First salvo in the town planners' war on community is fired...

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I recall a planner - a very senior planner - describing the localism act and its neighbourhood planning ideas as "the thin end of the wedge". It is a threat to their power and control - and they want it stopped:

The neighbourhood plan for Dawlish had been drawn up by a steering group of local representatives, including Dawlish Town Council and Teignbridge District Council.

The plan, which proposes 900 new homes over the next 20 years, has been examined by Christopher Balch, professor of planning at Plymouth University.

This is the first - an experiment that looked to be going well until this representative of the planning world arrived:

Balch’s report, published today, said that the plan reflected the National Planning Policy Framework by "providing a positive approach to plan-led growth". But he added that "it is not possible to demonstrate that the provision for housing growth is based on an objective assessment of housing requirements", as Teignbridge District Council’s emerging core strategy is yet to have been settled.

You see, dear readers, the local community had done it for themselves and hadn't employed the services of Professor Balch or his pals. So:

Balch said that Dawlish’s proposed neighbourhood plan is "neither positively prepared nor justified".

His report recommends that the Dawlish neighbourhood plan should not proceed to a referendum. In a letter to the council, Balch said: "This could only take place once the strategic policies of Teignbridge District Council have been settled and changes had been made to ensure full conformity."

That's it - the plans are no good because they don't confirm with other plans that have yet to be drawn up. Other plans that will involve planners not the local communities. And so - in my judgement contrary to the spirit of localism - Professor Balch, in the interest of planners everywhere has fired the first salvo in their resistance to communities having any say in what is, or is not, built in those communities.

I hope the referendum goes ahead and sticks Professor Balch's report where the sun don't shine.

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What is regeneration for then? A comment on the Select Committee report...

I mean seriously how can we begin to know whether a given regeneration strategy, policy or programme is right or wrong, effective or ineffective when we seem not to have the first inkling as to what we mean by regeneration.

For some regeneration is simply the process of transferring money to poor communities rather than redistribution to poor people. It is a victory for the collective outlook, for the idea that deprivation is communal rather than personal and individual. And the worst among these people are the poverty-mongers, those who argue against the sin of ‘gentrification’ who seem to delight in the existence of the poor. For whom the elimination of poverty is a goal until the improvement of a place transforms its demographics when we are told we’re pushing poor people out.

Others see regeneration as a process of development – the improvement of the physical environment of a place so as to enable change, most usually economic change and typically change driven by shiny office blocks or sleek business parks. This – what we might call the ‘field of dreams’ approach to regeneration – relies on the belief that places cannot fix themselves, that inward investment is critical to regeneration. And they make a mission with the poverty-mongers by promising the jobs and economic advancement they demand as the price of preventing gentrification.

Whatever approach to regeneration is taken it has a vital element – government funding. Here’s the conclusion of the communities and local government select committee:

Funding for regeneration has been reduced "dramatically and disproportionately" over the past two years, and unless alternative sources can be found, there is a risk of problems being stored up for the future

The government is wrong to place so much emphasis on funding streams such as the New Homes Bonus, the Regional Growth Fund and rail investment, which, "whatever their benefits, are not focused primarily upon regeneration"

The withdrawal of Housing Market Renewal funding in particular has created significant problems, "leaving many residents trapped in half-abandoned streets"

The government has "apparently paid little regard" to the lessons from previous approaches to regeneration

There are concerns that, in spite of its aspirations for ‘community-led regeneration’, the government’s approach will do little to support it. At a time of significant spending reductions, many of the community groups most closely involved in regeneration are uncertain about their future

Other than learning lessons from past regeneration programmes, every single one of these conclusions is about funding – about the direction of taxpayers’ money to the process of regeneration. Yet the very lesson from the past – one that coalition ministers seem to have learned despite the best efforts of “experts” to persuade them otherwise – is that 40 years of intervention in “deprived communities” simply hasn’t worked.

Targeted, area-based regeneration doesn’t work – especially when it’s mostly nice middle-class community development workers going into poor communities and stroking them while sympathising about the lack of good schools, jobs and aspiration. Yet the regeneration industry trooped down to London so as to give evidence to this select committee – or rather to plead the case for their industry’s continuing existence despite forty years of failure.

 

The truth about poverty – and poor people – is that most of it (that is most of those poor people) isn’t in places with multiple deprivations. For sure, those deprived places have a high proportion of poor people but people without jobs, the elderly without savings or pensions, single mums and others struggling to get by are in every neighbourhood.

Our regeneration efforts should be directed to people who are poor – be it in cash or aspiration – rather than to selected communities chosen because there’s a concentration of poor people. Our aim should be to “renew” people rather than to “regenerate” places.

In the end the regeneration debate is a dead end. Scoffing at the government because they say “it’s up to neighbourhoods” takes us nowhere. And saying there’s no strategy suggests that, without those middle class community development and regeneration “experts”, people and places can’t improve.

If those “experts” want to make a difference, let them go to these places and make a business of improving them. Not by grant farming but through enterprise and effort. Not by taking government cash to pay themselves good wages but by reaping the dividend from the success of others – the value that comes from helping someone out of poverty.

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Wednesday Whimsy: good neighbour or busybody?

The Old Sunday School, Wilsden - shows how Parish Councils can help get stuff done

Busybody n.; pl. Busybodies One who officiously concerns himself or herself with the affairs of others; a meddling person.

Driving along Laneside from Harecroft into Wilsden, I was taken by the sight of Jack Clapham trudging up the hill from his house towards a neighbour’s carrying what appeared to be a weeks worth of shopping. It wouldn’t surprise me that Jack – or his wife Freida – care enough about neighbours to get their shopping for them. After all he puts up a poster for me!

I know of others who do similar – not as members of some occult society and not with any purpose other than to do the right thing. And this is a good thing – sadly pushed aside by left-wing folk who seem to see volunteering as some kind of threat to the employment of “public sector workers

But I’m not here to have a moan about the public sector but to ask a different question. A question about privacy and about the busybody – a question made more interesting by Harrow Council’s decision to employ a vast army of busybodies to check up on “the neighbourhood”.

Now Jack Clapham’s not a busybody – he just likes to help his neighbour – but some folk who get involved in “community groups” and Parish Councils end up with busybody-ish tendencies! Let me explain.

It’s none of my business if Mr Jones across the village wants to extend his house, build a new garage or put up a nine foot high fence. It's certainly none of my business if he wishes to pave his front garden and park a couple of vans on it. I might assist a neighbour of Mr Jones who wishes to object – but that’s helping out. The matter remains none of my business. For some who, given the chance to criticise the design of someone’s proposed dormer or the siting of their garden shed, leap at the chance even though it is none of their business. That is being a busybody.

It shouldn’t bother me that the local farmer has set up a brewery in his outbuildings (in fact I think this a good thing) and I don’t give a toss whether it does or doesn’t comply with this or that regulation. But some care not that our farmer is bothering nobody. His brewery is not a proper use in the Green Belt and must be stopped. And does he have the right licenses? That is being a busybody.

By all means go on a Parish Council, join the Community Association, set up a neighbourhood watch or run a community clean up. These are good neighbourly things to do. But please keep your neb out from other’s business when it doesn’t concern you. And don’t be a busybody.