Grass roots and pathfinders lead to sustainable communities

Briefly I pictured myself, machete in hand, hacking my way through some impenetrable jungle. Or, even better, crouched on all fours and sniffing the earth intently, before jumping up triumphantly and exclaiming: “John Prescott’s review of public financing of housing went thataway!”

Back in reality, a better reason for agreeing was that I had served on a policy action team for the ODPM’s Social Exclusion Unit from which these sorts of ideas had emerged, and it felt like time to put my money where my mouth is. But the best reason is that I passionately believe neighbourhood management to be an essential piece of the sustainability toolkit.

For too long regeneration policies have been led by what I call “funny money”. This is when governments identify a hole in the social fabric and create a special pot of funding to try to plug it. For a year or two everyone gets quite excited. The money comes, the money goes, and very little remains to show for it afterwards.

The results are poor and short lived because they try to bypass the mainstream programmes that serve local communities: education; health; housing; police etc rather than getting the providers to take responsibility for the gaps they leave.

Neighbourhood management is light and quick moving; it doesn’t have its own territory to defend. It helps existing stakeholders and service providers to think about the sum of what they bring to a community rather than just their individual parts. Its strongest achievement is in bending mainstream provision to meet local needs. Successes are far more likely to be sustainable when they are part of the mainstream rather than dependent on time-limited funding.

Crucial to neighbourhood management is that priorities are set by what local residents identify as their concerns and interests, instead of service providers’ corporate plans. I’m excited that resident surveys for my pathfinder area have shown much greater interest in tackling the “nothing for teenagers to do” issue by the carrot of improving local facilities and services instead of the antisocial behaviour order stick.

I’m excited that residents in my pathfinder area want to tackle the ‘nothing for teenagers to do’ issue by the carrot of improving local facilities and services, not the ASBO stick

I’m confident it can work because it’s not that far from some of the things I have done myself as a vicar. In the late 1980s I was part of a small group that brought together a local authority, a landlord and training provider to create a self-build scheme for young adults. With another group we persuaded council departments to bend procedures and start a rent guarantee scheme. In fact my only fear if neighbourhood management takes off is that I might lose one or two of my clergy to it.

For housing associations it fits neatly into the In Business for Neighbourhoods picture. Our buildings, resources and staff make us major players in local communities. And we don’t have to be based in one of the relatively few areas that are part of a pathfinder to make the ideas work. What we need is to give frontline staff permission (and time) to act a little outside the box. Then we can begin to make a difference for our tenants and for the neighbourhoods where we work; places whose sustainability is necessary for our own.

In the last fortnight I have visited two West Midlands towns. In the first I was shown a social landlord’s community facility. Thanks to the vision of the warden in actively promoting it, it has become a centre of activity for residents and the wider public. It was a good place to be. A few days later I saw a similar building, less than 10 years old, struggling because not enough groups use it. I’m sure its problem is chiefly the absence of anyone with the combination of time, energy and commitment to help it find its niche.

There certainly isn’t any lack of community need; just an absence of anyone taking responsibility for addressing it.