Note from a Northern Roundtable: Levelling Up and Community Power
Summary of key points
Government needs to invest in creating legitimacy, listening and learning, and become an enabler, not a controller.
It’s important to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past - regeneration initiatives have been too top down, short-term and failed to reform the things that left people feeling powerless.
An ambitious change of direction is needed – ‘go big, or go home’. Despite many efforts over many years, too little had changed. Government must avoid prescription and micro initiatives and let communities decide how any new funds are spent. Existing funds could also be pooled and services delivered in new ways.
Community power must be built into the government’s forthcoming Devolution strategy, which starts from the bottom up. The more we can show examples of this working well, the more likely it is to happen.
Local government and public bodies must play a role in managing any new Levelling-Up funds but need to give more power to local people, following the principle of subsidiarity.
They and other organisations must do much more to ‘integrate with their communities’ through ‘radical listening’ committed to delivering the changes people want. They need to do this collectively, for example when seeking to co-produce with local people, rather than pursuing separate exercises and atomised approaches.
There must be investment in new structures, relationships and capacity building to achieve this agenda, perhaps called ‘Neighbourhood Democracy’, and the new structures must have teeth. LEPs are not the answer.
In more detail
The roundtable was introduced by Laura Seebohm, the Better Way’s convenor in the North, who explained that the issue for discussion was how can we level up in ways that lead to a sharing of power with communities, while also achieving system-wide impact. She said that the Better Way network has been exploring ways of sharing power and we have seen a growing momentum across the North for this, with encouraging examples of radical systemic change. The challenge now is to make sure that, as funding hopefully becomes available, we get the architecture and infrastructure right to place power and money with the right people at the right level. She introduced the four initial speakers who would kick discussion off.
Danny Kruger MP, who has written a report commissioned by the PM on the role of communities and levelling-up, and is also a founding member of a Better Way, said that now was a potential moment for change. Many people had been inspired by the community spirit shown in the first lockdown, and the flexibility shown by the public sector. His report, which reflected ideas gathered widely, called for more investment in social infrastructure and greater community power. The forthcoming Devolution White Paper, although delayed, would be important. He favoured a bottom up model of empowerment: this is not as clear cut as recruiting more mayors but had greater potential. He thought the Better Way principles, which he had helped to draw up, embodied how that should work.
Finally, he said that the more that we can do to show this can work through actual examples, the more likely it is to happen.
Nadine Smith, UK Director of Centre for Public Impact, said that, compared to other countries over the last 20 years, the UK Government had focused on effectiveness but far less so on being legitimate. Other countries which had taken legitimacy more seriously had been better prepared for the pandemic. There are examples of administrations in the UK that had tried to build legitimacy through forms of participative democracy, e.g. in Wigan and Camden, but we haven’t seen a ‘whole mindset shift’ in the UK, she said, even though the New Public Management model was dying on its feet. Government needs to be an enabler, not a controller, and without this the levelling-up agenda would fail. Key focus must be:
Listening, with investment in feedback loops, eg the Swedish Regional Co-ordinator approach set up after 2008 crash.
Learning – networks learning together with equity in the relationship.
Relationships - this requires equity in the relationship and time to build relationships with communities.
Chris Marsh, from Doncaster Metropolitan Borough Council and People’s Powerhouse, said that he had 30 years’ experience of translating policy into action on the ground and had seen many initiatives come and go, for example, the New Deal for Communities, Total Place and Opportunity Areas. It was important to learn from the past. Such initiatives were in general characterised by three main truths:
They were nearly always short term – and not long enough to deliver real change.
They were mostly top down – what people in Whitehall thought was logical, not what people wanted.
Didn’t set out to reform the things that are really making people feel powerless.
They did not seek to change local economies or the way in which public services work, but focused on ‘better co-ordination’, with the premise that things are okay as they are, just need to be better run. They did not strengthen voice.
Going forward, he made some suggestions:
Think about local economies so that they hold wealth in eg social value procurement, as in Preston.
Rather than ‘community improvement districts’, with greater freedoms and responsibilities to design new models of local social and economic policy, as proposed in Danny Kruger’s report, think of ‘neighbourhood improvement districts’.
Market failure exists in the public sector, so set up true joint ventures with local communities at the centre. We need to think differently about how we offer support.
Use asset based approaches – a profoundly different way of delivering.
Make more use of deliberative and participatory democracy approaches – elected councillors are not enough especially in areas where people need voice the most.
John McCabe, Board member of North East Local Enterprise Partnership, amongst other roles, explained that the timing of roundtable coincided with North East LEP Recovery and Renewal Deal proposal, which they had just put to government, seeking more funding. What shone through was the importance of listening and collaboration, which they had practised in drawing up these ideas. He ran through some of the key points, including a job recovery New Deal and initiatives to create a more connected North East. His overarching point was: now was the time to be unashamedly ambitious – if not now, when?
Jill Baker, from Lloyds Bank Foundation, said she was frustrated by how little change there had been in the last 40 years, with longstanding inequalities still existing and health inequalities growing. She said that there was a lot of money already out there which could be used differently but this wouldn’t happen without ‘breaking a few things’. For this to happen, we need to listen and build relationships with real ‘live people’ and let go of egos and break down silos.
Ideas from the group
We then broke into groups to discuss the issue. Points given in feedback to the plenary included:
Integrating with communities.
We spend too much time trying to get organisations integrated, when the real focus must be to integrate organisations with communities. This needs capacity building, a bonfire of outputs and measures, and greater collaboration between multiple funders.
Organisations also need to join forces so they can jointly co-produce with communities. It is unlikely existing structures will work for them and the end result may be radical change.
Listening which produces results.
Resources need to be put into radical listening ie listening which has radical results. Too often organisations say they have listened when they haven’t, and you have to listen to what you don’t want to hear and avoid preconceptions.
Once you’ve listened, you need to connect findings at a local, regional and national level – the Swedish model of regional co-ordination was mentioned again.
Building power in communities.
Power needs to be given away but do this we need to build trust, create relationships and give people in communities space and time just ‘to be’ and express their own agenda, not ours. This requires a real culture change.
Public investment is needed in capacity building, for example through community organisers and small charities and other organisations that carry out a connecting role.
It’s important that power is equally held in a community, which it isn’t often, and help create communities and enable them to come and stay together.
Local government must be part of the picture in managing any levelling-up fund or other initiatives such as pooled budgets. But they need to work with others and work at listening.
A new architecture is needed which allows people to collaborate and engage, long term. LEPs are not the answer. All this needs teeth. There was a suggestion that this should be called ‘Neighbourhood Democracy’.
There was some cynicism about commissions, citizens assemblies etc when time and resource go into the process but nothing comes out.
A Levelling Up Fund
A national Levelling Up social infrastructure fund would be very welcome, but only if there are devolved budgets. Danny’s report needed to stop half way through at the point where the principles were outlined, and then give power to people to decide.
We also need to be honest and talk about the impact of austerity when we talk about levelling-up.
Overall, the message was: we need to be radical – ‘go big or go home’.