Instead of regeneration flowing down through a series of complex quangos and layers of impenetrable bureaucracy, we will encourage power to be exercised at the very lowest levels of local government, by which I mean parish, ward, but also street level, in order to force faster change directed by the very people it will most affect
find ways to empower local residents to exercise more direct and effective control over the decision-making process that builds local communities
advocating the creation of partnerships with residential communities to create effective and lasting regeneration of disadvantaged housing estates – with the outcomes stretching far beyond each front door
History has taught us that well meaning top down solutions often take too long to deliver. And we don’t believe that residents who are exasperated by the place they live in can wait any longer – so we’ll provide the power and resources to effect urgent change directly to residents and communities to exercise locally – even at street level
Not an excerpt from a revised IWCA (or BNP) manifesto, but in fact the new Tory policy for community led/centered regeneration
Is this just harmless pre-election talk to differentiate from Labour’s top down/target driven approach and mop up some support from those attracted by the BNP’s community focussed approach, or something a bit more sinister/coded/dog whistle type stuff to prepare the ground for the type of ‘choice’ centred easycouncil approach that has been aired in recent weeks?
there´s no detail there, but usually when the big parties start putting on their libertarian hats and advocating change from below, it means talking about ´empowering communities´, then turning over a large proportion of municipal government to direction from private organisations (á la schools and hospitals under PFI)
With 15% or so coming off the public purse in the 2011 spending review all this is is a framework of local accountability over underfunded public services who will be pushed form pillar to post by who shouts the loudest and is best politically organised. Levels of public participation vary but generally they are higher in the better off areas.
How would prioritsing the most deprived areass or inequalties be addressed in a one size fits all approach?
I’m sure I’ve read this all before. It’s New Deal for Communities, Neighbourhood Renewal, SRB all over again.
The main purpose of all this crap is that it’s cheap.
In Bristol, for instance, what we really need from government is about £1bn urgently invested in transport and probably the same in housing. So a few million thrown at regeneration to give people the impression that the government’s “doing something” and they’re involved in it is a bargain.
Of course it’ll come to nothing. Whether you can choose to spend a few hundred grand on a drugs drop-in centre, a domestic abuse hotline or youth football is neither here nor there if at the end of it all the problem is housing and transport.
I quite agree Bristol blogger, if either this govt or any other were serious about tackling the inequalties in many working class areas concerning employment/health/educational attainment/ crime /housing/transport etc they would have to committ billions or at least a significant percentage of what they gave to the banks and building societies. Even locally councils would have to reduce services and investment in the more affluent ares and shift resources into the areas that needed it.
Most regeneration has been based on the illusion that something fundemental will happen by a cosmetic make over and some focus groups building up a feel good factor. The IWCA slogan of working class rule in working class areas might be a bit strak but shifting resources into working class areas at the expense of the better off is exactly what is required.