We now know where the neighbourhood renewal fund millions will be spent. Will cash make a difference?
Government announcements on the £800m Neighbourhood Renewal Fund and Local Strategic Partnerships are good news for those working in deprived neighbourhoods. But they are just two of what will be many announcements between now and December on the neighbourhood renewal and broader regeneration agenda.

The National Strategy Action Plan is due to be published sometime next month, as are the Urban and Rural White Papers. These are the three big announcements awaited, but there are a host of other initiatives that are being rolled out and trumpeted in the process. Much of this is the follow-through from the Chancellor's Spending Review 2000 in July. What we're witnessing now is a sustained domestic policy push by the government to win back some hearts and minds that they seemed to have lost recently.

But what are we to make of the Neighbourhood Renewal Fund and Local Strategic Partnerships? They are both integral to the government's Neighbourhood Renewal Strategy - so how they fit with the National Strategy Action Plan we will have to wait a little longer to see. But they warrant attention in their own right. And whilst both announcements were about the launch of consultation papers on how the NRF and LSP will work, we can expect the final guidance documents to vary little from what's on the table now.

The NRF represents a cash injection of £800m over three financial years, kicking off in April 2001 and ending in March 2004. Eighty eight local authority districts are to benefit from allocations which vary according to their score on the new Indices of Deprivation 2000 (ID2000).

It was widely predicted that the ID2000 (not to be confused with what it replaced - the 1998 Index of Local Deprivation) would alter how regions would fare when there was a government handout of cash. Some of the usual suspects in London - Tower Hamlets £21m, Hackney £23.5m, Newham £26.7m and Southwark £15.8m - have been identified for significant allocations. But other usual suspects - Lambeth £4.8m, Lewisham £4.9m - haven't done as well. Interestingly, more NRF money has been allocated to districts in the North West than to London. This must be a first in recent times, but doubtless the burghers of Liverpool and Manchester - allocated £40m each - will not be too displeased. Across the Pennines, Sheffield £19.1m might be a bit surprised that Bradford £19.6m managed to attract marginally more resources.

But how is the money to be spent, and how can it spent quickly, on the five Public Service Agreement (PSA) targets identified in the Spending Review 2000. The Treasury's thinking was simple. Allocate money where its needed, but expect results in return -set out in the PSAs. Furthermore, to ensure that money allocated to alleviate local deprivation, make sure the people who were supposed to benefit had a say.

This is where the LSPs fit in. This proposal found its way into the National Strategy framework document published back in April 2000. The idea is to ensure people in the locality are on board with the schemes being proposed.

How this pans out in practice remains to be seen, but the guidance published by the DETR expects existing partnerships to be built on-as opposed to new ones being established. Government Offices will have a policing role to ensure that LSPs are sufficiently inclusive of non-local authority views. Every LSP should include representatives from the public, private, voluntary and community sectors.

While the idea sounds fine in principle, how it pans out is anybody's guess. Many local authority members and officers will question why they have to justify (more than they do already) management and investment decisions for areas that they have responsibilities for. Equally, representatives from outside the town hall will not always be au fait with a process and culture that has its own momentum. And it will be local authorities that will get the blame if the money isn't spent and spent well delivering the PSAs. Some will have got to get shot of £5m-plus in the first year that starts in less than six months. Then there's the small matter of funding neighbourhood renewal after 2004:what kind of commitment can be expected from government then?

In essence, the challenge is to make a difference in a way that has rarely been achieved before. Gordon Brown and John Prescott announced the NRF and LSP consultation papers at Southwark's Peckham Partnerships scheme, which covers approximately two local authority wards. More than £64m of SRB1 money has gone into scheme costing a total of £280m over seven years. This kind of money makes the difference that gets ministers out of their offices. Will the Neighbourhood Renewal Fund and their guiding Local Strategic Partnerships make the same difference?

www.local-regions.detr.gov.uk/consult/nrfcon/01.htm