CIC: Can ‘community assets’ work?
2:31 pm - December 22nd 2008
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This is the final post reviewing the last chapter of the Communities in Control White Paper launched by Hazel Blears recently.
Chapter 8 looks at how citizens can move beyond being consulted or holding officials to account, to how people can own and run services for themselves, either by serving on local boards and committees, or through social enterprises and cooperatives.
The first question I want to ask Hazel Blears when Hazel blathers on about the joys of handing community assets to the community to operate is: you mean the few assets that New Labour hasn’t allowed to be sold yet, Haze?
I mean really, people – this has not been the golden age of community, or community assets, exactly: swathes of housing stock moved to arms’ length management organisations, schools closed and ownership of new city academies handed to private sponsors, lidos closed, nursery schools shut and nursery places cut, etc, with Labour, Lib Dem and Conservative councils all cheerful offenders.
Which isn’t to say the idea of community asset ownership as promoted by Hazel is a complete dog: far from it. In her lyrical moments, Hazel understands that: “where local asset management and ownership works well, it can create a new cadre of active citizens, owning, directing and running a service as well as providing good value for money for local authorities and other public bodies. It can support the creation of new co-operatives, mutuals and social enterprises which are responsive to local needs, reflect local ambitions and which generate loyalty from the local community.”
That appears to have been the case in some cases. Witness, Hazel tells us, social enterprises like the Fifteen Cornwall restaurant, which gives disadvantaged local young people a chance to train each year as chefs, with all profits made being returned to the charity. She also cites The Big Issue, the Eden Project and the fair-trade coffee company Cafédirect (you’ll note that most of those have a strong profit theme).
Lewisham CE Barry Quirk – a man with a loftier reputation for community mindedness than Hazel – has better examples in his 2007 ‘making assets work’ paper (the review on which Hazel bases her abovementioned ode to local empowerment).
He notes Gamblesby in Cumbria, where the restoration of the village hall to the local community has gone some way to restoring the morale of a town in economic decline. The village reclaimed the hall from the council, and got funds to restore it. According to Quirk, the town now ‘has an attractive focal point for social activities and some economic opportunities may also be opening up through the establishment of the hall as a venue and the associated demand for catering.’
But when he published his 2007 review, Quirk was criticised for generating a paper that was more about raising a quick buck by selling the family silver than inspiring the downtrodden: Hazel needs to make sure that these three points:
– the public benefit needs to be clear
– any sale or transfer of public assets to community ownership and management must generate social or community benefits without putting wider public interest concerns at risk
– the community must not become overly burdened with managing assets
…are enshrined in any legislation she proposes to draw up on asset transfers. The profit motive must not be the only motivation. It is also important that council initiatives like a few bob for local hall restoration do not transmogrify in government minds into adequate substitutes for much-needed social services like medical centres, council housing and schools.
We also need legislation that prevents asset sales to the private sector and puts community groups on an equal footing. At one point in her paper, Hazel blithly observes that the government, “will encourage local authorities to ensure that social enterprises are able to compete fairly for contracts.”
They’ll need more than encouragement, I’m afraid. Tory councils all over the place are outsourcing to the lowest bidders as we speak – Hammersmith and Fulham, for instance, have just outsourced their cleaning and road maintenance contracts to big companies that are in a much better position to undercut than a small group of local church-hall hopefuls. Barnet council transferred its older people’s carehomes to a third party concern that is closing those homes, and trying to shoehorn more money out of the council for the limited service it proposes to provide from now on.
Like I say, Hazel – the theory is all very well. In any new world order the left wants to achieve, we’d need the practice as well.
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Earlier reviews:
Chapter 1: Is the community empowerment plan any good? (Don Paskini)
Chapter 2: Can British citizens become active? (David Keen)
Chapter 3: Access to information (Justin McKeating)
Chapter 4: Are petitions the way forward? (Douglas Clark)
Chapter 5: Toying with elected Mayors (Andrew Adams)
Chpater 6: How to complain to councils (Tony Kennick)
Chapter 7: Why don’t more people get into politics? (Unity)
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Kate Belgrave is a regular contributor to Liberal Conspiracy. She is a New Zealander who moved to the UK eight years ago. She was a columnist and journalist at the New Zealand Herald and is now a web editor. She writes on issues like public sector cuts, workplace disputes and related topics. She is also interested in abortion rights, and finding fault with religion. Also at: Hangbitching.com and @hangbitch
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Story Filed Under: Blog ,Local Government ,Our democracy ,Westminster
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Reader comments
Thanks for posting this, Sunny.
I want to add that I have become even more disillusioned in the several weeks since writing the above, and struggle more than I ever did with the notion of any member of New Labour taking the idea of community – or humanity, even – seriously.
Justin’s post today on new powers for baliffs says it all, really:
http://www.chickyog.net/2008/12/22/and-its-easy-to-ignore-till-theyre-knocking-on-the-door-of-your-homes/
the point being that this government now has such contempt for those most in need of support that it’s going to allow thugs to get physical with them. Delightful.
Can’t wait to hear Hazel’s response to the contributions we’ve all made on her communities and control paper.
What a year.
Kate,
Can’t wait to hear Hazel’s response to the contributions we’ve all made on her communities and control paper.
Me neither!
Indeed, what a year…
Yes, it has been a trying year, politically at least. The highlight would have to be Obama’s win. The low point, or part, is that too many people still have no government, either at local or national level, that they can appeal to, or expect to support them. Labour has lost any ability it had to even make the right gestures. It should be so easy to knock these Tories over, but they haven’t been able to do it.
Back to community assets, this paper from the JRF looks interesting.
It seems that for all the good work that Barry did with his review and the long history of community ownership the level of evidence for the benefits or risks involved is a bit skimpy.
Hi Andrew,
Thanks for the link – will have a look at the paper. I agree that Quirk produced quite a good paper himself, but I wasn’t convinced by the outcomes myself. There is also a real risk that when politicians say community ownership, they actually mean stepping back from providing services themselves.
Yes, particularly at the moment I’d guess there’ll be a tension between wanting to find ways to keep services going and the big black holes that will be appearing in local government finances; and community ownership may well appear to be a way of getting services off the balance sheet.
I’m (perhaps understandably given that I did 9 years “hard time” as a councillor) quite sympathetic to the impulse, but don’t think it’ll necessarily be as easy as it might appear.
Certainly, the settlements councils have received this time around aren’t good, and probably the funding shortfalls are among the first real indicators of the battering that government finances have taken in bailing out the banks.
That said, I would hope that councils endeavor to prioritise in favour of frontline service provision in this climate, rather than, say, squander millions on privatisation initiatives, or costly failed joint venture initiatives with the private sector, etc.
Appreciate that it’s challenging to run a council though.
If you were at Lewisham, you must have known Barry Quirk? He did produce some good work. Is he still there?
I am a Lewisham resident and think highly of Barry – yes he’s still here. He’s extremely strategic, which I think has helped the politicians in the decisions that have had to be made.
Yep, I’m a Lewisham resident too, and worked in local government until comparatively recently. Barry always had a v good reputation. It’d just be nice to get some evidence that the likes of Hazel Blears – a lady I don’t particularly think is in Barry’s intellectual league – was genuinely influenced by his communities paper.
Ah, we’ll you’ll have to come to our next blogger’s meet up then.
When I lost my seat on the council Barry was kind enough to send me a book of Robert Kennedy’s speeches. It’s very clear that a lot of Kennedy’s thinking is at the heart of what Barry was trying to achieve with his review.
I don’t know Hazel, but my sense of her is that a lot of this would appeal to her sense of what politics should be about.
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