A focused mission: Neighbourhoods leading national renewal

Madeleine Jennings, Local Trust’s head of external affairs, explores the creation of new approaches to community policy that focus on the places that need it the most, built around the Labour government’s mission-led approach to national renewal.

The new Labour government has emphasised its commitment to a new approach to governing. Focusing on missions, they have set long-term, ambitious goals aimed at improving health, removing barriers to opportunity, reducing crime, increasing community safety and reaching net zero.

At the Labour Party Conference this week, we hope to hear more about what this means in practice and how the government proposes to partner with voluntary and community organisations to make it a success.

Based on our research, learning and experience from 12 years of the Big Local programme, we are advocating for a neighbourhood-based, community-led approach, with a particular emphasis on the doubly disadvantaged neighbourhoods that are not only socio-economically deprived, according to government indices, but which also lack civic or social infrastructure.

In the lead up to the general election and in the months that have followed, we have been making this case, mission by mission, in a series of blogs and papers.

A focused approach to national renewal

This programme of work on Labour’s missions was informed and inspired by two days of discussion at St George’s House in Windsor last November, on the future of neighbourhoods policy.

The event enabled a diverse group of individuals, who were involved in and have lived-experience of community-led neighbourhood regeneration, to share their views.

The report from the consultation: Have 30 years of regeneration policy made a difference? argues for the government to centre neighbourhoods, and the regeneration of the most deprived areas, in its work to deliver its missions.

These are the places in which the problems it is seeking to address are most intense and, without this focus, mission-led government is unlikely to achieve its full potential for national renewal.

Overcoming constraints

Our St George’s House report recognises the important constraints that must be navigated or overcome to achieve this: how politics works, how the civil service works, and how the public thinks.

These constraints are often in conflict with each other and are not conducive to radical, unified, community-led policy.

The report also outlines a context that, on the one hand, pushes against our agenda, but on the other hand makes it more necessary. These include a weak economy – which is all the more damaging to opportunity and life chances in doubly disadvantaged neighbourhoods.

Alongside this, public services have suffered from underinvestment to the point that they are in danger of collapse, and many have retreated altogether from the country’s most deprived areas.

The climate crisis also risks further entrenching a divide between communities equipped to cope with it and those who will feel the brunt.

The way forward

However, the consensus is hopeful. Participants in the consultation agreed that communities could and should be supported to turn around their neighbourhoods, fostering resilience in the face of crises.

The consultation mapped a way forward, producing a set of recommendations which Local Trust will advocate for:

1. Produce the evidence to make an even stronger case for the protective effect of community social infrastructure, demonstrating its potential to prevent problems arising in the first place and save public money.
2. Argue for a central Neighbourhoods Unit in government, charged with working across departments and the different layers of government to secure the regeneration of the most deprived neighbourhoods, ensuring they receive their fair share of available resources and attention.
3. Push for a commitment to build on the lessons from past efforts at neighbourhood regeneration. Too often the wheel is reinvented, but we know what works: community leadership, the building of local civic institutions and an emphasis on local wealth creation. All neighbourhoods have assets – the key is to identify and deploy them for community benefit.
4. Make the case for training community workers and provide appropriate support for community leaders, to develop a pipeline of talent for the future.
5. Develop a compelling narrative, based on the importance of a strong community to enhance people’s sense of security, social stability, belonging and hope.

This week’s Labour party conference provides us with an important platform to continue this work.