Time for us to have our institutions back! Thoughts on community-led regeneration.

Now don’t get me wrong, I think the rhetoric is right and that the problems the face our towns and cities must be right at the top of any regeneration agenda. Today’s comments from Grant Shapps, Conservative Housing Spokesman hit all the right buttons:

“We will send a signal to every struggling neighbourhood that instead of sitting tight and waiting for bureaucrats to come to the rescue, we will actively back local groups who demonstrate a vision to improve the place and community they call home. So a Conservative Government will give local people unprecedented new power over the future shape of their own communities.”

But this rhetoric doesn’t sound all that new. Back in 2001 the Joseph Rowntree Foundation was speaking approvingly of New Labour’s regeneration policies observing that:

“Particular importance is attached to a community-led approach in which local citizens and stakeholders engage in capacity building, community plans and devolved forms of local government.”

Each new order of central government takes the view that regeneration starts and finishes with the people who live, work and play in these troubled places. And ends up with a hodge-podge of policies directing relatively small amounts of money from one central pot to another. Local communities are not afforded any real control over decision-making (we mustn’t upset the local council big-wigs must we) and are fobbed off with consultation on proposals decided upon elsewhere and for other reasons.

What we don’t need is another round of “area-based initiatives” bunging money to selected communities – whether through New Labour’s make-believe “evidence-based policy making” or Tory-style (and now pretty Brownite) competitive bidding. These approaches – as we saw in the past – merely result in ‘begging bowl’ politics.

I recall the 1990s in Bradford with each new Labour council leader speaking of how poor, sad and deprived the city was and how it needed extra special attention (and the nasty, bad Tories weren’t giving enough) – it was truly sickening and did untold damage to the image and confidence of the city. After ten years of telling us the place was a dump, Labour had succeeded in persuading much of the local population that this was the case. And we’re paying the price for this every day.

The remedy – if that’s the right word – doesn’t lie in new funds, competitive bidding or even in supporting “community leadership”. It lies in handing control of key institutions back to local people and their representatives. In taking away the assumption of bureaucratic superiority built into key local institutions such as the police, the hospitals, primary care, social services and planning.

The “professional” leadership of these organisations – Chief Constables, Directors of Social Services, NHS Chief Executives and the like - has failed our cities and all they can now do is either blame each other or blame the people who live in these cities. Perhaps it’s time give ordinary people back their institutions?