Spending cuts to drive regeneration to local level

Author: Local Government Chronicle - Apr 30, 2010

Councils and their partners will have to take a small scale, practical, “bottom up” approach to renewal in deprived areas in anticipation of cuts to regeneration funding and severe public spending restraint, a thinktank has said.

In a report aimed at exploring how regeneration can continue in the wake of the anticipated swingeing cuts to public spending over the next three to five years, the Young Foundation report said councils, housing associations and other public agencies will need to think differently about how to break the cycle of entrenched poverty and disadvantage on so-called “sink estates” in their areas.

The report, which aims to provide a “toolkit” for councils to develop new approaches to regeneration, particularly on small deprived estates, said that measures to tackle regeneration in the past have focused too much on the symptons of deprivation, such as crime, grime and anti-social behaviour, and have placed too little emphasis on addressing the underlying social issues that keep particular neighbourhoods in poverty.

It adds that regeneration funding, when it has been available, has too often been focused on improvements to the public realm or new physical developments, particularly retail or housing-led schemes, rather than more “holistic” interventions.

“On occasions neighbourhood regeneration includes initiatives to tackle localised worklessness or develop the local economy [but] this is not widespread. Very rarely do public agencies concentrate on social and emotional support to tackle entrenched deprivation,” the report said.

The report recommends that councils and their partners establish locally driven neighbourhood taskforces that aim to develop small scale practical interventions to address the social issues that intensify or contribute to deprivation on estates.

“The aim is to identify immediate and long term changes that can be made to improve the quality of life of residents,” the report said.

Such interventions could include increased emphasis on outreach work to build up the confidence and capacity of those in the community to take part in the activities on the estate, as well as providing more support for parenting and early year development, rather than a more traditional focus on anti-social behaviour and grime, the report said.

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