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The community decides? Continuity and change in the involvement of communities in regeneration

Mike Smith and Dr.Mike Beazley

School of Public Policy
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
ENGLAND
0121 414 4991
M.M.Smith.1@bham.ac.uk

Paper presented at the conference Area-based initiatives in contemporaty urban policy, Danish Building and Urban Research and European Urban Research Association, Copenhagen 17-19 May 2001

Introduction

Policy making in association with communities has a wide currency within contemporary public policy. The current New Labour Administration has community at the heart of its rhetoric in a range of policy areas. In the field of urban policy and regeneration this is especially apparent: both the Department for the Environment, Transport and the Regions and the Social Exclusion Unit have placed the importance of community involvement and community–led partnerships as central to sustainable policy interventions (Social Exclusion Unit 2000).

The potential for involving residents in making decisions about urban regeneration has been enhanced as a result of partnership working. City Challenge, Single Regeneration Budget and now the New Deal for Communities initiatives all stress the involvement of communities as a necessary factor in the process of delivering regeneration. But what is the reality behind the rhetoric of involvement? Does greater community involvement afford the scope for an impact on strategic or local decision making, or is partnership working merely a pragmatic response by local policy makers to budgetary constraint? This question lies at the heart of what this paper sets out to address.

To do this the paper develops a framework for considering the issue of community involvement in regeneration partnerships by drawing together three debates. It begins by exploring the partnership context through which community involvement is mediated and managed. It will look at what partnerships are and what they set out to achieve. The explanations of community involvement to be found in urban regime theory are considered next as a means of thinking about the issue of governance and coalition building. Finally, the issue of participation is explored with actual regeneration programmes in order to consider the quality and level of community involvement.

The idea within the paper is that community involvement in partnerships can be better understood by a consideration of aspects of power and influence, of how local people participate, and how the partnership operates. In order to do this; the theoretical discourse outlined in the first part of the chapter is used to analyse a series of regeneration vehicles.

Background

Partnerships are clearly important in current urban policy terms. They are promoted as the solution to difficult problems and they have the potential to: enable local needs to be identified and addressed (Lowndes, et al, 1996;Hastings and McArthur, 1995); give local people a voice (Stewart and Taylor, 1995); and empower local communities leading to greater social justice (Himmelman, 1996). The important question is whether they achieve this potential.

Partnership has been the primary policy instrument for delivering urban policy in at least the last three decades (Bailey, 1995). The partnership approaches within the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, however, had very different and distinct implications for community involvement. The 1970s concept of partnership was characterised by a relationship between different levels of government – central and local. The arrival of the Conservative government in 1979 saw the concept change to one characterised by a relationship between central government and the private sector. Local government was no longer seen by central government a legitimate player in urban regeneration activity. The private sector was seen as the saviour to all our inner city problems and the task was to create regeneration mechanisms to enable it to work freely and without interference from any bureaucratic red tape – such as Enterprise Zones and Urban Development Corporations (UDCs). The 1990s saw the concept change again into one that was now characterised by the "all singing, all dancing" multi-sector partnerships that had everybody on board (Bailey, 1995). The rise of the multi-sector partnership grew out of a realisation that the property-market, business-driven approaches of the 1980s characterised by the UDCs was an inadequate vehicle for co-ordinating the renewal of local communities.

Moreover, this new concept of partnership was recognition of the important role local authorities play in regeneration partnerships. The local authorities were brought back into the urban policy equation to co-ordinate and, in most cases, to act as lead agents:

"No other organisation exists at a local level with the potential to broker and shape the range of competing interests required to produce and deliver a coherent and comprehensive plan for regenerating an area" (DeGroot, 1991,p.205).

Under the City Challenge initiative the ‘trickle-down’, ‘privatism’ answer to area-based problems of the 1980s was moderated by a more inclusive approach where local groups, in partnership with other sectors and led by the local authority, were incorporated into a five-year area plan. Funding for the programme was made available by top-slicing resources from existing Department of the Environment (DoE) programmes (Beecham, 1995,p.14; Parkinson, 1995,p.5). This ‘pool’ of money was to competed for by presenting bids which met criteria laid down by the DoE; primarily:

"Local Authorities were given the lead in preparing bids and action programmes, on condition that they brought in partners from the private and voluntary sectors and from the local community" (Davoudi and Healey, 1995,p.80).

Over two rounds of City Challenge all urban programme authorities were invited to bid for the resources. There was to be an emphasis on "negotiation between partners" (Parkinson, 1995,p.5); an inclusive approach rather than the top-down exclusivity of the 1980s. But there was also concern about the negative impacts of ‘forcing’ local authorities into a competition for scarce, yet much needed resources and on what basis the winning bids were decided (Beazley, 1996). Consequently, the two key principles that underpinned City Challenge were ‘partnership’ and ‘competition’, which were carried through into the programme that replaced it.

The Single Regeneration Budget (SRB) was established by the UK government in 1994. This drew together 20 funding programmes from five government departments into one integrated budget and extended the principles of competitive bidding for urban funding through partnership established under City Challenge (Tilson et al.,1997,p.1). The concept of the multi-sector partnership has thus been consolidated with the role and involvement of community partners brought to the fore (Marsh and Murie, 1997,pp.2-3).

A major review of SRB identified four main types of partnership that reflected the different levels of involvement of their members (Figure 1.).

Figure 1: A Typology of SRB Partnerships

Shell	Nominal involvement of partners The leader is dominant and partners have little involvement at any stage of the process.
Consultative	Partnership remains strongly controlled by thec leader, but partners are consulted to some extent and allowed to make changes at the margin.
Participative	Partners have increased and often equal access to the decision-making framework and their views frequently shape policy.
Autonomous	The partnership develops an independent identity in which partners are fully integrated. All partners have equal access and mechanisms exist to ensure genuine and sustained involvement.

Hall et al. (1996,p.69)

Hall et al. finds very few examples of autonomous partnerships operating. Much more common are examples of partners being drawn into the process after the design of a proposal for funding has been established by the lead agency: "…setting the vision and strategic objectives before involving partners" (Hall et al., 1996,p.69). Clearly this exclusive type of partnership augurs poorly for community partners who seek ‘genuine partnership’ status.

The more recent New Deal for Communities (NDCs) programme is an attempt to tackle some of the most deprived neighbourhoods in the country. The intention is to focus resources on small deprived areas with full community involvement in the whole process in order to maximise the impact. Although the focus of the NDCs will vary according to the location there are four key themes which the programme will attempt to address:

– Tackling worklessness

– Improving health

– Tackling crime, and

– Raising educational achievement

The programme is intended to be delivered through local community-based partnerships that involve local people, community and voluntary organisations, public sector agencies, local authorities and the private sector. Community involvement is seen as being integral to the whole programme both in devising and implementing the projects and initiatives that are undertaken. The areas involved are small and vary between 1,000-4,000 households. Funding allocated to these partnerships will range from £20 - £50 million over a ten-year period.

The intention is that these local partnerships are robust and inclusive and all the partners must be willing to take responsibility for effectively challenging problems of social exclusion in order to make sustainable improvements to the local area. The intention is to provide mechanisms by which all the partners can work together in a collaborative fashion to provide what the government has termed "joined up solutions to joined up problems." Regeneration partnerships, then, represent the collective attempt to add value to, or derive some mutual benefit from, activities that individual actors or sectors would be unable to attempt alone (see Mackintosh, 1992).

Local Strategic Partnerships

The latest initiative to emerge from the government in terms of the co-ordination of regeneration is the consolidation and extension of the partnership concept. Local Strategic Partnerships (LSPs) are to be established (or existing arrangements drawn upon) in order to deliver on the government’s development of policy in two areas: neighbourhood renewal and modernising local government.

Not long after the election of the Labour government in 1997, the term social exclusion became used to describe the poverty experienced disproportionately by individual neighbourhoods and housing estates. A Social Exclusion Unit was established out of the Cabinet Office to explore the issue in its widest sense and ultimately to feed into a National Strategy for Neighbourhood Renewal that covered the "88 most deprived districts" (SEU, 2001). Policy Action Teams (PATs) were set in motion to analyse particular aspects of social exclusion and its potential remedies. PAT 17 was charged with the task of "joining it up locally". Out of the PAT 17 findings emerged the idea of the Local Strategic Partnership. These multi-organisational, collaborative partnerships would join things up by:

– preparing neighbourhood renewal strategies

– administering funding under a new Neighbourhood Renewal Fund

– having a role in a new contractual relationship between local and central government on the delivery of service standards

– acting to rationalise the complexity of existing partnership bodies

– locally administering the new Community Empowerment Fund designed to build community capacity and enhance participation in the partnership process.

The revised guidance on LSPs issued by the Department for the Environment Transport and the Regions in March 2001 has made explicit links between this agenda and that of parallel developments in the modernisation of local government and the new duty to prepare collaborative community strategies.

The National Strategy for Neighbourhood Renewal

The National Strategy for Neighbourhood Renewal framework was the culmination of three years work, co-ordinated by the Social Exclusion Unit and involving the 18 Policy Action Teams (PATS) referred to above. The task was to examine how to tackle poverty and exclusion in England’s most deprived neighbourhoods. The intention is to provide a co-ordinated framework based on lessons from best practice to arrest the wholesale decline of poor neighbourhoods. The approach is based on a simple contention that:

"Neighbourhood renewal will not work and will not be sustained, unless people living in the deprived areas get involved. They know their area and the local population best and, given the right help, are best placed to turn it around" (Social Exclusion Unit, 2000, 64).

Effective community involvement is therefore seen as key. The Strategy outlines some key ideas on how to facilitate such involvement:

– "developing the capacity of local organisations, including ethnic minority, voluntary and faith organisations;

– having targets for community spending built into regeneration programmes;

– piloting local training programmes in community leadership;

– providing start-up and loan funding for social entrepreneurs and encouraging support networks between them;

– encouraging volunteering, for example by extending the rule that people on Jobseeker’s Allowance should be made available to start work within 48 hours to being available within one week;

– making it easier for local organisations to get funding by rationalising funding sources; having common applications forms; having easy to access funding arrangements for very small grants; and piloting neighbourhood endowment funds; and

– having ‘benchmarks’ for public service delivery through community organisation; validation or accreditation programmes for organisations that work closely with local communities; and ensuring that new initiatives, like neighbourhood learning centres, neighbourhood management and neighbourhood warden schemes are community-led" (Social Exclusion Unit, 2000, 64).

This brief review of regeneration initiatives clearly demonstrates that community involvement is very much on the agenda. But how can we evaluate it? It is a notoriously difficult topic to evaluate. The next section is devoted to exploring some ideas that might contribute towards an analytical framework that we might apply to regeneration programmes to provide some assessment of how well community involvement works?

Some ideas for an analytical framework¹

1) This framework builds on and employs that developed in Smith and Beazley (2000)

What contribution can regime theory make?

Urban regime theory "…was developed to explicate the nature of local power structures and their importance for political decision making" DiGaetano (1997,p.846). The theory developed, originally, in the United States through longitudinal studies of decision-making hegemonies in cities, perhaps most notably those of Stone and Sanders (1987), Stone (1989) and Elkin (1987). The complex environment in which the governance of city space is conducted requires the building of a capacity to govern which will of necessity include a range of interests and actors. In other words, governing is complex and although some groups have more resources to draw on than others, the nature of public policy problems (e.g. regeneration, social exclusion, etc) requires a holistic approach to policy making.

In interpreting the use of political power, regimes are predicated upon collective social production - the power to get things done through negotiation. Regime theory provides an explanation of the coalition building, which is necessary to tackle difficult problems (Stoker,1995,p.59)

Central to regime theory is the ‘need for leadership and the capacity of certain interests in coalition to provide that leadership’. Power is reflected in the ability to assemble the capacity to achieve ‘attractive’ and ‘non-routine’ goals. This is regarded as the distinctive contribution of regime theory (Stone,1989; 1993; Stoker,1995).

At the heart of regime theory is the assertion that while constrained, governing coalitions carve out a capacity for effective action. It may be the case that private interests with greater access to resources have an advantage here, but Stone argues that ‘systemic’ advantage does not necessarily translate into effective regime formation (Stone,1989,p.xi). Indeed, the theory does not exclude the notion of community involvement as a partner in coalition building. There is a community involvement theme to be found in the regime typologies produced by different authors (see Stoker and Mossberger’s (1994) Symbolic regime and DeGaetano and Klemanski’s (1993) Social reform regimes for example). Stone’s (1993) typology contains many of the elements present and reflected in other work on regime theory. Stone presents four regime types: Maintenance regimes, interested in preserving the status quo; Development regimes, concentrating on promoting strategies of growth; Middle class progressive regimes, tailoring policy to favour certain groupings; and Lower class, opportunity expansion regimes, that seek to provide opportunities for the disadvantaged.

The community development perspective, however, while explicitly acknowledged by regime theorists, is less well developed than regimes based on growth and development. Stone himself points out (1993,p.20), the lower class opportunity expansion regime is "largely hypothetical". But while regime theory suggests it is more difficult to assemble these resources for community-led priorities (see Stone, 1993,p.23); the focus of regeneration funding in the UK, together with the mandating of community involvement by central government and other funding bodies, provides the potential for resources to be available to meet this agenda. These resources are vital to maintain a regime:

"In order for a regime to be viable, it must be able to mobilise resources commensurate with its main policy agenda" (Stone,1993,p.17).

The proposition here is that a community focus to regeneration goes beyond the accessibility of resources or the ability to ensure that ‘lower class opportunities’ are taken up by the ‘lower classes’ - as Stone (1993,p.22) implies. A community coalition would be explicitly grass roots generated, not a top-down imposition (albeit initiated and ‘enabled’ by top-down funding). Moreover, it would, in a normative sense, be based on the involvement of communities (however theoretical) in making strategic choices about regeneration within their localities. The argument is, therefore, that regime theory can only provide part of the context within which community involvement in regeneration takes place. For a community regime to have meaning, communities must be involved in a meaningful way and not just the passive recipients of benefits perceived elsewhere.

Regime theory then provides part of a framework in which to evaluate regeneration partnerships for effective community involvement. The focus on coalition-building and maintenance, the role of leadership and the consistency policy are useful indicators but we argue that this says little about the quality and level of involvement. The nature of community involvement is particularly important given the current emphasis on partnership working at both strategic and local levels. But to justify the existence of a community regime, some additional considerations of partnership process need to be considered.

The necessary addition of ideas about the quality and level of participation

Community as process rather than place, is explicit in Nicholson and Schreiner’s work (1973) who regard a sense of community as being derived from participation in the decision-making processes that affect that community:

"Community’ actually means that it is possible, as a member of a social group, to make decisions affecting the behaviour, life-style and three-dimensional expression of that group" (Nicholson and Schreiner, 1973,p.131).

By promoting participation, a community culture within civil society can be developed (Butcher et al., 1993,p.234), which helps foster three outcomes: a democratic dynamic; the capacity of communities for social action; and the promotion of social justice. It seems clear that community and participation are linked in such a way as to render ideas of community unsustainable without the processes of participation to reinforce and develop a collective sense of identity, interest and place.

The argument here, then, is that participation is good for individuals, and good for civic society. But also good for representative democracy. In opposition to the Shumpeterian view of participation as a hindrance to freely elected representatives (see Pateman,1970,pp.3-5; Lowndes,1996):

"…the more the public as citizens participate in discourse and deliberation the more informed will be the representative" (Prior et al.,1995,p.78).

Classifying participation

Variations in the quality and type of participation is exemplified by the classic framework of participation produced by Arnstein in the 1960s. This still provides a "helpful starting point" for the analysis of citizen participation in decision making (Burns et al.,1994,p.158). Arnstein’s Ladder describes a hierarchy of participation ranging from information giving through degrees of consultation to degrees of partnership and citizen control (the ability to shape ones community through participation as laid out by Nicholson and Schreiner above, lies very much towards the top of the ladder).

Himmelman (1996) considers the nature of participation in the specific context of collaborative arrangements. He classifies the majority of collaboratives as betterment processes with communities involved but not in control: "Community involvement is invited into a process designed and controlled by larger institutions" (Himmelman,1996,p.29 emphasis added). This is very much a top-down arrangement. He argues that empowerment, defined as: "the capacity to set priorities and control resources that are essential for increasing community self-determination" (ibid,p.30), or a bottom-up arrangement, is found less frequently. For Himmelman then, the quality and level of involvement lies not in the step-wise, incremental progression towards meaningful participation, but as a continuum from betterment to empowerment. The question for this paper is to consider where the involvement of communities is positioned between these two outcomes.

The partnership process is important too

In order to analyse how communities fare within different partnership arrangements, we need to establish a series of simple 'tests' of effective involvement.

The brief outline of regime theory stressed the importance of resources to building an effective coalition. One model of partnership outlined by Mackintosh (1992) is that of ‘budget enlargement. This model emphasises the pursuit of additional funding from the differing perspectives of partners. Financial constraints on the part of local authority partners and subsidy or risk reduction motivations from private sector partners come together in order to collectively increase budgets. It has already been shown that resources are required to enable community groups to play an active part in a regime. However,

"…[a] model of partnership which focuses on extracting added value in strictly financial terms is likely to play down and devalue the role which can be played by partners not in control of large budgets" (Hastings, 1996, p.262).

If the pursuit of resources places community groups at a disadvantage, one measure of effective community involvement might take into account the direct access to resources that those groups command.

The discussion of participation made reference to the differing degrees of involvement that participation can represent. Jacobs,1992, cites two forms of structure that partnerships may adopt in order to assess the impact on community involvement: exclusivist and pluralist. Involvement in exclusivist structures will be restricted to a local elite, whereas the pluralistic will be open to "every sectoral and political interest". The range of involvement that is manifest within just one initiative, that of SRB partnerships (see Hall, et al., 1996 above), supports the view that structure is an important factor in a consideration of community involvement.

The difficulties associated in attracting disadvantaged groups - tackling social exclusion - are often raised when community partnership structures are conceptualised. It is often the case that other considerations of openness - the use of language, the physical access afforded by particular locations and the timings of meetings - are designed to accommodate the statutory sector and not those groups whose involvement is sought.

As a simple measure of effectiveness we propose to look for two conditions in the examples that follow: access to resources that communities derive by involvement in a partnership; and the degree of access offered by the partnership - how open and accountable is it to the wider community? One other measure will be considered, that of mutual transformation. Partnership, Mackintosh (1992,p.216) notes, becomes a "mutual struggle for transformation".

"The private sector is seeking to bring private sector objectives into the public sector, to shake it up, get it to seek more market-oriented aims, to work more efficiently in its terms. The public justification offered is that this will be in the long-term public interest. The public sector, conversely, is trying to push the private sector towards more ‘social’ and longer term aims, justifying this in precisely the same terms."

Here the goals and objectives are being fought over with each partner trying to orientate the others to their way of thinking. Transformation is then "…a process whereby partners seek to change or challenge the aims and operating cultures of other partners" (Hastings,1996,p.262).

Hastings develops an alternative transformation, mutual transformation, characterised by a "desire to learn as well as to teach". In this type of partnership, the differences between the partners are reduced by a mutual understanding or empathy, which addresses (to some extent) the inevitability of unequal power distributions amongst partners. It is not suggested by Hastings that mutual transformation is easy to achieve. On the contrary, she cites one sided transformation as an objective anticipated by government (p.264). And evidence from the community partnerships shows that:

"…whilst all private sector representatives volunteered the view that they found contact with representatives of the community partner challenging and on occasion edifying, none suggested that they felt the private sector should adjust its practices as a result of working with the statutory agencies" (Hastings,1996,p.264)

Nevertheless, other experience points to a degree of mutual transformation operating and contributing to the strength of the partnership:

Partners have developed stronger relationships on a personal level, and have a greater understanding of each other’s approaches and the constraints under which they operate (Hutchinson and Foley,1994,p.11).

Equally, there is evidence that communities have gained access to key decision makers in the form of senior officers from various agencies which provides a direct route to spheres of influence not previously available.

If we extract the key elements out of this theoretical discussion we can put together a framework that can be used to analyse the effectiveness of community involvement in regeneration programmes. The discussion highlights three important characteristics or principles of effective community involvement. These are:

1. Access to resources
2. Openness and accountability
3. Mutual transformation

Therefore, if community involvement is to be effective then the process must be adequately resourced, the decision-making process must be open and accountable and there must be evidence of mutual transformation (i.e. a sympathetic partnership process). This framework will now be used to analyse community involvement in regeneration over the last twenty years.

Community and regeneration: changing patterns and structures

A brief word about the 1980s: market-led approaches and communities

Throughout the 1980s, as noted earlier, the market, especially the property market, was seen as the route to successful regeneration. The participation model proved unattractive to the new Conservative administration and a market-led, 'bureaucracy-free zone' was preferred in general accord with the 'rolling back the frontiers of the [local] state' agenda. The result was "…the imposition of a different vision, one based on replacing rather than reflecting the locality…" (Brownill,1990,p.172 emphasis added).

UDCs were deployed by successive Conservative administrations to tackle the physical problems of the inner urban areas. The UDCs were introduced in the 1980 Local Government, Planning and Land Act and the first two UDCs were established in 1981, the London Docklands Development Corporation (LDDC) and the Merseyside Development Corporation (MDC) in Liverpool. The solution was no longer thought to be a matter of partnership with the local state. On the contrary, as noted earlier, by the 1980s the public sector was seen not as the solution, but rather as part of the problem (Parkinson and Evans, 1990, p.65). As Lawless remarks (with a hint of irony) "The 1980s proved a difficult decade for local government" (Lawless, 1991, p.25). UDCs added to this difficulty by eroding local discretion over local regeneration; they were seen as ways of countering bureaucratic delay and creating a stable environment for private capital to invest in inner areas:

The UDCs were imposed in an attempt to create the conditions in which the market could operate more effectively; by substituting (in theory) private for public investment, they replaced locally determined priorities with those of the centre. These powerful, undemocratic, 'enabling' QUANGOs were to clear away the obstacles to progress, unleashing the energies of private developers (Robinson et al, 1994, p.326). This writ was to focus explicitly on the workings of the property market. Physical regeneration, often including large 'prestige projects', was to be used to improve the physical infrastructure and 'gentrify' the image of declining areas. Eisenschitz and Gough record the similarity of these policies with flagship projects in the US which, in their view:

"…have had no impact on the economy of the surrounding inner city…"(Eisenschitz and Gough,1993,p.69).

It should be stated that there was an explicit undertaking to include local consultation in the work of the UDCs. This was to be achieved through:

"Liaison arrangements, where possible with local authorities, business and community leaders" (CLES, 1989, p.15).

However, as the Audit Commission note these liaisons have been problematic:

"UDCs are not accountable locally and have had among their members many people with limited experience of, or connection with, the area concerned" (Audit Commission, 1989, p.27).

This diminution of the role of the locally elected state in favour of market mechanisms and appointees to rectify local failure, together with a redistribution of public money in favour of the latter (Lawless, 1991, p.25), was not conducive to a consensus surrounding urban renewal.

Planning, in Hall's words (1987, p.303), should be a "resource for democratic and informed decision-making". The exclusion of local government and public consultation from the decision-making processes within the early UDC model, raises the question of the legitimacy of using public money to generate private profit. After several years of operation, the need for community involvement was recognised by the UDCs (CLES, 1992;Lawless, 1989;Parkinson and Evans, 1990). Nevertheless, as CLES note in their 1992 review of urban policy:

"…there is still a conflict between the obligation to consult and the lack of public accountability inherent in the UDCs" (CLES,1992,p.27).

This lack of consultation is consistent with the ideology of seeing local (Labour) government as a barrier to growth (Parkinson and Evans, 1990). As such the decisions of the UDC have been described as 'corporatist', made in secret among a select elite of mainly property developers, financiers and board members drawn largely from the private sector (Brindley et al, 1989, p.116; Parkinson and Evans, 1990, p.77). In terms of effectiveness, this form of intervention ignores the interests of local people:

"…private sector substitute investment is unlikely to meet [ ] the needs of the poor and inner city residents" (Stoker,1991,p.228).

In a similar vein the Audit Commission express doubts as to the compatibility between property-led regeneration and community interests:

"…there are doubts about the long-term viability of some development and about the extent to which it will benefit the local community "(Audit Commission,1989,p.27).

This approach to regeneration scores badly on all the measures. Community involvement was never seen as a priority and consequently was not properly resourced. The second and third generation UDCs that were introduced in 1997/8 did attempt to involve the community more fully than their predecessors but the overall budget for community consultation was extremely low in relation to total expenditure.

In relation to openness and accountability there was very little particularly in the first generation UDCs. The decision-making processes were not open to the public, and much of the decisions were taken behind closed doors. There was little accountability as they UDC Boards were appointed and not elected. There was very little redress for residents living in UDC areas, which might have opposed or be negatively impacted by the activities of the UDC in question.

In terms of mutual transformation again there was little positive evidence to suggest that this had taken place. The UDC Boards operated in a single-minded fashion to bring in inward investment to facilitate the physical transformation of the area. There was little to suggest that they would be swayed far from this prime task. Relationships with local authorities would often be strained, particularly at a member level, although there is some evidence to suggest that as officer level there was often a high degree of co-operation and collaboration. Certainly it can be stated with some confidence that there was little community influence over the activities of the UDCs.

A City Challenge Partnership

In response to some of these concerns and others a shift in regeneration policy towards local area-based multi-sectoral partnerships was introduced. Michael Heseltine, Secretary of State for the Environment, initiated the City Challenge programme in 1991. The local authorities were vested with a civic leadership role (Bailey, 1995, p.65) which marked this re-think on the part of central government in how regeneration was to be delivered. The Challenge programme was predicated on ideas of collaboration and co-ordination and, most importantly, competition. Partnership bodies in selected areas were invited to bid for funds that would lever in private investment, but would address both physical and social aspects of regeneration.

Our mini case study was a successful Round 2 bid and begun on 1 April 1993. It was wound up on 31 March 1998. The area was chosen because it exhibits high levels of deprivation. In common with other City Challenge programmes, the area was allocated £37.5 million of public sector resources to use to lever in other public sector and private sector funds.

At a national level, City Challenge was seen as a means of involving communities in regeneration programmes and making those programmes accountable to the communities they sought to benefit. The property-led initiatives of the 1980s were rightly criticised for their physical emphasis and for excluding input from local communities. City Challenge was seen as a way of redressing the balance and to increase input from the local community and indeed local businesses.

The administrative arrangements involved the setting up the Challenge Partnership that would be run by a Board of Directors. The Board was set up with 17 members:

– Private sector 4

– Community 4

– Public sector agencies 4

– Local authority 4

– City Challenge Chief Executive 1

The programme was to be implemented by groups organised around strategic objectives identified in the Action Plan. Each group had a group leader, some of who were Board Members, and the membership of the groups was determined by the implementation needs of the programme.

A Co-ordinating Group of Implementation Group leaders was set up under the Chair of the City Challenge Chief Executive. Membership was restricted to maximum of eight. Its role was to:

– receive progress reports.

– approve projects up to £500,000.

– oversee linkage between strategic objectives.

– oversee communication between implementation groups and the community.

– consider any variation needed between strategic objectives.

Community Fora were set up to represent the communities within the City Challenge area. Each Community Forum had a Chair and a representative on each of the Implementation Groups. The role of each community fora was to:

– monitor programme implementation on a local area basis.

– monitor potential impact of other activity on the area.

– provide representatives to other decision-making parts of the structure.

– receive and comment on Board papers, the Action Plan, annual implementation plans etc.

– receive and comment on project applications.

There were a number of local interest groups already active in the area. The area had also been the location of a Council-sponsored community development project that had placed three community development staff in the area prior to the arrival of City Challenge that had been successful in generating community activity. The well-established Action Group was given the responsibility to manage the block community funds that issued grants to local groups. It reconstituted itself to take on this role to include representatives from each of the community fora.

The partnership established a Youth Forum early on as part of the programme to address the concern that young people were generally underrepresented in the existing local organisations. Originally 19 young people were elected to the Forum by local youth clubs, schools and other organisations that young people attended. It made an important contribution to the establishment of many youth projects, but also organised events such as discos and an annual festival. The Forum is represented on the Partnership Board.

There was then a fairly sophisticated community involvement structure set up to around the Challenge programme. The key issue is how well the structure worked and whether it did in fact facilitate effective community involvement.

Research findings indicate that there was a feeling that the position of the community had been enhanced as a result of participation in the Partnership. Clearly, the Challenge initiative was responsible for community development activity in the area and established structures within the community to enable people to get involved, for example, the community fora and the Youth Forum. Access to resources for community groups was available through the additional resources City Challenge brought into the area but also through establishing block community funds which amounted to some £150,000 per year.

Participation in the process was seen positively in terms of being legitimate, open and accountable. This reflected well on the establishment of the community infrastructure around the fora and groups such as the Youth Forum, which required the identification and election of representatives. Certainly members of the community served on the Board and on the various groups operating within the partnership but it was acknowledged that the process of involving people was not easy. The issue of representativeness is always problematic - are the community representatives fully representative of those whom they are supposed to represent? A further issue was that generally the local people were not natural joiners of groups or institutions and were a little reticent to get fully involved. The consequence was that the representatives in the process tended to be the same few faces and that the numbers of local people actively engaged in the partnership was quite small. One community organisation commented:

"The partnership structure should be reviewed during the period [of operation]. A more democratic method should be adopted to ensure a better balance of views and ideas"

In terms of mutual learning, an understanding between partners seems to have developed over the lifetime of the partnership. Some of this effectiveness in operation between partners, particularly the community's role, was invested in prior to the inception of the partnership. However, problems remain and this may reflect some concern about the nature of partnership working around the City Challenge initiative. For example, some of the partners were clearly in a greater position to influence the outcomes of partnership working than others. The local authority and other public agencies are generally much more powerful than the community as is the private sector. Clearly, partnership working does require a change in attitudes and behaviour of the major players and this is a slow process. There is little question that the partnership working was better at the end of the initiative than at the start.

Building a coalition in this case was helped by two key factors: the investment of time and effort in strengthening a community infrastructure; and the availability of dedicated resources. To describe this partnership in terms of a regime however, would clearly be premature. This model of regeneration has nevertheless been influential and as later cases show has been extended both in time scale and scope.

Single Regeneration Budget (SRB)

The City Challenge initiative only lasted for two rounds of funding. The system was replaced by a wider competition for regeneration funding under the SRB. Under this funding regime for regeneration, 20 existing programme from six government departments were brought together under one central budget. This initiative fostered a wide diversity of bids (primarily from local authority-inspired partnership arrangements) that sought to address a range of regeneration themes that varied both in scale and scope (Mawson, et al, 1995).

Our mini SRB case study area has been dominated by industry since the early nineteenth century with a particular focus on metal industries. During the 1950s and 1960s the area began to experience high levels of Asian immigration, particularly Bengalis and by the mid-1980s had become the main centre of the Bengali community. The area is of mixed residential/industrial area with many low-income families living in poor quality housing. Generally, the environment is poor and there is little in the way of community facilities.

The area has an active and committed community who is keen to work in partnership with others to regenerate the area. A residents group campaigned in the late 1980s to save the area from clearance in favour of a more sensitive renewal policy that led to the development of a Housing Development Trust. The starting point for current partnership working was in a Planning for Real exercise on the Unitary Development Plan in 1992, which raised concerns about the lack of Council action that was directed towards the area. The partnership structure was established as a consequence. The Group is a partnership between the Council, the Housing Development Trust, the Health Authority, Housing Associations, the Training and Enterprise Council and the local community.

The Group has three basic objectives:

1. to promote partnership working in the area.
2. to prepare and monitor a regeneration strategy.
3. to assist in the implementation and monitoring of regeneration projects.

To achieve these objectives the Group established a number of Sub-Groups to pursue policy at a more detailed level. These included:

– Community Services

– Housing

– Employment and Training

– Business and Industry

Community involvement is key. It is recognised that improvements can continually be made to representation of groups (particularly the business community). The Community Forum organised by the Housing Development Trust is an important group and is run independently from the Council that provides a further opportunity for community debate.

Research suggests that the work of the Group has contributed in part towards the empowerment of community groups in the process. In interviews with Group members it was acknowledged that there had been a measurable change in the ability of community groups to get involved in the regeneration process.

In terms of access to resources there was a less positive perception that resources in the area are unevenly distributed. This is related to the perception of the unequal distribution of power within the Group and the perceived dominance of the major players in the process such as the local authority. It is the major players who at the end of the day ultimately control the purse strings. Clearly, the internal power structure of the Group is affected by the relative systemic power of the participants, that is, their respective position in the socio-economic structure of the locality and the wider borough. This issue is critical when it comes to the struggle for resources since those with greater power will have more control over the allocation of both money and authority.

Turning briefly to participation there are some concerns about the make-up of the Partnership. It was felt that whilst the membership included the key actors in the community, its base was not broad enough to be fully inclusive. There was scope to expand the membership beyond the committed few well known individuals. One agency officer commented that community representatives "…do not always speak with their [the community’s] concerns or knowledge". However, while there is this ambivalence regarding the legitimacy of the Partnership, a wide range of partners are drawn on and there is access to the structures through a wider regeneration network involving the Community Forum and other community organisations.

Accountability of the Partnership Group to the wider community has proved problematic. There is a regular newsletter, offered in different community languages, and there has been a concentration upon community consultation, especially around the regeneration strategy that has been one of the Partnership’s key aims. The response to this was poor, however, even from amongst partners within the Partnership Group and there have been some criticisms from within the partnership as to why this should be. One agency officer remarked that the domination by the professional and political activist "…often carries forward an agenda which is narrow in concept and may not [therefore] meet the needs and aspirations of the people most affected".

The Partnership Group meetings are held monthly in the afternoon at a venue within the community. The timing of meetings, therefore, tends to exclude those with commitments during the day and is set up for the convenience of mandated officials. The status of the meeting, while formally open, is very traditional and bureaucratic and can be a "forbidding process" which "excludes the community" (Community organisation member).

Clearly, in these circumstances mutual learning is problematic. There is some doubt as to whether partners view the different characteristics of participants in a positive light. In interview data, reference was made to the fact that some partners have ‘hidden agendas’ and involve covert and ‘hidden partnerships’ that impact negatively on the efficacy of the community to influence the outcomes of partnership working. There was also the perception that the partnership process was heavily dominated by professionals that follows a particular agenda that might not be as reflective of the whole partnership as they might. Building a coalition in these circumstances, where resources are tight and lacking focus, and where communities are diverse and dispersed is clearly not an easy task.

New Deal for Communities

New Deal for Communities was to focus resources on deprived neighbourhoods and was to be delivered through local partnerships that would be formed between local people, the community and voluntary sectors, the public sector and the private sector. In February 1999 17 pathfinder NDCs were announced of which this mini case study was one.

Our NDC case study area contains10,000 people and is characterised by inadequate private and public sector housing. More than half of the private sector stock is unfit. There are high levels of social exclusion and social and economic deprivation. Other key characteristics include:

– High levels of unemployment – at 10.5%, which is much higher than the local, regional or national average.

– Low incomes with 30% of residents earning less than £6,000 per year, and 83.9% earn less than £15,000.

– Educational attainment levels are low.

– The health of the local people is poor, with high incidence of serious disease and premature death.

The NDC programme has attempted to place the community at the heart of the process. One of the key projects to facilitate this was the setting up of a residents’ consultative forum to incorporate community views on what should happen in the area. Other key projects have focused on establishing a learning network in the area, on improving the quality of the health provision in the area and into trying too integrate the neighbourhood into the wider area.

The NDC budget for the ten year period is £56 million. There is a strong commitment to involve the local community in the regeneration of the area. The stated intention is to resource and develop the full potential of the community. A Community Regeneration Statement has been produced, which says:

"The Partnership will engage local people in: determining problems and the issues, designing the solutions, making decisions about how the solutions are delivered and by whom."

The plan is to build on the strengths of the area and to nurture and support a strong and vibrant community in which people will choose to live and work. To facilitate this work there is a team of nine community officers in the programme led by a community regeneration manager. The team is responsible for co-ordinating a number of projects that are aimed to facilitate community activity and involvement, including:

– Supporting 10 new Neighbourhood Forums.

– The Project Development Fund: to support community groups with grants ranging from £1,000 to £5,000 to encourage new initiatives in the area for the benefit of people living in the area.

– The Festival Fund: to enable all sections of the community to celebrate a diverse range of festivals.

– The Community Chest Fund: to provide small grants to support

– A Positive Action Fund which is to ring-fence £3 million for the six main ethnic minority communities in the area over the next 3 years.

There is a commitment to work with the local community in the area, to build the capacity of the local community, to facilitate involvement at both a strategic and operational level, to operate in an open and transparent manner, and to ensure that the community has influence over the nature of the regeneration activities undertaken.

If we turn to our analytical framework we find that in many ways the NDC approach is an improvement on the SRB programme. In terms of access to resources the NDC projects have more resources to spend on smaller areas enabling a more concentrated approach. Moreover, there is greater flexibility and opportunity for the local partnerships to influence what the money is spent on. Moreover, in our case study money was being ring-fenced for Black and minority ethnic communities that have been much neglected by past regeneration activities (Loftman and Beazley, 1998; Beazley and Loftman, 2001).

In relation to openness and accountability the Community Regeneration Statement explicitly states that the Partnership will be open and transparent in all decision-making and that the community will be involved in setting priorities.

In terms of mutual transformation the NDC approach has to encourage all the partners involved to work much more closely together and to work much more closely with the local community. The mechanisms are there to facilitate much greater community involvement – community regeneration is at the heart of the approach. An approach that is designed to facilitate a much greater degree of influence and power for the community.

As the Community Regeneration Statement says:

"We recognise that community involvement is central to the success of the New Deal for Communities programme because: it increase local democracy, builds on existing skills and knowledge, ensures the best use of community facilities – consulting and involving local people ensures that they are part of the difficult decision-making and will hopefully take ownership."

National Strategy for Neighbourhood Renewal

"Neighbourhood renewal will not work and will not be sustained, unless people living in the deprived areas get involved. They know their area and the local population best and, given the right help, are best placed to turn it around" (Social Exclusion Unit, 2000, 64).

The National Strategy Action Plan A New Commitment to Neighbourhood Renewal was launched in January of this year (2001) by the Social Exclusion Unit. The Action Plan is the culmination of three years work by the Social Exclusion Unit and the Policy Action Teams in devising a new national strategy for urban regeneration. This is the first time we will have had a national strategy that has to potential to provide a co-ordinated framework for action at the neighbourhood level. The Action Plan sets out this new comprehensive framework. There are three key elements to this approach:

– New national policies, funding and targets;

– Better local co-ordination and community empowerment; and

– Improved national and regional support.

A new Unit has been established in the DETR to spearhead the implementation of the strategy – the Neighbourhood Renewal Unit (NRU).

The Prime Minister Tony Blair’s foreword to the Strategy neatly outlines what it is trying to do:

"The Action Plan sets out a new approach to renewing poor neighbourhoods. This approach is different for four reasons. First, the true scale of the problem is being addressed – not the tens but the hundreds of severely deprived neighbourhoods. Second, the focus is not just on housing and the physical fabric of neighbourhoods, but the fundamental problems of worklessness, crime and poor public services – poor schools, too few GPs and policing. Third, the Strategy harnesses the hundreds of billions of pounds spent by the key government departments, rather than relying on one-off regeneration spending. Fourth, the Strategy puts in place new ideas including Neighbourhood Management and Local Strategic Partnerships for empowering residents and getting public, private and voluntary organisations to work in partnership (Social Exclusion Unit, 2001, 5).

Effective community involvement is therefore seen as key. Community groups are seen as essential drivers of change at the local and community level so need to play a central role in the regeneration process. The Strategy outlines some key ideas on how to facilitate such involvement:

Neighbourhood management is seen as important in terms of giving local areas ‘a single door to knock on’, a locally-based mechanism to which local people can turn for support and advice. It is a mechanism for devolving power down to neighbourhoods. This could involve a neighbourhood manager or organisation that could have responsibility for running local services, handling devolved budgets, making service level agreements with service providers, and acting as an advocate for the neighbourhood in question.

Local Strategic Partnerships (LSPs) will be given the task to promote and encourage community involvement. They will also act as the co-ordinating framework for neighbourhood management. The Action Plan identifies that community involvement in a complex process and requires a variety of strategies and approaches, including:

– Outreach work to excluded communities to make them aware of the opportunity to influence the process;

– To ensure community representation on LSPs;

– To provide training and support to encourage involvement;

– To put in place Government Office action to reprimand LSPs that do not engage local community or do not take sufficient account of community views.

– The new Community Empowerment Fund that will provide about £400,000 over the next three yeas to each of the 88 NRF areas to support and encourage community involvement in LSPs.

– Working more closely with faith groups as a potential means of accessing certain communities

A Community Task Force will advice the NRU on how communities needs and priorities can be met via neighbourhood renewal and to encourage community involvement in the National Strategy. This Task Force will be staffed by a diverse range of people who have had direct experience of getting communities involved in improving service delivery and of community activity more generally.

A Community Chest scheme will be put into operation to enable people to participate in self-help and mutual support activity. The intention is to channel new resources (£50 million over the next three years) into community schemes through new Community Chests. The Strategy states that these measures are intended to maximise the involvement of local communities in neighbourhood renewal activity.

It is difficult to evaluate the National Strategy as it is yet to be implemented, but if we use our analytical framework we can throw some light on its potential for encouraging community involvement. In terms of resources then there is a commitment to provide resources to facilitate community involvement in the process. This must also be set in the context of the Spending Review 2000, which gave high priority to neighbourhood renewal and provided increased resources for key areas such as education and training and the NHS. The Neighbourhood Renewal Fund (NRF) set up as part of the National Strategy will provide unhypothecated top up funds to the 88 most deprived local authorities. This fund will be administered by the NRU and will involve £100 million for 2001/02 rising to £400 million in 2003/04.

In terms of openness and accountability the advent of the LSPs and the principles behind neighbourhood management are all aimed it seems at encouraging local people to get involved in the decision-making structures for neighbourhood renewal. The intention is to provide a transparent structure that people can identify with and relate to. The extent to which this becomes a reality we will have to wait and see, but at least the potential is there. The intention of the Action Plan is that it is local people who get involved in identifying objectives and priorities, in devising local strategies and in implementing them. This is a far cry from the UDC approach.

In terms of mutual transformation the potential is high. Close work of all the stakeholders in the LSPs should, if they operate as intended, enable mutual learning and the changing of working practices to facilitate great joint and collaborative working.

Summary

This review of key regeneration initiatives that have taken place over the last twenty years can be summarised in Table 1.

Table 1 Community Involvement in Regeneration Programmes

	Community Involvement
Initiative	Access to resources	Openness and accountability	Mutual transformation
UDCs	LOW	LOW	LOW
City Challenge	MEDIUM	MEDIUM	MEDIUM
Single Regen Budget	MEDIUM - LOW	MEDIUM - LOW	LOW
New Deal for Communities	MEDIUM	HIGH	HIGH
National Strategy for Neighbourhood Renewal	MEDIUM – HIGH POTENTIAL	HIGH POTENTIAL	HIGH POTENTIAL

Conclusions

The degree of community involvement in the regeneration initiatives varies considerably, but there is a noticeable trend from a low level of involvement in the private sector-led initiatives such as the UDC’s to much higher levels of community involvement in initiatives such as the more recent NDCs.

Clearly, community involvement in initiatives such as the UDCs was very limited. It could be argued that as a result the regeneration undertaken is not that sustainable. The UDCs were highly effective in transforming physical space and building prestige projects, but they were less successful in investing in the economic and social infrastructure that might have provided more long term gains for local people. In addition, the regeneration activities were largely unaccountable and not determined or influenced by the local community. Moreover, regeneration activity within UDC boundaries often did not relate well to wider regeneration and planning policy. The focus was very much on securing development within the UDC area rather than considering a more strategic approach. There are important questions too about the compatibility between property-led regeneration and community interests.

City Challenge was seen very much as a response to the mounting criticism of the UDC approach that had gathered pace toward the end of the 1980s. City Challenge in its conception was more inclusive both of local authorities and of local communities. The approach of City Challenge was broader in that it encompassed the physical as well as the social and economic aspects of the regeneration process. The problem of City Challenge was that it introduced competition into the equation in that it forced deprived areas to compete with one another for scarce resources and it was based on too short a timescale. Nevertheless there was more emphasis on community involvement as the mini-case study above demonstrated. The attention on youth, the setting up of community fora and the block community funs were two examples of positive community involvement activity that was undertaken. City Challenge is ranked as medium in terms of its access to resources, openness and accountability and the degree of mutual transformation.

The Single Regeneration Budget replaced City Challenge but the two essential characteristics of competition and partnership remained in place. The extent of coverage however changed from the now former urban programme areas to any partnership in England. Since its inception in 1994 there have been six rounds of SRB with 900 schemes being approved, worth over £5.5 billion in SRB support to projects over lifetimes of up to seven years. This SRB money has attracted an estimated £10 billion plus in new private sector investment and to have been a major factor in drawing European Union funding.

The intention of the SRB was to support regeneration initiatives carried out by local regeneration partnerships in England. The stated intention of the SRB was to enhance the quality of life for people in areas of need by reducing the gap between the deprived areas and the more prosperous ones. A wide variety of projects, supported by the scheme, have been intended to meet a range of needs specific to their local areas.

SRB partnerships were expected to be inclusive and involve a wide range of organisations in the management and delivery of their scheme. Partnerships were supposed to work closely with and to harness the talents of the private sector, the voluntary sector and the local community. It was hoped that the SRB schemes would be instrumental in developing the capacity (in terms of skills and confidence) of the local community so that they could play an active role in the regeneration of their areas. The findings from the mini-case study whilst not conclusive do raise questions about all the criteria used in this evaluation. In terms of access to resources there was a perception that the local authority and other major players dominated the process and ultimately controlled the purse strings. There were some concerns over the accountability issue. The Partnership was not seen to be as inclusive of the community as it might have been. There were concerns about how the Partnership organised itself in terms of the timing and tenor of the meetings. These and other factors were then felt to inhibit the degree of mutual learning that was possible.

The NDC programme was an attempt to learn the lessons from the SRB Challenge Fund experience. The need for dedicated resources for capacity building and for developing and nurturing community involvement, the need for longer term perspectives, and the need to focus resources more effectively. It can be seen that on all the criterion used the programme scores quite highly. Yet it must be said that it is still early days and it will be interesting to see if the programme lives up to its potential.

The National Strategy and all its component parts including neighbourhood management and the LSPs seems to offer the best potential yet for effective community involvement in urban regeneration. It is a programme that is yet to be implemented, but there appears to be potential for high levels of access to resources, of openness and accountability and of mutual learning. We need to watch this space intently to see if this potential transforms into reality. If it does we will have gone a long way to securing the most effective means of facilitating community involvement in urban regeneration for over twenty years.

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