Getting our estates to work

All over Britain, people are being written off because of where they live. Their address stands in the way of getting a job; banks and shops are closing down; they can't get credit; they get a bad press. The prospects for their health and their children's chances of finishing their education are poor. The fact that many of these people live in social housing is now well acknowledged.

Over the years, a series of regeneration policies have tried to address the problems that come with living in the most marginalised areas of Britain. But despite the efforts of many who live and work in these areas, economic and other forces make it an uphill struggle. We now describe this as "social exclusion", recognising that, as the standard of living rises for many, the few are pushed ever further to the margins. Many would argue that the housing market has intensified this process. In 1998, government's Social Exclusion Unit published Bringing Britain Together and started a process to find some new answers to the problems of the most excluded estates. Some eighteen months later, armed with the results of the work of 18 policy action teams, it is about to put its National Strategy for Neighbourhood Renewal out for consultation.

One of the central ideas in Bringing Britain Together was "neighbourhood management". One of the policy action teams was given the task of proposing ways to put this into operation and will report any day now. The argument behind neighbourhood management is that special initiatives on their own are not enough. Mainstream services make up the bulk of spending in excluded areas and they have to be the engines of renewal. Neighbourhood management would do three things: it would decentralise as much decision-making as possible down to the neighbourhood level; it would "join up" local services and make sure they were part of an overall strategy; it would maximise community involvement in developing and implementing this strategy.

Area-based initiatives are not new in themselves, but the emphasis on joined-up mainstream services is new, and the signs are that government means to make sure this time that local communities are fully involved in planning and implementing neighbourhood management. There are few examples as yet of the comprehensive approach that government is proposing. But the Joseph Rowntree Foundation research that I have recently been involved in suggests that there is a growing body of experience to build on. Housing organisations have been major players. Local authority housing departments have been centrally involved in the growing number of area co-ordination initiatives around the country, with generalist area-based teams working alongside neighbourhood forums to deliver locally agreed plans. Registered social landlords have developed a wide range of "housing plus" initiatives, which are exploring ways of giving their tenants access to jobs and training. Tenant management organisations are providing a strong foundation for community-based initiatives, such as resident service organisations and community development trusts. Housing Action Trusts and regeneration partnerships are leaving behind them strong community organisations with assets of their own in the belief that this will make special initiatives sustainable in the long-term.

Will neighbourhood management work where the regeneration initiatives of the past have failed? There is certainly a full head of government steam behind it. But it will not be easy. Neighbourhood management will require agencies and communities at neighbourhood level to develop:

• a joint understanding of local needs and assets
  
• a joint action plan, based on commonly agreed priorities
  
• agreed mechanisms for pooling information, money, management and accountability
  
• ongoing monitoring and evaluation, based on joint benchmarks.

This means that effective ways have to be found to bring communities and service providers into dialogue. Much energy will inevitably be devoted to finding the right structures. But effective partnership structures are only part of the story. Indeed, too much concern with structures and procedures will deal a death blow to neighbourhood management. All the experience of the past suggests that two of the main barriers to progress have been the dead hand of central regulation and resistance from traditional public sector cultures and professions, with collaborative working stranded on the margins. Of course there are exceptions and the JRF report gives examples of some of the existing experience on which neighbourhood management can build. But if neighbourhood management is to work in all the neighbourhoods that need it, it will require public service and professional cultures which:

• spread rather than protect information;
  
• reward risk-taking and establish work across professional and departmental boundaries as the norm rather than the exception;
  
• thrive on difference and diversity;
  
• people who can work flexibly with change.

It is not just communities which need capacity building. New skills and approaches are needed in public services and professions as well - mediation, negotiation, listening, brokerage, conflict resolution. People need to be given support to work in new ways, not just thrown into the deep end. Working across boundaries needs increasing recognition in career terms and at a professional level and should be seen as essential to progression.

Community development strategies need to be in place at the outset to ensure that involvement can reach all parts of local communities. Otherwise community participation will rely on the few people who are known and have learnt how to operate in official arenas. These strategies will need to offer:

• a wide variety of ways to engage with local plans, services and activities;
  
• time to allow people to engage in ways which make sense to them and to get to grips with the range of community interests;
  
• quality public service jobs for local people and accreditation for their unpaid contribution to regeneration strategies - local people should be employed and suitably rewarded in housing plus and neighbourhood management initiatives, in carrying out research and development as well as in implementing plans and activities;
  
• finance to stimulate and underpin (but not to drive) joint working - adequate resources are essential to joined up action, but high profile sums of money announced without adequate groundwork can drive wedges between communities and between them and agencies;
  
• social investment to allow local communities to develop their own assets and organisational capacity for service provision and community enterprise;
  
• effective infrastructure at local and regional level to get people working effectively together:
  
• technical aid support for a community "infrastructure" that make sure that all community interests are taken into account and that formal mechanisms for involvement are fully accountable;
  
• opportunities to share experience across neighbourhoods, agencies and authorities.

It has been common, in talking about regeneration and community involvement, to contrast "top-down" with "bottom-up" approaches. But if new strategies for renewal are to work for everyone, talk of "top-down" and "bottom-up" needs to become obsolete. Effective neighbourhood renewal will need the energies and knowledge of communities, professionals, and elected representatives at local level if it is to work. It will need regional networks that can spread experience about what works and what doesn't. But it is also important that neighbourhood strategies are part of a wider picture. The work of renewal cannot all be done at local level. If it is to tie the energies of people living and working in excluded areas back into the mainstream economy, neighbourhood management will need to be integrated with regional and national economic development strategies. Otherwise social housing will continue to be the place where those energies are written off.