2nd opinion: Put up or shut up

Three years ago I was one of the chief cheerleaders when the government unveiled a national strategy for neighbourhood renewal.

For the past 20 years I've been an adviser on regeneration in councils and registered social landlords and I've been struck by the way some places get regenerated every decade. The strategy recognised that the way to stop this continual renewal is to get mainstream services right so we don't need special schemes time after time.

This strategy is of major importance to RSLs. Last year the National Housing Federation established In Business for Neighbourhoods. Hundreds of RSLs have signed up to neighbourhood management and development. But I recently spent a day in a unitary authority talking to RSLs and the council about neighbourhood initiatives and met senior RSL managers who did not know if their organisation had signed up. They had even less idea if it made a difference to what they were doing.

Mind you, many councils are no better. Large elements of the neighbourhood development fund have been frittered away on tacky projects that haven't proved sustainable but have proved to have no medium- or long-term significance.

So, what is to be done? First, the top people in government, councils and RSLs must ask themselves if they really mean it. Neighbourhood management involves:

• giving away power for day-to-day delivery to more appropriate neighbourhood bodies
  
• scrapping silo-based performance indicators in favour of ones that are geographically and topically relevant
  
• finding a new breed of social entrepreneur prepared to be innovative in questions of service delivery and funding
  
• involving local people in strategic decision-making about their areas rather than in tokenistic consultation
  
• ending artificial demarcation lines based on service delivery organisation in favour of the joining up of services at the point of delivery for stressed individuals or stressed neighbourhoods.

These things are not on most people's agendas at the moment.

If neighbourhood management is to work it must become the way of doing things and not a way of mopping up cash, keeping people happy or buying off vociferous community groups. This is important to RSLs and council housing managers for three reasons:

• RSLs and councils are the only relevant organisations that invest in deprived areas for the long term and will be here in 25 years' time
  
• housing managers in both the RSL and council sectors are the best people to undertake neighbourhood management because they have the most experience in "patch working". Instead of their role as supplicants to other public agencies on behalf of residents – often, these days, not just their own tenants – they could take effective control of local activities far more cheaply and quickly than happens now
  
• investment in non-housing activities might be the only way to safeguard investment in housing. Successful neighbourhoods are ones in which churning, void periods and management costs are all reduced.

So my entreaty to RSLs, to councils and to the government is put up or shut up. Either restructure the way you do business and mainstream neighbourhood activity or continue to provide handouts or diversionary activity in ways that don't help your core business or the worn-out communities you're supposed to serve.