The Campaign Company Blog

Empowerment to the People!!

Richard Wilson Director of Involve has posted an article on the Guardian Blog about the "empowerment gap" and gives an excellent overview of how the government has sought to tackle it over the last decade.

I commented on it and made 3 points, which I expand on in much greater detail here:

• As Richard points out there has been a lot of progress, but as a result of many of these initiatives being driven by individual government departments through the relationship with relevant local agencies there has been uneven empowerment development across public sector bodies within localities. So for example, some sections of local government (eg, planning) may be far ahead of other departments in the local authority as well as compared to other local bodies like Primary Care Trust's (PCT's). There would be nothing wrong with this if it were a conscious decision arising out of collective local priorities, but this has actually emerged through many, sometimes unconnected, decisions made at various times in separate Whitehall departments. The next stage could be to develop a combined empowerment agenda at Local Strategic Partnership (LSP) level, to enable local public sector and voluntary bodies to advance together and become collectively more accountable to the communities they serve. Ways to achieve this might include: LSP's to jointly commission single public engagement units in each local government area which would benefit from economies of scale with duplication of savings ploughed back into more engagement; agreeing common local standards to various consultations; strengthening the scrutiny function in local government as well as perhaps even developing a formal scrutiny function for MP's over their own local public services?
• Capacity building is vital and part of this requires greater investment in community leadership support and training at a local level. This should not just be aimed at Councillors but should also be targeted at less well-off communities. TCC has already done work on developing local community champions for communities covering specific policy areas like recycling, but also in a wider role. This approach can help develop the local leaders of the future and widen their representativeness and diversity. This would be a broader approach than rely simply on the electoral process in a locality to throw up a small number of individuals who might then receive training from their local authority. Early intervention here can widen the pool of local leaders thus helping to build wider local trust in institutions.
• TCC, in working with PCT's, has discovered that in reviewing services there is an issue around "low expectations" whereby people may say a service is fine because they have no way to compare it with the equivalent in another area: eg you may find that people say they are happy with GP services, even when they do not compare well with somewhere else. This can also be linked to the wider "Delivery Paradox" whereby people say they are satisfied with their local service, but feel the same service is as a whole declining. So far the government has generally relied on league tables and delivery incentives from the centre to drive up some improvement, but if expectations are low in the first place, there is much less local pressure from below on organisations to improve. Greater local democratic accountability is clearly part of the solution, but is probably not enough on its own. Training up "expert residents" in local communities to learn more about what is happening elsewhere and be able to assert themselves as part of a wider community champion scheme might be a way forward to help build a critical mass for higher local expectations. We have formal twinning between Council's in different countries across Europe and even with the developing world, why don't we have twinning within the UK so Council's twin with other Council's to share knowledge and good practice with much of the work being done online to ensure value for money. Most local authorities will have historic connections with many others across the country so the decision over who to twin with could be quite an interesting process in its own right. Twinning could also be taken further so good practice is shared between twinned LSP's and therefore services in areas like health are twinned too.

Increased social capital makes for a more socially cohesive society. Community Empowerment provides an opportunity to challenge complacency at the local level, whilst making people feel they can influence more at a national level.

As Richard says in his article, we don't need countless repeat measures to tell us that. What we need is to use the current broad political consensus in this area to make some clear progress in wider local empowerment in the coming years!

From Elliptical Galaxies to Potholes......

I have previously mentioned Grid Republic as a social network for a scientific or medical purpose, whereby a community of people across the world get together to use their spare computing power to do distributed computing with a capacity in terraflops - ie very big - through a rather clever screensaver download.

However this is a passive form of science where one just allows one's computer to be used for a wider purpose.

Yesterday evening I discovered Galaxy Zoo - a far more exciting piece of scientific endeavour where you can directly contribute to the scientific work online.

In this case you are helping astrophysicists to map distributions of various types of galaxy (elliptical and spiral are the two broad forms, but there are lots of sub-groups) by joining the online team (now 115,000 strong since the project started in July 2007) assessing photos of over 200 million objects taken by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). This will assist with a far greater understanding of the lifecycle of galaxies, many of which go through mergers to move from spiral to elliptical - our own Galaxy's probable fate.

Whilst computers can be used to assess many things, when it comes to indistinct photos of two merging galaxies edge on to earth view the eye and the brain are still superb tools. However the sheer amount of data being generated means scientists and their students do not have the time to do this themselves and should they be wasting their discovery time anyway?

This is a project where anyone online at home can help.

You need no prior knowledge to take part in the work. Once you join Galaxy Zoo you are given simple online tutorials and in order to start assessing pictures you then take a short online test where you have to get 8 out of 15 pictures right - this is because they get up to 35 people to look at each photo and then recheck any disagreements between viewers.

Having passed the test you can then assess photos. For someone like myself who spent every non cloudy night from the age of 10 to 11 outdoors in the evening doing astronomy, this is a much warmer experience and could get quite addictive in a Sudoku sort of way! I did 45 galaxies last night and have resisted doing it tonight only so I could blog about it.

Apart from its benefits to astrophysics, I have started to think whether such a system could be used in other more terrestrial areas of activity.

A few came to mind:

• Assessing the millions of earth satellite photos to identify issues such as climate change and land use. On a more local level TCC has a project called Carbon Crime Stoppers and I wonder whether a photo assessment system could work with that?
• It could be used for community engagement where residents could both submit and assess street scene photos that either other residents had taken of the Council regularly took from its front-line staff going about their daily duties with handheld PDA's. This of course would be a culture change for local government where it effectively employed teams of online resident non-professionals. However creating resident buy in with the prioritisation of street scene issues could be a great way of developing community cohesion in the future.
• Assessing biodiversity in local authority parks and gardens through the taking and assessment of photos. Again this could bring together communities in worthwhile projects.

The above are just tentative thoughts and I would welcome further suggestions.

What is interesting is that this sort of project could give young people a strong and empowered role in any local activity. Galaxy Zoo says it has young people from 8 years old upwards assessing photos.

Therefore in years to come both science and community cohesion could strongly benefit from online communities collaborating to solve problems. What might have started as project to understand galactic evolution could be just the thing to massively expand the collaboration between local authorities and the communities they represent.

Googling Alone! - A quick way to assess local social capital

You may have heard of the book Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam where he surveys the decline of social capital and suggests how it can be revived. The evidence base is generally drawn from American sources, however the points he make are very much applicable to other developed democracies.

Putnam conducted a lot of research for his book, but many working in their community trying to assess social capital for their area do not the time or the academic resources Putnam had.

Perhaps there is a web 2.0 solution?

If you are reading this article, there is a good chance you use Google or another good web search engine. If you use Google a lot you may be aware of many of its search facilities. One of the most interesting is if you type a full postcode in you get many internet entries associated with that geographical area.

As someone who was a Councillor for 20 years, I was fortunate in having a pretty good understanding of the social geography of my area. As a result recently I started typing in postcodes for some of the wealthier areas of my borough and some of the poorest.

The results were reasonably predictable. In areas that were quite wealthy you would find postings for people who ran their own businesses or were in community groups. In poorer areas you would generally find websites that related to wider public sector bodies but little community or small scale enterprise activity. At times I found up to 10 times as many pages for a relatively well-off residential road with no other facilities compared to a poorer area of flatted social housing.

Of course some might say it is all about access to home computers between poor and well off areas and that in poorer areas it is the mobile phone that has much more usage. A fair point. However in this much more connected world access to and participation on the internet can be a reinforcing factor for developing social capital in wealthier areas. The fact that the gap is so wide in the number of Google pages is a useful proxy indicator for quickly assessing levels of basic social capital and social connectedness.

What can we do about this?

One idea I had was that Local Strategic Partnerships (LSP) could trawl every postcode in their locality and ensure they are connected with every group listed. I suspect there is good software that can automate much of this process. This in itself might go some way to increase the overall stock of social capital across a local authority area as more groups and individuals would be connected to key local stakeholders. A far-sighted LSP might even seek to connect people within a community together through encouraging the development of geographical based social networking software similar to Residents HQ that I have previously blogged about.

Another thought was for Local Strategic Partnerships to identify 10-20 postcodes with low Google pages and perhaps conduct a pilot survey of them regarding internet access. It may be that residents are not using free facilities in local libraries? Some extra publicity and perhaps even the sort of doorstep engagement that TCC recommends for many projects could be easily provided. This could be linked to an offer of simple computer training.

This sort of approach might go some way to connecting people up and creating the sort of network effects that can perhaps start to increase the stock of social capital in some poorer communities.

Registering to Vote - Making you Count!

Never having learned to drive, means I use the bus a lot which means I get a bit of extra time to devour more of a newspaper - that way giving me a few extra new thoughts on a wider range of subjects. Being in TCC also means I like looking at how other people get their message across and also how we can Make Democracy Work!

When you combine this together you get blog postings like this!

As I got off the bus stop I always look at the bus stop advertising. This is not because I am an avid consumer - indeed I am probably quite a non-materialist really. It is because social marketing campaigns - an area which TCC works in - are often advertised at bus stops.

This time I saw an advert for registering to vote for the London Mayoral election. I didn't think it was a good poster - it wasn't a great design and didn't really encourage you to register, though I suppose it was helpful as an information item. There is clearly a need to advertise registration as up to 1 million Londoners might not be registered to vote in May in the GLA elections. As I walked on to the library I then mentally challenged myself as to what I would do instead!

It struck me that what real incentive was there to make young people want to register? Having your say is hardly tangible in a mature consumer democracy like the UK. It is not as if a young person is going to struggle like many South African voting for the first time after a lot of queueing in 1994.

Many young people may also make the ostensibly rational consumerist calculation, that "will my single vote make any difference"? Until we teach more about the science of change at an earlier age and that small acts really do make a difference either by making a big change on its own or being part of an amplification of a change this rationalisation will continue to exist. As Bobby Kennedy said in South Africa in 1966:

"Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centres of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."

In addition for some sort of Tipping Point to occur, such as the collapse of a pile of sand, it needed a single grain of sand to move.

Collapsing sand and Bobby Kennedy's soaring rhetoric might be an interesting explanation to me, but are not a great incentive for others leading busy lives in a reasonably secure democracy where voting and politics in general are lower down their priority list.

The insight I had at the bus stop and on the way to the library - where I am now typing this blog posting - was that it was the act of registering itself that was the problem. For all the centuries of developing democracy, is a vote every few years a great return on filling in a form?

Unlike the past when the registration form was one of the more important things you filled in every year, we all now fill in hundreds of forms a year, many online and many much more exciting or important than the humble electoral registration form. In other words, in an era of mortgage applications, bank loans and overseas holidays, the poor old electoral registration form had fallen down the hierarchy of important acts that you do.

What we need is to make registering to vote a lot more of a key thing, not just for young people but for citizens of all ages.

In recent years the main debate on registration has been on security and voting fraud and whether there should be individual registration or household registration. As one can imagine, this has not been a great encouragement to either registering or voting.

I think this is a false choice as with all the digital databases we now have we can actually have both types of registration, with one acting as a check on the other. Where an individual registration conflicts with a household return, the local authority electoral registration unit should check the issue out. This might require greater resources to operate, but my other suggestions below also recommend more resources being spent on this key entrance point to democratic participation.

Below are a few of my ideas for reforming the electoral registration process for all voters that not only assists with registration itself but also encourages voting:

• Should first registering to vote be done at schools like an internal Citizenship ceremony. With the school leaving age soon to be 18, this could be a key role for them and the culmination of years of PHSE lessons.
• The registration form should come with a standard booklet explaining all your opportunities to participate. Some would be things that already exist. Some extra forms of participation are suggested below.
• The registration form should offer you text message and email notice of public debates hosted by your local authority where Councillors are available to answer questions a few times a year.
• Many people say they want to have their say. The registration form should offer you an online local authority level discussion area where the local strategic partnership and your MP will hold online sessions so they can be questioned, with online votes on issues etc.
• It should offer you an opportunity to register for annual free draws to meet the Prime Minster and the cabinet and opposition party leaders perhaps with a few days holiday in a London hotel thrown in to make it more of a holiday.
• For young people how about a free draw to enable some to have their child trust fund topped up or your university tuition fees written off. Over the next few years we will see people realise how valuable the child trust fund is and that adding to that will become an increasing incentive to many families.
• You could request to join a political party and specify which one you wanted to join. This would have to be a party registered with the Electoral Commission, but the local authority would then pass your name on to the relevant national party to follow up if they wished.
• You could request to become a school governor or to sit on a local government outside body or a local community group or charity. The local authority could then add you to a list that the Councillors could use to draw from a wider range of experience. This approach might even help with improving political party recruitment and making them more representative of their communities.

Some might disagree with some of these ideas or might have other, even better, suggestions. My fundamental point is that filling a form for a single democratic purpose that has been unchanged for many years, is not enough in these more complex times. The form should be transformed into a gateway into a whole range of participatory democratic activity. That way we all should have more opportunities to make democracy work!

The Death of Communities?

The Independent on Sunday has coverage of a study by the Prince's Trust about community decline. The report claims that a third of people are predicting the death of their communities as traditional social networks decline in the face of rapid change in the composition of communities.

The report claims that:

"Most people believe the days of face-to-face contact are numbered, with 65 per cent saying that people in the future will have more contact through the internet than in person. Almost one in 10 Britons, nine per cent, admits to failing to meet other people socially on a weekly basis. And 15 per cent go a week without speaking to any of their neighbours."

More significantly from a community cohesion perspective the report claims that:

"Poorer communities are the least confident about the future of their community and the least satisfied with life in general. More than one in five people here said they had not spoken to a neighbour for at least a week, while eight per cent have not spoken to a neighbour for at least a month."

The Independent also reports on laudable actions by government and the voluntary and private sector to support those poorer communities. Whilst one can always argue for more resources, a more important issue is how we use existing resources better. Two things come to mind:

• Investing in community assets so they draw in a wider community of people to increase social interactions and strengthen social networks.
• Supporting people in the community to act as local champions and advocates - perhaps through a relaxing of some inflexible benefits rules to enable them to be better supported in the work they could do talking to a range of local people.

TCC, working with the New Deal for Communities (NDC) Network as well as with local authorities on community cohesion, has come to the view that it is investment in some of those smaller changes that can make a bigger change in the long-run.

If we are to either sustain or rebuild social networks and community cohesion, it can only be through engaging with the people in a community and helping them to identify the shared challenges that face them and their neighbours. Only when you identify those challenges can you create a potential for dialogue across other cultural and social barriers.

Shameless Marketing

The Chatsworth estate is heading for its second election (remember shopowner Kash was elected to Chatsworth Council at the end of series 3) and this time, if I've viewed the preview clips correctly, this gritty Mancunian housing estate will be electing their own Young Mayor.

As a programme, that I'm a great fan of, which has taken social commentary to, occassionally unbelieveable, dramatic heights I can't help wondering what might be in store for our candidates and what the writers have decided should be the moral tale told with this next election.

Previews of story lines for the episode (5) suggest that 'Debbie spots a chance to provide free egg and chips to everyone on the estate' (courtesy of the Radio Times) - could it be a bribe to help her chosen candidate get elected? Well, like me, you'll just have to wait and see whether the writers have decided that participation in elections should be equated with spoils politics - even if the spoils, in true Shameless style, is free egg and chips.

On a more serious note though, well done to the Shameless team for a piece of Shameless marketing for youth empowerment and participation. With any luck there'll be new young mayors or young leaders springing up in local politics all over the country - joining those already in post in places like Lewisham and Newham. And, as its the biggest focus in the UK for all those politicos this year, we can only hope that the candidates for this years London Mayor and Assembly elections are tuning in and thinking of new ways to involve young people, not yet able to legally vote, in the decision making that affects their lives.

Private Optimism, Public Despair - What can we do?

It has been long known that there is a general perception gap between what people might think of their local hospital and what they think of the NHS in general.

Matthew Taylor, Chief Executive of the RSA, writing in the New Statesman has talked about these difficulties but goes much further with an important and insightful article which looks to the future. He says:

"This perception gap is not restricted to public services, as a recent BBC poll on families confirms. Some 93 per cent of respondents described themselves as optimistic about their own family life, up 4 per cent from the previous time the survey was conducted, 40 years ago. Yet more people - 70 per cent, across race, class and gender - believe families are becoming less successful overall."

He also adds to the point by Polly Toynbee, that we have blogged, on the lack of advocates to tell good news in the public services when it happens:

"In the burgeoning industry of reputation management, it is generally argued that people are much more likely to tell others about bad experiences of services than good ones (5:1 is the usual ratio)."

He argues that trends such as the rise of individualism and the decline of some forms of collectivism combined with the rise of pretty much self-organising global capitalism moving at a rapid pace have created this private optimism and public despair, adding that:

"Globalisation is the gravity of modern society: an unstoppable force that will knock us over if we try to defy it."

Since the collapse of the cold war two systems in 1989 no single person or authority is in control even if some parts of the world are more powerful than others.

He points out that people still see the same broad problems as they did 100 years but now see rapid change as a challenge and seek greater comfort in those close to them.

However, he strikes an optimistic note saying that people are more affluent and healthy and yet there is a danger of some missing out on the celebration:

"Progressives want the world to be a better place. We bemoan its current inequities and oppression - yet if we fail to celebrate the progress that human beings have made, and if we sound as though the future is a fearful place, we belie our own philosophy. Instead, we need to address a deficit in social optimism that threatens the credibility of our core narrative."

Addressing social optimism is clearly a project for everyone. We have previously blogged about Richard Layard's case for increasing overall happiness and David Cameron has talked about the government having a mission to improve people's general wellbeing.

Matthew Taylor makes the case for a New Collectivism to tackle what he describes as the social optimism deficit:

"It is in working with others on a shared project of social advance that we can be reconnected to the sense of collective agency so missing from modern political discourse. It is the attitude of the spectator that induces pessimism, the experience of the participant that brings hope. The problem is not that change brings fear and disorientation (there's nothing new in this), it is that we lack the spaces and places where people can renew hope and develop solutions."

It was challenges like this that brought TCC into being and where we try to assist organisations. He then refers to the sort of change making we should all be attempting together:

"The institutions of the new collectivism must be devolved, pluralistic, egalitarian and, most of all, self-actualising."

This is the sort of approach that this blog argued for and it good to see the arguments so well set out here. He gives a number of examples of where this happening:

"Today, there are signs of a yearning for new ways of working together. There is the growing interest in social and co-operative enterprise and the emergence of new forms of online collaboration. Gordon Brown's citizens' juries are a tentative step in the right direction, albeit without much fun or risk-taking..."

and

"Tackling climate change offers a fascinating opportunity to interweave stories of action at the individual, community, national and international levels."

TCC is working in places like EC1 in London on increasing recycling whilst linking it firmly to the whole issue of climate change through initiatives that engage with young people.

He concludes by making a call for people to build the institutions of the new collectivism:

"Despite the huge impersonal forces of the modern world, people are prepared not only to believe in a better future, but to work together to build it......This potential will be fulfilled only when we provide spaces for collective decision-making and action that speak to the same vision of collaboration, creativity and human fulfilment that progressives claim to be our destiny."

Many of these new institutions of this new collectivism already exist: NHS Foundation Trusts, New Deal for the Communities (NDC's) aspiring to run community assets, social networking sites like Ning, Facebook and Myspace. These are a different set of institutions to perhaps those of the 1945 welfare settlement, but they are a potentially strong mixed economy of institutions nevertheless, and they and other new institutions need support to build a collaborative new collectivism for the future.

In addition there is also challenge for long established institutions, such as local government, to respond to this agenda and to ensure they can relate more effectively to the places where people are optimistic such as within the family unit, whatever size or shape it now comes in. That also means they have to make themselves more accommodating to the places that people are optimistic so they can engage within that space.

Institutions, in whatever form they come and new or old are the arguably finest piece of (social) technology we have created. The Saturn 5 may have put men on the moon, but it was the institutions of the state and their agencies and contractors that put that immense machine together, and educated and trained the men for that mission. Institutions or whatever age encourage collaborative and collective action so as Matthew Taylor has stated the more we strengthen them through peoples involvement in them the more likely we are to rebuild trust and social optimism.

Making Disempowerment History?

Quite a significant speech today from Nick Clegg, the new Leader of the Liberal Democrats, on reform of the public services.

Whilst most coverage will focus on his comments on schools, hospital and taxes, a significant theme of the speech was his comments on community empowerment. The Lib Dems have generally been strong promoters of devolution to local government and local Councillors, but Clegg went further saying:

"This also means embracing a wider understanding of empowerment: not just of local authorities and politicians, desirable though that is, but of pupils, patients and parents too.

Individual power must be an everyday thing, not just reserved for the moment a vote is cast in the ballot box."

This again strengthens the consensus in this area, thus making it easier for the government to move forward with wide public support.

The strengthening of Local Strategic Partnerships to increase joined up public services locally is one important aspect of public sector reform, but this must be combined with empowering local communities to take control of their local institutions and work together with such Partnerships to solve local problems. Not just hospitals and schools, but also smaller community assets. TCC has worked with residents in New Deal for Communities (NDC) areas, young people and with Hospitals developing their membership to make the aspirations of politicians for "pupils, patients and parents" to exercise their "individual power" as an "everyday thing", a reality.

What about the FT Governors?

The Local Government Association is today calling for 'NHS Trust directors (to be made) accountable to the elected representatives of the area' - Call for council power to fire hospital and police chiefs .Tonight Gerry Robinson is once again fixing the NHS in Rotherham on BBC2. What these two stories have in common is that they both ignore the potential role and mandate of the elected Governors of NHS Foundation Trusts. And who can really blame them? It must be a cause of anxiety for all FT enthusiasts (of which TCC is one) that FTs are finding it difficult to establish themselves as reference points when it comes to either democratic accountability or as an instrument to drive up service standards.

Using Plain English or Dumbing Down?

Apparently the Local Government Association has published a list of words that public bodies should try and not use if they want to communicate effectively with local people. Whilst I can understand why we should avoid some of them ('contestability' and 'place shaping have always been two of my favourites!), others seem perfectly reasonable-are terms such as 'good practise' and 'level playing field' really so arcane?Certainly no worse than old cliches such as 'It is absolutely vital that residents are told how to access services' which is trotted out in the LGA Press Release announcing its'non-word' list!

Young people in Lewisham don't need burgers to vote!

The recently published "Representing the Future" report from the Councillors Commission, suggests that voters should be offered incentives such as council tax discounts or fast food vouchers to persuade them to vote in elections.

However, the results of our most recent Young Mayor for Lewisham election prove that incentives aren't needed to get young people interested in democracy. With a turnout of 45% - well above the 34% turnout for Lewisham's adult mayoral election - this election continues to show that the following are the key ingredients for successful engagement:

1. Involve young people from the start - it's young people's slogans, designs and ideas on how to raise awareness that inform the election communications
2. Make it real - young people are voting for a Young Mayor who has a budget of £25,000 to spend on improving the lives of young people in the borough. They will have real authority.
3. Feedback on achievements - the Young Mayor and the Young Advisors who support him / her let their peers know what they are doing and how previous Young Mayoral budgets have been spent. If young people can see that their vote has made a difference they are more likely to listen and learn. (visit www.binvolved.org.uk to find out what the Lewisham Young Mayors have been up to over the past few years).

So adults listen and learn!

Is Civil Society Prepared for the Future?

Geoff Mulgan wrote in the Guardian yesterday about the Carnegie UK Trust Inquiry into the future of Civil Society. He was Chair of the Inquiry and in his article summarises some of the key findings.

Quite a few findings were pessimistic. Societal fragmentation, inequalities, racial tension, loss of public spaces (both physical and intangible) and increased fear through raised security against terrorism were all issues that could challenge civic society.

Third sector involvement in the delivery of public services was expected to modestly expand, but there was an issue of the private sector displacing the third sector in areas where it was established.

At the same time there was much greater debate, public awareness, government interest and cross-party consensus over the need to support civil society than the past and no senior politician ever argues "there is no such thing" nowadays!

Geoff Mulgan concludes by posing the question:

"So is civil society prepared for the future? Probably not. Most organisations have to live hand to mouth, juggling short-term funding and perpetual minor crises. Even the bigger ones rarely get much time to stand back and look at the bigger picture. Many are on a treadmill chasing after contracts and new funding."

This is probably the biggest challenge out there. Only through more wide ranging community engagement and public debate can we perhaps address the question posed.

The end of "Business as Usual"?

Polly Toynbee in today's Guardian comments on Gordon Browns speech to the National Council of Voluntary Organisations in London on Monday where he said politics could not be "business as usual".

The Prime Minister's Speech was made at the same time as the announcement of plans to  to set up independent citizens juries to help the Government formulate key policies - the first jury will meet later this week on the subject of children with a second on Crime and Communities - and a citizens summit to help formulate a "British statement of values".

He also announced a cross-party Speaker's Conference to help tackle the issue of low voter turn-out. Mr Brown said that this rarely-used device would "address the problems of the political system itself" to tackle the problem where "once 84% of people voted, and that was 17 out of every 20, in the last election it was less than 62% - 12 in every 20. In the 1950s 1 in 11 people joined a political party, today it is 1 in 88. Once political parties aggregated views from millions of people, now they need to broaden their appeal to articulate the views of more than the few. In 1987 nearly half the electorate identified fairly, or strongly, or very strongly with a political party, now only 1 in 3 do so. 20 years ago 4 in 10 people trusted the government to put the needs of the nation above those of political parties, more recently it has been only 1 in 5."

The speech itself again reiterated the commitment to greater local involvement where people will influence their beat policing, their local NHS, the help carers get and what schools offer.

Polly Toynbee commented today that, "Brown is right to point to vibrant expressions of civic life in parallel but apart from the political process. Millions of people do good things that never intersect with the waning life of local political parties, joined by only one in 88 voters".

She cautions that, "These promises are tricky. Will each participant protest when not all their views are acted on?"

However she also criticises those who, "dismiss this ambition to reach outwards, the obvious riposte should be: "What would you do?" Now that only 62% bother to vote and millions say Westminster is out of touch, doing nothing is not an option. Let the sceptics offer their own solutions."

Whilst her comments cover the overall proposals, something that she did not refer to was the Prime Minister's answer to questions after the speech where he was challenged to commit to provide more training and support to enable the less articulate to engage. His response was to say, "The Commission on Volunteering in England is proposing, as I think people here know, that we do far more to help train people. I want us to provide some more finance to enable that to happen. It is clearly a challenge for the future that more training funds are available for this and I think we should see it as a central part of what we can actually do to back up the great work that different voluntary organisations are doing and we will try to do that."

If this commitment is significant, then maybe we can say it is the end of "business as usual"?

Young People to lead on environmental change

A new report from the Sustainable Development Commission, Every Child’s Future Matters, calls for local authorities and young people to lead on environmental change, and calls for schools, youth services and community groups to empower young people to do this. TCC has recently been working with schools and youth groups in EC1 on recycling and climate change – aiming to empower children and young people to be recycling champions in their local areas. In East Sussex we have also been working with the County Council, young people, and the wider community on participatory budgeting projects which are seeing young people having a genuine say and making a positive impact on their local environment. The SDC report explores the influence of the environment as a whole - from road traffic to green spaces to climate change - on children and young people’s well-being, and provides evidence that the environment can deliver the Every Child Matters outcomes. Does anyone have any other examples of how local authorities and other bodies are working with young people on environmental change? Read the report here

Young People and Participatory Budgeting

Over the last few months we have been working on a project for East Sussex County Council to help young people to participate in deciding how to spend £20,000 in two projects in Peacehaven near Brighton and Hollington in Hastings.

We think this is really important work and reflects important trends in both youth engagement and local government participatory budgeting as was shown by recent speeches by ministers Hazel Blears and Ed Balls. Indeed the Prime Minister has taken a deep interest in this subject recently hosting a "Youth Cabinet" where the Young Mayor of Lewisham - a project we have helped develop for that Council - took the chair in the Cabinet room!

The current East Sussex project follows on from a previous TCC ‘Emotimapping’ exercise there. Over a month-long period local residents from the two areas - including many young people - told the County Council how they felt about their area. Using large scale maps and MSN Messenger-style ‘emoticons’ - expressing emotions such as ‘feel safe’ or ‘feel scared’ - young people identified local places and described how they felt about them. They then went out ‘on location’ to film and interview one another talking about these places and what they thought could be done to improve them.

Common themes were identified in both areas and young people had various ideas about what could be done to improve their neighbourhoods. Suggestions ranged from making public transport cheaper and more accessible, to improving street lighting, cleaning and litter and graffiti, and providing more constructive activities for teenagers.

As a result of this consultation work the County Council agreed to provide money to enable residents in the Peacehaven and Hollington areas to practically address some of the issues they identified.

Following consultation with local residents, Councillors, MYPs (Members of the Youth Parliament), school pupils, community groups, and other stakeholders, a short list of ideas was drawn up for each area and a vote held.

More than 1,000 young people cast their votes in a ballot for how £20,000 of County Council grant should be spent improving their communities in Peacehaven and Hollington. In Peacehaven it has been decided that the money will be spent on organising a community event which will include cleaning up local parks and producing artwork for the local shopping centre and youth club. In Hollington the budget is likely to be spent on play equipment for a local park, improving the local youth centre, and holding a Community Sports Day.

In the coming years participatory budgeting is likely to be an expanding activity for youth services and local government. We are pleased to have assisted East Sussex County Council in leading the way in giving local people a say!

The Jury's Out

At the Labour Party Leadership Hustings in London on Saturday, Gordon Brown talked quite a lot about Citizen's Juries and how they should be used more to deliberate on local issues.

This sounds like a good idea as they allow far more in-depth discussion on a given issue.

Whilst they are not a replacement for other forms of democratic process they can certainly add to the richness of a debate.

However in order for that to happen there needs to be support from central government to encourage more of them to occur and for them to be seen as a regular part of local engagement processes.

In the rush to get decisions made - and the Planning White Paper springs to mind - there is a danger that they will be seen as something that is unnecessary.

That need not be the case. As Jonathan Upton of TCC recently pointed out in a presentation he gave to an event organised by the Consultation Institute, the trick is for community engagement to start early and be ongoing.

If that approach becomes the norm, then a wider range of engagement tools, including Citizen's Juries, can be employed to develop options or even wide consensus on a host of controversial local issues.

Let's hope the Jury's in before long!

Brownian Emotion

Just read an interesting quote in this weeks New Statesman (p15) which reports on Gordon Brown's recent talk at the Hay Book Festival where last week he said:

"Ten years ago, even a few years ago, I felt you could pull a lever and do things; there was an assumption you could dictate from on high. But I don't think you can solve problems without involving people."

This is exactly the sort of point we would make. It will be interesting to see whether this clear intent is realised with serious announcements and proposals for draft legislation over the coming months that make greater involvement a reality of the ground.

Power to the Young People

Launching his campaign for leadership of the Labour Party, Gordon Brown has called for a ‘servant state’ which would include ‘youth budgets with young people making their own choices’. The Young Mayor for Lewisham and South Kilburn NDC Youth Board are great examples of young people being empowered through making real choices about real budgets to improve their local areas. I’m currently also working on a project in East Sussex which involves young people being given a budget in order to improve their local environment. It’s a follow-up to a previous piece of Emotimap work we conducted for East Sussex County Council a few months ago. As a result of that project – which has been blogged about on these pages before and involved young people ‘mapping’ their feelings about their local neighbourhoods, ESSC is now able to provide some money to enable young people in Peacehaven and Hollington to practically address some of the issues they identified. Young people will oversee this budget, select which parts of their areas they want to improve (through a vote in local schools and youth clubs), and work in partnership with the wider community to effect real change in their local community. So far lots of great ideas have been suggested, ranging from making the local shopping centre more ‘youth friendly’ by brightening it up with art work, through to cleaning up local parks and streets and having a big event for young people and the wider community. I’ll update these pages as the project progresses so watch this space!

An asset to the community?

A major report published today says local people should be given greater control over how key assets in their communities are run - such as local community centres and other public facilities.

Making Assets Work, the report on Community Management and Ownership of Assets by Barry Quirk, Chief Executive of Lewisham Council argues that transferring public assets to communities not only leads to more responsive services that meet local people's priorities but can also create more confident empowered communities with greater civic spirit.

It concludes that there are no substantive barriers to prevent councils transferring assets into community management or full ownership. Powers already exist for this but the report finds that many are not fully aware of them, or are not using them to full benefit. Therefore a change in culture is required so that every community has the chance for more active citizenship, a greater role in running services and owning assets, and improving wellbeing in their communities.

This is a very welcome concept and is likely to build local social capital where it happens, but one wonders what incentive local authorities have to encourage this, bearing in mind such a transfer might be a loss to their own capital asset base.

In order to drive this forward it really needs local social entrepreneurs to act as drivers for change. Step forward the local Councillor in their community advocate role. A small amount of legislation in the next Local Government Bill could give them a specific duty to push this to encourage community ownership of assets.

Strengthening powers at a local level is likely to be the catalyst to build assets at a local level and strengthen local communities.

 

"A shared national consensus"?

Gordon Brown launched his campaign to become Prime Minister today and had quite a lot to say about the future of democracy at national and local levels:

“Just as my first act as Chancellor of the Exchequer was to give away power to the Bank of England to restore trust in economic policy, so one of my first acts as Prime Minister would be to restore power to Parliament in order to build the trust of the British people in our democracy.

“Government must be more open and more accountable to Parliament. For example, in decisions about peace and war, in public appointments and in a new ministerial code of conduct. But this is just the beginning.

“Over the coming months I want to build a shared national consensus for a programme of constitutional reform that strengthens the accountability of all who hold power, that is clear about the rights and responsibilities of being a citizen in Britain today"

“I think we also need a constitution that is clear about the rights and responsibilities of being a citizen in Britain today. I think that would immeasurably help our country unite around shared purposes, if people felt that the responsibilities and rights of citizens were clearly understood.”

He also suggested this could include new citizens’ powers along the lines of schemes piloted in parts of the country to require senior police officers to report to the community and granting citizens the right to petition and to be consulted on local budgets.

Some of these areas for debate were flagged up as future challenges in my earlier blog on the many changes that have occurred over the last 10 years. However there were areas not covered such as electoral reform, local government finance and powers and sensitive areas such as the role of provider diversity in the NHS and it will be interesting to see whether they are also part of such a debate?

Developing a "shared national consensus" on many of the issues raised today is surely to be welcomed and Oliver Letwin's recent speech (also blogged here) indicates opposition parties may well be receptive to this approach. This would enable any changes to have the stability to prove themselves over a number of years.

Making Democracy work requires shared commitment and investment over many years and recent pronouncements by senior politicians indicate we could see a significant move forward in this area over the coming period.

No doubt this blog will have much further to comment as we explore the issues that need to be debated first before the country can achieve any such national consensus!

What sort of Localism?

In Tuesday's Guardian, Polly Toynbee, analysing the local election results claimed that localism was not important and that securing proportional representation for other elections was a far more important issue at present.

The danger with this argument is that it disregards the significant polling evidence that where people feel their views are being listened too locally and they have a meaningful way to take part, they have much greater local satisfaction. Many regeneration schemes in deprived communities across the country have shown this as evidenced by the level of participation in their community activities.

The evidence she puts forward for 4 star councils changing hands politically whilst poor performing Councils don't is not borne out by the evidence as Council's such as Hull demonstrated last week. The assumption seems to be that voters judge Council's on their star rating, when that is itself a central government construct rather than anything localist in its own right.

Voters take a much localist approach with 4 star Camden changing hands due to its position on parking charges - a localist policy if ever there was one.

Despite it being a national furore in recent weeks, the public expressed their view in various ways on the frequency of rubbish collection. Again this was a opinion expressed on what were initially locally made choices, even if it then later became part of a national debate.

Polly Toynbee herself has chronicled in her Guardian column people's local satisfaction with services and contrasted it with their dissatisfaction with the same services at a national level. Surely this local satisfaction is down to the hard work and engagement of those who work in these front-line services?

She has also been a superb advocate for services like Sure Start, in which many parents go on to become staff in the service - surely a hard indicator of participation by those previously hard to reach?

She is or course right to say that "voters are disaffected....not because they yearn for more meetings", but there are many ways to engage with people that do not require conventional meetings as TCC knows from its own experience in this field.

Naturally there is a tension in the localism debate between the provision of universal services and the requirement for local discretion, but there does seem to be an emerging consensus around; firstly the development of more local organisations such as NHS Foundation Trusts with a large membership base; and secondly the requirement of minimum levels of service that seeks to reduce the worst aspects of postcode lotteries.

On the day she published her article, the Daily Telegraph reported that in a speech to the Policy Exchange think tank, Oliver Letwin was saying there was a divide between Labour as what he described as a "centralised provider" and the "framework state" provided by the Conservatives. Whilst Gordon Brown or David Miliband would no doubt respond that that is a caricature of government policy, nevertheless all of this goes to the heart of what sort of localism should evolve in the coming years. Process is part of it but then so is the minimum level of service.

So far there has been no public debate on what a "national minimum service" should be for every locally provided service. This is an area where there will be clear differences between the main political parties and surely we all need to know what the differences are? Polly Toynbee could be a powerful advocate for such a debate.

Localism is not a panacea to voter turnout, but then neither is proportional representation as European election turnouts show. The only practical way to reduce disaffection and increase turnout in an era when there is a consensus on many of the big political and economic questions is to increase the amount of face to face contact that parties spend with voters on the doorstep in weak areas as well as strong areas! That requires activists and the only way to give then a good reason to come back to all the parties is probably a substantial shift of party funding to local parties so they can engage with all voters and not just target voters in target seats.

Localism isn't just about how to provide services, it is also about strengthening political engagement too!

Rhion's consultation blogspot

Our friend Rhion Jones has just launched his consultation blog. Every day we stories in the paper highlighting the worldwide trend towards consulting people on all aspects of public and commercial policies. Rhion aims with his blog to comment on all aspects of this – and as Programme Director of The Consultation Institute (and probably the world's most prolific writer on public and stakeholder consultation!), he knows his stuff! Watch this space - http://rhionjones.blogspot.com/

A lot done...a lot to do?

As we move to a significant change with a new Prime Minster it is perhaps right to take stock of what changes we have seen over the last 10 years.

It is an opportunity to ask the question, to paraphrase our Company strap-line: "Does Democracy work better?"

Inevitably for any government managing a complex developed society the results will always be mixed, but it is arguable that simply on the basis of significant constitutional change enacted early in the present government that there are far more opportunities for the public to vote and to engage.

The fact that the people of Scotland can have a significant debate on their future as they are currently doing is something that would not have been able to happen 10 years ago!

So what are the areas we have seen change and what are the challenges for the future:

Health

We now have an increasing number of large membership Foundation Trusts. TCC has done a lot of work helping Trusts to develop the representativeness of their membership base. For the future it will be interesting to see whether Gordon Brown takes up the idea of an Independent National Health Board and whether we see a directly elected element on Primary Care Trusts?

Education

The development of Academies and Foundation Schools is slow. Governing bodies still have difficulty attracting people to stand. It will be interesting to see whether remuneration will be introduced and whether local membership schemes for schools or more likely for groups of schools similar to Health Foundation Trusts will ever be piloted.

Citizenship Education was introduced. This is likely to have a significant impact but probably over the longer term. TCC has developed initiatives in this area such as its Young Mayor Schemes, which enable young people to take much greater responsibility locally.

Crime and Justice

The Freedom of Information Act and the Human Rights Act were landmarks as the government itself knows having lost cases under them. At the same time modern threats such as trans-national terrorism are forcing an ongoing debate on civil liberties.

For the future, the direct election of Police Commissioners may go up political agenda.

Constitutional Issues

The establishment of the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly are having a significant impact not just on their own areas but on how the English define themselves. It is likely there will need to be further review on these relationships, with the previously fringe issue of an English Parliament moving further into the mainstream.

The use of proportional representation has increased with Euro elections, the Scottish Parliament, GLA and Welsh Assembly now being joined by the Scottish Local Government Elections. It is likely that as the possibility of a hung 2009/10 Parliament looms that further extensions such as English Local Government will be considered with even a possible referendum on Westminster elections on the agenda.

The Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland has with many false dawns slowly led to a long-term power sharing agreement in Northern Ireland, which should be in place the day before Tony Blair announces his resignation.

The slow pace of reform to the House of Lords may at last be resolved with the House of Commons coming to a likely settled view that 80% of it should be elected. However it still likely to be years before any reform is complete.

Party Funding whilst made substantially more transparent is clearly still controversial with no clear consensus as to future change in terms of local and national capping and donations, however reform of the Honours System is likely to be due for an early review once the current Police investigations are resolved.

Another possible change for the future is the possibility of future Parliamentary votes on the deployment of British troops.

Local and Regional Government

There was change with more unitaries, the establishment of the GLA, a power of general competence and the abolition of CCT. However elected Mayors did not take off (perhaps because they were seen as to "top-down") and the move to strengthening the local role of Councillors as "Mini-Mayors" is, if resourced, likely to be more significant in developing a bottom-up approach in this area. Local Government Finance, remains an area of caution and whilst that is the case it is likely to hold back further local devolution.

There was significant investment in regeneration with numerous communities benefiting. However these is still a lot to do and TCC has worked closely with the New Deal for Communities (NDC) to raise the profile of very deprived communities.

Environment and Culture

Free entry to museums has contributed to many more people visiting them, which is surely good for a civilised and engaged society. Winning the Olympic bid is likely to see substantial redevelopment in the Thames Gateway area, however TCC's work on community engagement in this area demonstrates the need for ongoing communication with communities affected by rapid change.

Climate Change is increasingly an important part of political debate. As the recent online petition on congestion charging and the furore on fortnightly bin collection has shown many in the public express concern, but still do accept the need for significant lifestyle change. This is an area for much wider engagement and TCC is working on practical projects in this area to raise public awareness.

Economy and Trade

Trade Unions as large members organisations operating in the economy are increasingly seeing the need to break out of traditional ways of working. The merger of Amicus and TGWU to form Unite with the aim to create a global union in response to globalising economic trends is a significant development. The Government has invested in the development of Union Learning and Union Modernisation and TCC has worked with many unions to improve the way they work in the modern workplace.

International

Both EU and UN institutional reform have been very slow despite all the efforts of the government to move things forward. This is an area where change is measured over more than a long-serving prime-minister's term. More effort now seems to likely to be invested in "soft-power" and "cultural projection" after liberal interventionism, successful in Kosovo, was found to be not enough on its own in Iraq. As a result the expansion of the work of the Westminster Foundation for Democracy is an area the government needs to look closely at. TCC has also worked in helping to build democracy in a range of transitional and developing countries and knows the benefit of this work.

Conclusion

In the words of the song, from democracy's point of view, after many years of mainly market led and individualist reform, "things could only get better". However as illustrated above whilst a lot has been done, there is a lot more to do. The fact there is much greater consensus between the major parties in this area compared to the 1980's is likely to ensure that the changes that do exist are likely to survive and that further change is likely to happen.

That is a "legacy" that some people might even want to be proud of!

"I can"....but I need some help to do it!

The article in the Observer on Sunday by David Miliband was no doubt read by many for his views on the Labour Party Leadership election.

However what received less coverage was his analysis of the changing nature of society where he says:

If the 1945 government was motivated by the popular cry: 'I need', the 2007 government needs to be driven forward by people saying: 'I can.'

People want to be players in the economic, social, environmental and political decisions that affect them. They want to feel that their fate is not constrained by their background. That means budgets in the hands of people, more devolution from central to local government, new ways to empower people not just through education and training but also at work.

This is a potentially exciting agenda. However it really requires someone to be seen as the champion of it within the government.

Unless there is, the rather disappointing Lyons Review of local government finance will remain as the default position of central government and there will not be the sort of local devolution that will make this vision a reality.

Whilst the affluent already say "I can". For many less fortunate it requires support locally to liberate and empower them to be able to take action.

Following his article, it is very likely that whatever the final outcome of the Labour Leadership election David Miliband will be taking a more senior role in the government after June.

Hopefully that will give him the opportunity to champion the sort of society he proposes with the resources it requires at a very local level to empower everyone to be able to say "I can".

My favourite community is a local one!

With all the media speculation over whether he may stand for the Leadership of the Labour Party, it was interesting to read the profile in the Observer on Sunday that set out what David Miliband has been doing to promote stronger local communities.

The Observer profile talks of the work he is doing to champion a new style of government that envisages loosening the reins of Westminster and forging a partnership with local communities. Setting out his political vision in a recent New Statesman article Miliband spoke of a new 'I can' spirit in society and said that Labour's challenge must be to embrace and reflect it.

Other possible candidates for the Labour Leader and Deputy Leadership have also raised the need for strengthened communities and the need for government to take a more strategic role after a period of growth where we have seen an expansion in public services.

There is an increasing consensus that having set higher minimum standards of service over the last few years, there is now a need to encourage wider local diversity through devolved responsibility that is additional to the current standards rather than necessarily detracting from the improvements already made.

In order to take this agenda forward we now need to see an increase in local capacity. That requires central government to provide the commitment, through a variety of local stakeholders and Local Strategic Partnerships, for them to be able to engage effectively within local communities to strengthen their social capital. For example some of the innovative local ideas tested in New Deal for Communities (NDC) areas could have wider application.

Whatever ministerial role David Miliband has in the future, it is clear that the debate on this will need to continue and be responded to by all those taking a leading role in the future direction of government policy in the coming months.

Getting Ready for V

As part of it's on going relationship with Connexions South Yorkshire, The Campaign Company recently worked to organise a reception for the public and non-profit sector in South Yorkshire called 'Getting ready for V'.

The purpose of the event was to introduce organisations to V, the new charity which is replacing Millennium Volunteers as the national framework for youth volunteering. Vs goal is to work in partnership with the public and private sector and with voluntary and community sector organisations to develop and share best practice in and increase opportunities for youth volunteering, particularly in deprived communities. The charity is launched with £50 million of funding to help organisations build new volunteering projects and extend existing ones.

David Miliband MP, the Minister for the Third Sector was the key note speaker at the event, in his address he commented that:

'Youth volunteering is a huge part of the solution to many of the problems in our society, it builds bridges between generations'

and

'V represents a huge opportunity to build up our communities'.

Rod Aldridge the chair of V commented that:

'V will be trying to change the attitudes of young people to volunteering and to rebuild communities'

Philip Udah a young trustee of V also outlined the 'youth fund', a section of funding specifically available to young people to set up their own projects. Through involving young people continually in the development of the charity and it's on-going management as well as through initiatives such as the 'youth fund' V is striving to be youth led and innovative.

V represents a new and substantial injection of money, energy and political impetus into youth volunteering nationally. The only question left to those of us working in public or private organisations around the country is do we rise to this challenge and make use of this great opportunity?

Ruth Kelly and ASBO's!!

Amongst all the news furore over the education of one of her children, Ruth Kelly today launched a new policy where resident groups will gain the power to apply for anti-social behaviour orders (ASBO's).

The Government says that resident groups will be assessed before being allowed such powers, with "clear safeguards" to make sure they are not abused.

In order for any policy like this to work and be seen to be fair and not arbitrary, there will need to be substantial capacity building for resident groups and the development of independent advocacy advice for them in the same way as there already exist "tenant's friends" for housing issues.

At the same time this proposal may also put the onus on local authorities to demonstrate that they have actively responded to resident concerns through enhanced local community engagement, otherwise angry and frustrated residents will inevitably seek to use this new power.

Waste more, pay more?

The BBC today reports that the body that represents Local Council's in England, the Local Government Association has launched a War on Waste campaign and its main policy plank is that householders who throw out large amounts of rubbish instead of recycling should be charged more

It also wants to reward those households which throw out less by cutting their council tax bills.

The BBC is conducting an online poll on whether some people should be charged more and as at the time of posting 58% thought they should, with 39.5% opposed.

Why not have your say on this issue?

Green Council's - The Top 10

Today's Guardian has the results of a survey it has conducted on the Top 10 Councils for Green Issues.

The broad themes that emerge from it are that leading Councils have been good at developing Green infrastructure in areas such as transport and energy as well as improving planning regulations.

What is interesting is that the article indicates a lot of positive action, but little on building local community sign up to tackling climate change.

If we are to build wide political consensus on the need for urgent action in this area, then community engagement is vital and local authorities are probably best placed to co-ordinate this.

If the top 10 Councils are still developing in this area, then clearly we still have a long way to go across the country as a whole!

Ingredients for Community Engagement

IPSOS Mori have recently published their report on community engagement - Ingredients for Community Engagement: The Civic Pioneer Experience. It considers the necessary ingredients for successful community engagement and concludes that the 9 key ingredients are: