs of improvements already in some of the New
Deal for Communities areas but the real benefits will be seen
in the next 10 or 20 years when the benefit of sustained investment
becomes apparent.
(Financial Times, 4 December 2001)
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