Revive the local economy, empower the local community, improve public services and encourage local leadership. The Prime Minister has engraved these four hall-marks on his policy to revitalise poor neighbourhoods.
But years of top-down solutions have made local communities suspicious. One disgruntled man wrote to me as Chair of New Deal for Community in Liverpool quoting the advice given to Franklyn D Roosevelt when he set up his own New Deal: "Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficial." Our government's intentions are benevolent. I have no doubt that both the Prime Minister and the Chancellor are determined to break the cycle of poverty but I wonder if they have the political courage to do what really needs to be done. The PM's four hall-marks need to be stamped on the sterling silver being channelled into New Deal.
The stark advice to Roosevelt came from one of his Justices who added: "Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greater dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding."
The political and professional classes who dominate the regeneration industry are well-meaning and chant the correct mantras: 'urban renewal must be community-led'. But the more involved I get the more I feel we do not understand what it means. One disillusioned local group told me that it means 'when we want your opinion we'll give it to you.' And at a recent national conference someone wise-cracked that NDC mean New Deal for Consultants!
Huge amounts of money are being showered on deprived areas through funding agencies, the professional regenerators and consultants. But instead of the showers, the money needs to be channelled into the actual communities to irrigate them. Money to consultants gets spent in middle-class areas. What we need is to get that money spent in the communities that need the revitalising. NDC money ought to be spent reviving the local economy. The issue is not how much money is spent on and for the New Deal Communities but the critical issue is how much money is spent through them. In other words, how do we get that money into the hands and pockets and tills of local people?
Money is power. The way to give power to local people is quite simply to give them the money! But how? It will require political nerve. 'Community-led' will always be an echo-less chant until we have the courage to act on the understanding that real empowerment is about letting the people spend the money!
This is where the political nerves start jangling. There is a curious double standard over using money as an incentive in urban renewal. We will use tax breaks and sweeteners to encourage big companies to develop brownfield sites and relocate to deprived areas. This brings jobs to some local people and sizeable profits to big companies. But when it comes to using the tax and benefit system to encourage local people to get involved in regenerating their neighbourhoods there's a corporate sigh from the middle-classes who control the policies, raise the spectre of benefit fraud and the dependency-culture.
Some of the work given to outside consultants and agencies can with suitable training be done by local people. Research and mapping exercises, for example, provide training and work, increase confidence, secure greater involvement and get money flowing through the community. Engaging local people in this work is happening in a few places but not enough. The Government rightly wants to involve local people but puts obstacles in the way.
There is tremendous commitment in neighbourhoods to make them better places to live and work. At our last AGM of the Liverpool NDC the hall was packed with over 400 people. Where else do you get that turn out? A Cabinet Minister can come to the inner city or an outer estate for a meeting and only a dozen turn out. Hold a session to discuss plans for the future of an area, its housing and services, and thank God, people turn out in their hundreds. But capitalising on this is the challenge.
I've seen volunteers in tears. Exhausted by the plethora of meetings and activities and overwhelmed by debt because they cannot be remunerated for their work. They want to take advantage of the Government's many schemes but they cannot afford to do it. The spirit is willing but the flesh needs feeding. We need to be much more imaginative in finding ways to remunerate the community activists. Otherwise, we will push the local citizens further away from the regeneration process and fill the gap with professional regenerators from outside.
Just as we provide local councillors with allowances that are viewed sympathetically by the tax and benefit agencies so we must reward community members who work all the hours God sends.
An idea gathering momentum is to engage local people as Community Consultants for specific tasks such as serving on Citizens Panels to appraise local projects. They would be trained, supported and offered time-specific and project-specific contracts. The payment would be tax free and benefit penalty free. It would empower the local community, encourage local leadership and stimulate the local economy by getting the New Deal money spent through the area - three of the hall-marks of the Prime Minister's strategy for neighbourhood renewal!
In some urban areas the alienation of children from their parents is of epidemic proportions. Educational under achievement, truancy, juvenile crime and drug dependence are some of the symptoms of a society where parents feel out of their depth in the nurture of their children. Some parents have no skills in raising a child because their own parents were equally deprived of this ability. We need a radical intervention. One initiative to be considered is to offer parents double child benefit in the first year of their first child if they avail themselves of a 12 week effective parenting course. This £750 training grant (mediated through the Learning and Skills Council?) would target specialised learning at one of the neediest areas in society. These voluntary courses provide parents with mutual support and encourage self-help.
They can have dramatic results. The elimination of child poverty requires not just more money but the strengthening of the parent-child relationship in which the child is nurtured. Some would say that parents would do it just for the money yet some would undoubtedly gain important skills to the benefit of the children, and society would be the beneficiary. The increased benefit would be tax-free and would most likely be spent in the local community and so contribute to reviving the local economy.
The same approach could be adopted towards young people. An idea already gaining currency is to employ young people between the ages of 16 - 25 as 'Youth Agents' to engage other young people in purposeful activity in the neighbourhood. They would be trained, supported and supervised - and paid, again tax free and benefit-penalty-free. Again, it would have a double impact. It would encourage motivation and self-esteem among young people and also get the New Deal money spent through the community so using that money to stimulate and revive the local economy.
Kensington New Deal in Liverpool has been awarded £61.9 million which is expected to lever in a further £250 million over ten years. But how much of that money will be spent ON the community instead of THROUGH it? The more that is spent through the local people the greater the empowerment will be and the more the local economy will be revived.
The Government is beginning to consider new initiatives for 2003. Politicians are rightly exercising themselves as to whether we really have a system that encourages a truly bottom-up approach. The ideas in this article may not find favour. If they don't then radical and practical alternatives need to be devised to ensure greater community productivity. We are not maximising our social capital in New Deal areas. We do not hesitate to use fiscal policy to stimulate the economy and to reinforce certain patterns of behaviour and to reward big investors. Can we not apply the same approach to deprived communities?
In his foreword to Neighbourhood Renewal the Prime Minister wrote about "developing new ways to put deprived communities in the driving seat'. Perhaps it's time now to put fuel in the community tank - free of leadened taxes and penalties.