Some boom amid the gloom

Andrew Stunell: "The Localism Bill presents a lot of positive news for local government. We are devolving power back to local authorities, communities, and individual people up and down the country. Lib Dems have long campaigned for power to flow from the bottom-up not top-down. The “Man in Whitehall” doesn’t know best, and the publication of the Localism Bill marks the end of Labour’s top-down presumption they know more than local people about how their area should be run."

Andrew Stunell is the Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department of Communities and Local Government. The above is reproduced with acknowledgements to Liberal Democrat Voice.

Some further thoughts on Community Empowerment

"Community empowerment is about people and government, working together to make life better. It involves more people being able to influence decisions about their communities, and more people taking responsibility for tackling local problems, rather than expecting others to."

The above is the definition of Community Empowerment as given by the Department of Communities and Local Government.

This is not to say that DCLG's definition is necessarily the best one, of course, neither should we accept without question the right of a government department to impose its interpretation upon us all. Nevertheless, as an attempt to put flesh onto the bones of an abstract concept it is a surprisingly good starting point.

Yesterday Councillor Paul Fisher and I attended a one-day conference at London's Cavendish Conference Centre on the theme "Community Ownership of Assets - Creating Strong and Sustainable Communities", which discussed and debated the innovative Quirk Review into asset ownership.

Community Empowerment has, of course, been the core objective of the ICG since the day it was formed. Back then in 1994 the concept was unfashionable, particularly in the context of our own local authority, where organisational Stalinism was to survive Labour's lurch to the right of the political spectrum in policy terms.

It is gratifying to know that our vision has come into vogue even though, other than perhaps in Hounslow, it is unlikely that we as a Group actually contributed in any way towards this new departure.

As I see it there are essentially two schools of thought on the question of Community Empowerment. At the recent Housing Conference in Harrogate I was appalled to hear a speaker delivering himself of the view that all the community aspired to was good services, and that in the event of such being delivered members of the public were happy to sit back and let the political elite get on with the business of making decisions on their behalf. It is a view which I personally would always instinctively associate with New Labour, but in this instance I had been surprised to learn that the speaker was in fact a Liberal Democrat.

That is one school of thought. The other is that which would tend to be associated with the ICG, that holders of political office are morally, if not legally, delegated to act as those who elected them instruct, and that the true source of power lies with the community which put them where they are. Whilst it is necessary for the efficient working of local government for holders of political office to make decisions on a day to day basis, all reasonable efforts should be made to involve the community itself in the decision-making process, in a meaningful as opposed to a tokenistic way, to the greatest extent possible.

Yesterday's conference seemed to flow from the assumption that the second school of thought has it right. Several speakers gave their views as to how this might best be achieved. Most of it was very interesting.

However, one disappointing aspect of the whole debate for me was the fact that every speaker, without exception, seemed to equate Community Empowerment solely with grant funding. The more money which is given to communities and their organisations, so the logic went, the more free and independent they become.

It is undoubtedly true that community initatives do need funding. It would be absurd to argue against this. However it is equally true that funding can actually work against the whole ethos of Community Empowerment. We have seen this in Hounslow, indeed I have seen it in Isleworth - on my own estate - where grant funding is given which the recipient becomes dependent upon, and then the political conditions become evident which, if not fulfilled, lead to the threatened withdrawal of the funding and, if the threat is carried out, the subsequent collapse of the group.

This is not Community Empowerment. This is Community Enslavement.

There is a certain breed of political animal which seems to talk about nothing but grant funding, revenue streams and so on. They seem to speak in a language all of their own. I confess to finding such people tiresome.

Community Empowerment is an ideal, not a commodity which can be purchased. Community Empowerment is about creating irreversable channels through which the community can direct government, local and national.

If, having created those irreversable channels, you then still wish to give us your money, it will seldom be refused.

Everybody Matters - making Community Cohesion work

I've heard it said that the good thing about losing one's memory is that one gets to meet new friends every day!

Whether that is true or not, I had an extraordinary piece of good fortune when I arrived at the Civic Centre this morning for the sole purpose of treating myself to one of the surprisingly tasty English breakfasts which they serve up in our canteen. For en route to said canteen I encountered a number of Somali ladies and gentlemen, including my good friend Hassan Isse, who naturally assumed that I had turned up to attend the Annual General Meeting of the Refugee Employment & Training Initiative (RETI), which I had promised to do and to which I had been looking forward very much. But for whatever reason I hadn't noted the date in my diary, and would have missed it but for the call of my rumbling tum.

RETI is an organisation which provides advice and assistance to newly-arrived immigrants and their families with a view to helping them to integrate more easily into British society. Although heavily rooted in the Somali community, it is reaching out to other groups and amongst those I encountered today were Albanians, Kosovans, Nepalese and Tamils. Despite its name it provides services to members of these groups irrespective of whether or not they have attained British citizenship, a fact which has led some members of RETI to question whether the misnomer "Refugee" should now be dropped from its name.

Initiatives such as RETI should provoke healthy debate amongst those of us who hold the view of the current administration at the London Borough of Hounslow that there should be more emphasis on what unites the people of Hounslow, a thoroughly multi-cultural community with over 120 languages spoken, rather than on what divides us. Knowing some of my colleagues within the coalition the instinct might well be, perhaps understandably, to see RETI as being more a product of the old mentality, providing special services for some sections of the community and not for others.

It is worth considering therefore the three foundations on which Community Cohesion is built, according to the Department of Communities and Local Government:

• People from different backgrounds having similar life opportunities

• People knowing their rights and responsibilities

• People trusting one another and trusting local institutions to act fairly
  

It is the first of these that we need to consider. There is ample evidence to suggest that members of the Somali and many other newly arrived communities are less likely to find employment, less likely to achieve at school and more likely to experience mental health issues than other members of our society, be they from the majority community or from the more settled and established minority groups. Pretending this fact isn't there and not talking about it will not make it any less of a fact. We cannot, at least according to DCLG, achieve cohesion between groups of people who have different life opportunities to one another.

Groups such as RETI aspire to create a level playing field. In other words they want to create conditions within our society which make integration and cohesion more, not less, achievable. To that end I believe they should be supported and encouraged.

I share the revulsion of all my colleagues within the coalition towards the tacky, cynical vote-buying approach which the previous administration took in its support for some elements of the Voluntary Sector. But in our rejection of this approach we need to be clever, and resist the temptation to throw the baby out with the bathwater in the process of making some grand gesture. We should make our support for the Voluntary Sector work for Community Cohesion, just as our predecessors made it work for themselves.

RETI is one of many groups which, if successful, will pave the way for a united, cohesive and integrated Hounslow. But as it blossoms from beyond its purely Somali origins and reaches out to other newly-arrived groups I can foresee this particular organisation, possessed as it is of dedicated, astute, charismatic and highly intelligent leadership, becoming a very major player in the Community Cohesion work which is so important to me and to all of my colleagues.

These people deserve all the help and support we can give them.