This summer may still bring important announcements for our sector …
The Government’s new approach to community empowerment and its focus on the role of individual citizens has caused growing concerns within our membership; we have expressed these concerns in our response to the department for Communities and Local Government (CLG); they will likely launch a Community Empowerment White Paper in July. We are also awaiting an announcement from Government around their proposed community anchors fund.
In the meantime, we are continuing to promote the community assets agenda through a range of initiatives, and we were particularly pleased that in its current consultation on Eco-towns, CLG recommended that community development trusts should play a key role in the development of Eco-towns from the outset, ‘to determine how services are run and assets are managed’.
The next edition will come out in September.If you have suggestions on the contents of this briefing, please email me at: g.arradon@dta.org.uk.
Glenn Arradon
Policy and Enterprise Manager
Content at a glance
The Community Empowerment White Paper
Community Assets
Eco-towns
New Third Sector Strategy from the MoJ
Tory Green Paper on Social enterprise
Quirk demonstration programme
Community anchors fund
Community petitions
Community Allowance
Community Assets Fund
The Community Empowerment White Paper
The government has announced that a Community Empowerment White Paper will be published in the summer.The Department for Communities and Local Government (CLG) ‘green paper’ Unlocking the talent in our communities raised concerns with its emphasis on tackling worklessness and the role of individuals in relation to the state.The summary of DTA’s submission was as follows:
Community organisations in our membership feel very strongly that the approach to community empowerment set in the CLG paper ‘Unlocking the Talent of our Communities’ doesn’t go nearly far enough.
We note with concern that CLG’s views as expressed in that paper are not consistent with the more ambitious approach which the Department has been taking over the last year.The strategy appears to have narrowed to a focus on the role of individual citizens in their relationship to the state, and on tackling worklessness.While important, these do not represent a community empowerment programme sufficient to generate the change that government wishes to see.
Our experience is that community empowerment works best where there are resilient multi-purpose community vehicles (of which development trusts are an example), that are community led, generating some of their own income, owning assets, and able to tackle problems and deliver a change-agenda themselves and through partnerships.
Furthermore, while we welcome a focus on worklessness, the recent paper does not offer a specific strategy to harness the vast potential contribution of community-led social enterprise in helping people towards positive activity, training, volunteering, and paid employment.
1. The Community Empowerment White Paper should introduce an incentive scheme linked to the Working Neighbourhoods Fund to make this happen.
2. We do agree with the Department’s view that participatory budgeting could be a useful way to empower local communities.We also welcome the Department’s proposals for community petitions.
But above all we believe that a community empowerment programme must include a strong focus on community anchors, community assets, and community enterprise.In our experience this is the single most effective way to achieve long term sustained community empowerment.
3. We therefore urge CLG to invite tenders to deliver the community anchors investment programme without further delay.
4.We hope that the conclusions of the second phase of the Quirk review on community assets will be fully reflected in the Community Empowerment White Paper.
5.We recommend that the White Paper includes proposals for enhanced development finance, knowledge and skills exchange, and business mentoring, for community-led social enterprise.
We have the potential to achieve high quality community anchors, community asset ownership, and community enterprise, in every neighbourhood in the country - and therefore we do have the opportunity to truly unlock the talents in our communities.
See DTA’s full response on: http://www.dta.org.uk/whatsnew/news/clg3.htm
We have recently learned that the sections of the White Paper are to be structured as follows (this might still change):
Active citizenship
Accessing Information
Having a say in a local area
Having influence in a local area
Challenge (how to take part in overview and scrutiny)
Redress (call for action, petitions etc)
Standing for office
Community ownership
Community assets
Barry Quirk and his review team reconvened in April and again in May to review progress one year after the launch of the Quirk review.DTA gathered evidence from its membership and submitted a paper.Our recommendations to Quirk and to government are as follows:
1.Set an overall transfer target of £100m a year for the next ten years.
2.Maintain momentum with local authorities by a) extending the Advancing Assets programme, b) promoting the guidance more widely, c) encouraging local authorities to designate senior officials, and d) better use of the planning system.
3.Extend the assets transfer agenda to other public sector agencies including central government.
4.Address the investment gap, by a) launching the £141m community anchors fund and inviting tenders to deliver it as a national programme with linkages to local authorities, and b) establishing a replacement for the Community Assets Fund at a level of £30m a year.
5.Establish a relationship brokerage, and a ‘lifeboat’ intervention service, as a means of protecting investments.
6.Establish a pilot community shares scheme.
7.Introduce a version of the Community Right to Buy legislation that exists in Scotland.
8.Extend the community call for action petitioning mechanism to community assets by introducing a ‘community designated’ status.
9.Establish the next generation of community assets in relation to community housing and eco towns, encouraging joint ventures with the private sector.
10. Include all these proposals as a centrepiece of the forthcoming Community Empowerment White Paper.
The Department for Children and Schools (DFCS) has launched My Place, a £220m capital grants programme to invest in ‘world class’ youth facilities in every constituency.The fund is being delivered by the Big Lottery Fund.Following advice by DTA some revenue funding has now been allocated to support the business sustainability of this programme but we remain concerned that it is not enough.
Eco-towns consultation
In July 2007, Government launched an Eco-towns Prospectus.Eco-towns will be new towns which are ‘exemplar green developments’ of up to 20,000 homes (including 30-50% affordable housing). The eco-towns prospectus referred to community assets and community trusts: “Whatever the nature of the delivery body there will be a need to provide for the long term maintenance and endowment of community assets. Community Trusts are an option and there are good models in some of the earlier new towns.”The prospectus invited proposals for five new schemes from local authorities and the private sector – at the Labour conference in September 2007 Gordon Brown raised this to ten, and government announced an international competition for the world’s top architects and designers.57 expressions of interest have been received, many from private developers.
Then on 3 April 2008, CLG launched a consultation document - ‘Eco-towns: Living a Green Future’ (http://www.communities.gov.uk/publications/housing/ecotownsgreenerfuture) – which provides information on the 15 proposals going forward for further assessment and how the final ten locations will be selected later in 2008. The consultation closes on 30 June and is seeking views on:
The way in which the eco-towns concept is being developed and the different potential benefits that an eco-town could offer;
How particular features such as greenspace or innovative approaches to housing can best be developed in an eco-town;
Preliminary views on the 15 locations going forward for further assessment;
The document also summarised the Department’s approach to Community Building and Empowerment as part of the development of eco-towns in the following terms:
- An eco-town can provide many more people and particularly families with an affordable home in a vibrant and sustainable community and one which is designed in an inclusive way to ensure that people of all ages and those with disabilities can be active within the community.
- Potential residents and existing residents close by should be actively involved in the design of the new eco-town.
- Residents would take a key role in determining how services are run and assets are managed, through the establishment of a community development trust.
DTA takes the view that community-led enterprise (including community anchor organisations such as development trusts, and community asset ownership) are essential towards creating thriving prosperous communities and in particular meeting the environmental, social and economic goals of eco-towns.
We therefore welcome the CLG guidance and consultation document.In particular we are pleased that it recommends that community development trusts must be an integral part of the eco-towns from the outset, that they should be independent community controlled bodies, and that a portion of assets should be set aside for the trust to own and manage.
We would go further and propose (along the lines of the community land trust model and the original vision for the city garden movement) that the freehold of all the land should be transferred into ownership of the community trust (with leases assigned to developers and homeowners), so that affordability and community benefit is safeguarded in perpetuity.It is worth noting that a community land trust need not be distinct from a community development trust – experience to date is that a single organisation is best placed to take on the range of proposed community trust functions – let’s avoid unnecessary bureaucratic complexity and potential sources of future division.
The guidance also calls for a purpose-built and adaptable community resource centre which can be used by community groups and start up businesses.The guidance fails to make it clear that these should be community owned and controlled, and the community trust is the obvious body to do that.
There is extensive experience of development trusts across the country owning community resources of this nature, successfully delivering both social and economic benefits, creating wealth and keeping it circulating within the community.The difficulty is always to make them financially sustainable, and so we welcome the proposal that they should be designed to accommodate start up businesses, where rental income can help pay for community activity.We would again go further and say that a viable business model must be a requirement, and that if trading income is likely to be insufficient there must be an endowment, or at minimum assurances of long term grant, to support the centre and its work.
Other aspects of the guidance regarding employment of community development workers and ensuring quality open spaces and allotments are also very much to be welcomed, and do reflect the experience of development trusts about what is needed to build social capital, and places in which people can feel pride.
See www.dta.org.uk/ecotowns for our full briefing
New Third Sector Strategy from the Ministry of Justice
On 6 June the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) launched the ‘Third Sector Strategy: Improving policies and securing better services through effective partnerships – 2008 – 2011’. Following a period of consultation that ended in February 2008, this third sector strategy for England and Wales provides a framework for how relationships should be taken forward between the various organisations/business areas under the MoJ and their third sector partners. Each Department within the MoJ will further define their third sector strategy based on the principles in this document.
The Third Sector Strategy is built around four common goals:
1. Enabling voice and campaigning
The third sector understands local communities and their needs, and that knowledge can be used to help shape services.
2. Strengthening communities
The sector can help tap into social capital that is available through mentoring and volunteering.
3. Transforming public services
Collaborative relationships between commissioners and the sector will improve the shape and delivery of public services.
4. Encouraging social enterprise
Supporting the right social enterprises, and the conditions for them to thrive, will encourage long term sustainability.
The National Offender Management Service (NOMS) is finalising its own approach to working with the third sector to reduce re-offending. The Development Trusts Association was recently awarded strategic funding for three years from NOMS to enable the community and social enterprise sector to better engage with NOMS and the ‘reducing re-offending’ agenda. Through our programme of work with NOMS we will seek to explore and expand the potential for community and social enterprises to play a meaningful role in delivering services that reduce re-offending.
Many development trusts are already engaging with ex-offenders or people at risk of offending. None have a specific ‘ex-offender’ focus, but due to the nature of their work and their presence in the community some will come into contact with individuals that have a history of offending; others will set up ex-offender specific programmes.
Here are just three examples of development trusts working with ex-offenders:
Blacon Community Trust in Cheshire works with teenagers facing exclusion and/or custodial sentences;
Sunlight Development Trusts works with a range of local people in Gillingham (Kent), including ex-offenders; they have helped some set up a recording studio as a social enterprise;
Action Acton provides motivational and pre-employment training to PPOs and other offenders in West London.
Over the coming months, the DTA will seek to raise awareness of opportunities to deliver through the community and social enterprise sector, by mapping existing activities and sharing best practice.
If you are involved in or know of a development trust or other social enterprise working with ex-offenders, or for more information about DTA’s involvement with NOMS please email g.arradon@dta.org.uk
Tory ‘Green Paper’ on social enterprise and voluntary action
The Conservative party launched its ‘Green Paper’ A Stronger Society: voluntary action in the 21st century at the Sunlight Development Trust in Gillingham, Kent, on 3 June 2008.
The main proposals are to:
- Allow voluntary organisations delivering public services to earn a competitive return on investment – ie to make profits.
- Promote grant funding: contracts should only be used where there is a clear justification.
- Establish Social Enterprise zones.
- Focus state funding on outcomes not methods of delivery.
- Require statutory bodies to take account of social as well as financial value of publicly owned assets.
- Implement a Co-operatives Action Plan to enable co-ops to play a bigger role in running and owning community assets.
- Replace the Big Lottery Fund with a Voluntary Action Lottery Fund dedicated entirely to the voluntary and community sector.
- Replace the Office of the Third Sector with an Office of Civil Society.
- Promote volunteering (with special attention to areas described as ‘charity deserts’) and encourage more charitable giving (eg simplify Gift Aid).
Over the last year the DTA has had meetings with Greg Clark, the Shadow Third Sector Minister, and Conservative Party officials, and has also participated in briefings arranged by the Social Enterprise Coalition with members of the Conservative Front Bench.Clearly they have paid attention, and this is a serious set of proposals.
Initial analysis
The overall tone of the document is interesting – there is a strong emphasis on civil (rather than civic) society, and also a desire that government should not seek to control the sector: ‘our approach is not to change the voluntary sector to better serve the Government, but to change government itself’.
The most radical and welcome proposal is that the public sector should contact with the third sector on the basis on ‘price and outcomes’ not cost.This moves beyond the ‘full cost recovery’ debate (which risks creating new forms of dependency), towards a social enterprise culture where it becomes legitimate for the third sector to generate profit, in the same way as the private sector.DTA has pushed this approach but it has up to now been rejected by government and indeed parts of the third sector itself.
The concept of social enterprise zones is open to question – we would want every area to be a social enterprise zone. When DTA challenged Cameron about this at the launch his reply made the point that the zones would create a favourable climate for social enterprises through less regulation and ‘maybe less tax’ and so the zones would be a way to target effort and resources in the areas where the approach was most needed.Harriet Baldwin (a Conservative PPC for Worcester and a leading Tory strategist on social enterprise) has told DTA that the concept of ‘zone’ need not be confined to geography.So there is probably room for development of the proposals.
The community asset ownership agenda is promoted, and the new proposal that statutory bodies such as local authorities and government departments should take account of social value of their assets is very welcome, and should produce greater momentum for community asset transfer.The Conservatives had some time ago expressed interest in the Community Right to Buy proposals, but appear to have dropped these.Here, they link community asset ownership directly to the promotion of democratic co-operative models, - there is perhaps a danger if the implication is that other types of community organisation are regarded as inappropriate.
Comments invited
The DTA will be making a formal response to the document.Comments are very welcome – by Friday 20th June. Please email g.arradon@dta.org.uk
in brief…
Advancing assets: Quirk demonstration programme
The ‘Advancing Assets for Communities’ programme has now been extended and expanded from a short-term action research programme (May 07-March 08) to run for a further two years and work with a total of 60 further local authority areas with a total of £2m funding from CLG.
The purpose of the programme is to demonstrate in selected local authority areas how local authorities and local community-led third sector organisations can be supported to develop joint plans for asset transfer, in line with the recommendations of the Quirk Review, and to begin to implement them.
The areas and the projects are supported on the ground by the Case Managers who tend to be DTA RDMs but have also included RDOs and Community Matters consultants.
The AA20 cohort from 2007-08, with a total of around 37 pilot projects, are now coming to the end of their supported phase and we are currently undertaking detailed review meetings with each of them.Lessons from this information informed a presentation to the reconvened Quirk team on 19 May 2008.
A further cohort of local authority areas was chosen from the original expressions of interest and we held scoping meetings in each area during March, resulting in 12 areas going forwards with AA in 2008-09.We also ran an open call which attracted 42 new expressions of interest.These were scored and 18 areas were chosen to make up the total of 30 for 2008-09, along with three in reserve.There will be a further round later in 2008 to seek interest for 2009-10, perhaps including themes for specific focus.
Alongside the support for pilot projects, we have also been focusing on strategic support and development which has led to a set of conclusions around principles, process, and policy for Community Asset Transfer (CAT) and influence over LA options appraisals. Tony Rich has been leading this work, along with developing the Risk Management Toolkit for local authorities.Four key ‘pieces of kit’ are emerging from the work:
- A model asset transfer strategy/policy
- A model asset transfer process
- Risk management toolkit
- Process/tool for comparing Social Value with Open Market Value
Community anchors fund
As previously reported in this update, the Office of the Third Sector and CLG have set aside £141m for a community anchors fund.Over the last six months there has been delay after delay in confirming and announcing the fund.DTA (and others notably Adventure Capital Fund) has held a series of meetings with Hazel Blears and officials in CLG and the Cabinet Office, in an effort to resolve the difficulties, in particular to achieve a sensible delivery mechanism.
Our position is that we would like government to invite tenders from bodies such as the Adventure Capital Fund, who would bring investment expertise and have the capability to connect to local authorities.We have also encouraged the ACF to work with the Community Alliance on this although the relationship has not progressed as far as we hoped.There is now a strong possibility that some or even all of the money will be diverted to other agendas, such as tackling worklessness.
Community petitions
On 15 May Hazel Blears announced that the Community Empowerment White Paper will include provision for community petitioning (ie the Community Call for Action that DTA has been lobbying for).
She said that community petitions could provide people with a new right to ask for a stronger say on spending decisions that affect them or their communities, a new right to ensure councils consider the sale or transfer of under-used properties, lands or parks to local community groups, co-ops and social enterprises, a new right to force a debate on specific local issues onto the council agenda.
We are very pleased about this – some local authorities and the LGA have been lobbying vigorously against it, so we had feared the idea was going to be shelved. See DTA’s full response to the CLG consultation on: http://www.dta.org.uk/whatsnew/news/petitionpowers_LSPs.htm
Community Allowance
The Community Allowance is a proposal to Government to change the benefits system to enable community organisations to pay local people to do work that strengthens their neighbourhood without it affecting their benefits.DTA is participating in a campaign on this alongside British Urban Regeneration Association, Community Links, National Community Forum, and Slivers of Time.
Meetings have been held recently with Stephen Timms the DWP minister urging him to set up a pilot scheme, and with CLG officials to encourage them to incorporate the idea into the Community Empowerment White Paper.For more information visit: www.communityallowance.org
Community Assets Fund
The £30m Community Assets Fund administered by the Big Lottery Fund has announced 37 winning bids. A full list of grant offers is available on the Big Lottery website (http://www.biglotteryfund.org.uk/comm_asset_shortlist?dynamic=prog&id=95126®ioncode=-uk&progStatus=closed&progpageid=95126)
The DTA was successful in tendering, in association with Community Matters, Environment Trust Associates and Coin Street Community Builders, for the BLF contract to support the successful Community Assets fund LA/community partnerships. This involves an intensive period to September 2008 helping partnerships to produce capital development plans, followed by a hand-holding role until six months after their refurbishments and transfers have taken place (max to Jan 2012).
