if the wearer of the shoe is best placed to say where it pinches, then local development trusts are the ideal regeneration vehicle for local communities.
Development trusts are the epitome of the kind of decentralised, bottom-up, social entrepreneurial, public–private approach to regeneration that John Prescott and Tony Blair called for at the sustainable communities summit. They are formed by local people, led by the community and work closely with councils and the private sector. The aim is to provide a way for local people to solve their own problems, for example by creating job opportunities or hiring street wardens. But of course money is at the root of the problem – and the heart of the solution.
Some trusts are tiny outfits run by a handful of volunteers, others are big companies. But what all have in common is their origin: in every case, local residents created them to provide a solution to a local problem that was not being adequately addressed by either the public or voluntary sector. By growing wealth in their communities, development trusts themselves have built up a combined turnover in excess of £100m.
There are 300 trusts in the country. Their umbrella organisation, the Development Trusts Association (DTA), has set each of these a target: it wants them to build up an asset base of £1m. The strategic objective is to give the trusts enough resources to fund long-term, sustainable benefits in the communities that they serve.
The DTA does not want the trusts to raise this money on their own. It is trying to persuade central and local government to create a fund dedicated to community groups. It has encouraged a growing number of councils to transfer assets to community control, a policy that is helping to swell the number and influence of trusts.
The specifications and goals of each trust depend on local conditions. For example, the Market Rasen Development Trust in Lincolnshire needed to find a way to encourage more tourists to visit the market town. Manor & Castle Development Trust (MCDT) in Sheffield has been improving the housing stock and creating job opportunities in rundown estates close to the city centre.
Steve Wyler, the director of the DTA, says the growth in the number of trusts in recent years – they have more than doubled since 1998 – is testimony to the need for organisations that can deliver community enterprise. He says: “We bring a unique approach. We go beyond the provision of welfare services by setting up enterprises that encourage self-help and reduce people’s dependency on public services. And, crucially, we give local residents the opportunity to steer the transformation of their community themselves.”
Lincolnshire: Fighting tooth and nail
Market Rasen Development Trust started with a bang. It was set up in 1999 when local residents realised that the Lincolnshire market town might miss out on the government’s Single Regeneration Budget Challenge Fund. Carol Skye, chair of the trust, says a small group of volunteers got together to “fight tooth and nail” to ensure that the SRB round didn’t pass by the town’s 4000 residents.
After Lincolnshire council and local businesses helped the trust to secure £4.4m to regenerate the market town and its rural environs, the trust set out to develop the town’s tourism market. One early move was to expand Market Rasen’s annual Gardener’s Fair, traditionally run by the town council. As Skye explains: “We increased the private sector’s involvement, for example by striking a deal with the local Land Rover dealership to provide a park and ride service. We saw the fair as a good opportunity to raise the town’s profile.”
The trust has also devised Under Wheels to Work, a scheme that allows 10 young adults to hire mopeds for £5 a week so that they can travel to jobs outside their own village. The trust is now refurbishing its building, Rasen Hall, and will let some of the space, mainly to voluntary sector organisations such as a women’s support group. In turn, this will provide the trust with an income to fund more services, such as seed capital for business start-ups.
Sheffield: The philosophy of glue
Mike Patterson, regeneration manager at Manor and Castle Development Trust (MCDT), says the best way to think of the trust’s work is to compare it to glue. “A lot of what we do involves brokering deals between the private and public sectors – we bring the two together and fill in any gaps,” he says.
MCDT has been brokering deals for eight years. It started life in 1997, under the guise of a local strategic partnership, to oversee the regeneration of the Manor and Castle area of Sheffield and the spending of the government’s Single Regeneration Budget Challenge Fund, worth £16.6m. A limited company, it has a board of directors which includes four private sector representatives, including housebuilder Bellway Homes and retailer Dixons, and four public sector and four local community representatives, including Sheffield council and local residents. Before the trust can take any action, all members of the board have to consent.
With 80 staff and a turnover exceeding £12m, MCDT is England’s largest development trust and has a long list of achievements. It has built 200 homes in the area and is creating 330 more. It also set up Rebuild, a community-owned building contractor that takes on unemployed local people as apprentices and has won contracts to build homes and community buildings. It has also established a street warden scheme in response to local residents’ fear of crime. In addition, the trust converted an old public baths house into a youth centre and is building a medical centre to replace an overcrowded GP practice.
Patterson says all this has been achieved thanks to the trust’s glue philosophy. “For example, there was a lot of discussion about who would foot the cost of some infrastructure work for one of our housing schemes,” he says. “The council insisted that the sewers, electrics and waterworks should be installed prior to Bellway building the scheme. Bellway said it was too risky to spend so much money upfront in case the development needed to be downsized. So we stepped in and said we’d underwrite the cost of the infrastructure works. We’re willing to take the risk. So the development went ahead, we were able to recoup our costs and the local residents got their new homes.”
Source
RegenerateLive
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