Growing the big society

One thing is clear about the ‘big society’: it is pretty nebulous. The concept, which broadly covers community action and devolution of power to local groups, was espoused by prime minister David Cameron long before the election.

A document defining the idea, ‘Building the big society’, said it covered everything from the publication of local crime data and the abolition of regional spatial strategies, to training community organisers and allowing community groups to take over state-run services.

Enthusiasts might say that the big society is hard to define because it is about communities choosing their own, varied priorities. Sceptics, on the other hand, could view the concept as a brand, allowing the government to take credit for all manner of community activity that was already happening without its support.

Housing’s role in the big society may soon become clearer - four local authorities have begun testing the government’s ethos and most of their plans include housing-related ideas.

Eden in Cumbria, Liverpool, Sutton in south London, and Windsor and Maidenhead in Berkshire, put themselves forward as pilots armed with projects, some well established and some barely defined, which seemed to fit into the prime minister’s vision.

In return for nominating themselves, the Communities and Local Government department will provide civil servants to groups in the local authority areas, who will help them deal with any bureaucratic barriers they might face.

There will be an unspecified amount of money for these ‘vanguard communities’ - the government refuses to call them pilots as it suggests they are having something imposed upon them by Whitehall (very un-big society) - but mostly the groups must find the money they need from existing sources.

A big society bank, which will use money left in dormant bank accounts that haven’t been touched for more than 15 years, where the account holders may have moved abroad or forgotten about their money, or could have died without leaving a will, is also being looked at to fund social enterprises, charities and voluntary groups via intermediary bodies, but there has been no mention of the pilot areas using it.

Officials from the CLG are due to meet representatives from the four vanguard communities over the next few weeks. During these meetings, the local authorities hope to find out more details about what is expected of them and what funding is available.

Some of the communities’ more developed ideas - such as Eden’s community land trust or Liverpool’s resident activists - give a clue as to how the big society could work for housing. However, the striking aspect of most of the projects put forward by the pilots is that they are not new.

Liverpool’s residents’ group was around years before the words ‘big society’ had been uttered, and community land trusts and residents groups are concepts that have been around for many years.

The only thing with the potential to make the big society different from old-fashioned community activism, is if the civil servants really do manage to break down any significant bureaucratic barriers faced by communities.

That cannot happen until the pilots have been up and running for a longer period of time. Until then, it is hard to judge whether big society is simply a meaningless label to be applied to any enterprising community project, or an anti-bureaucratic bulldozer that could clear the way for a new era of local activism.

Liverpool : volunteering and regeneration

In July, David Cameron chose to launch his big society in Labour-dominated, urban Liverpool.

The early stages of the city’s pilot will focus on volunteering in museums to extend their opening hours and developing neighbourhood media, but housing is likely to get in on the act further down the line. Residents living in the city’s housing market renewal pathfinder area, Sefton and Wirral, for example, hope to explore new ways to regenerate their neighbourhoods under the big society banner.

England’s nine pathfinders areas, all of which are located in the midlands and the north, are set to lose 17.4 per cent of their budgets as part of government’s £50 million cut to the Homes and Communities Agency’s budget for the programme. A decision about their future is expected to be made in the coalition’s spending review in October.

Due to the funding cuts, the Anfield and Breckfield housing strategy group, which has been around for more than a decade, is keen to look at the possibility of setting up a local housing trust. These trusts, which were first proposed in the Conservatives’ pre-election papers on housing, are local organisations with planning powers to develop small amounts of housing for local people.

The group had talked about setting up a community land trust in the past, and may now be able to adapt some of those proposals into plans for a local housing trust.

Ros Groves, chair of the housing and physical regeneration for Anfield and Breckfield housing strategy group, says: ‘If it [big society] means we can complete the regeneration then we will grab it with both hands.’

Despite the fact that Ms Groves has found herself part of Mr Cameron’s vision, she isn’t quite sure what it is. ‘It is vague and communities need more information,’ she says. ‘Are they expecting communities to empty the bins for free? Are they expecting people on the dole to be refuse collectors? Then what do we do with the ones we are paying for? We would have people unemployed.’

She points out devolving powers on a street-by-street basis - when the prime minister launched the big society, he spoke of ‘devolving budgets to street level’ - could be a good idea, but it could also lead to divisive competition for funding. ‘It could be great,’ she says, ‘but we cannot have areas arguing about small pots of money.’

She has not heard anything about funding from government or on when the community groups are expected to undertake their projects or report back.

Sutton : youth involvement

Sutton’s arms-length management organisation, Sutton Housing Partnership, is heavily involved in its big society pilot. Working with other public bodies, it wants to train younger residents to become community organisers who would relay messages between residents and local public service providers.

Sutton Housing Partnership chief executive Andrew Taylor says: ‘The people that do engage [with us] tend to be of a more mature generation so we are trying to find ways of getting young people engaged.’ The organisation is considering getting in touch with younger residents by organising sporting and social activities.

In a similar vein, the Liberal Democrat council and the ALMO are also looking at ways to reach out to people who tend not to use health services. Life expectancy in the northern wards of the borough, where there are higher concentrations of social housing, can be seven to eight years less than in the rest of Sutton. The idea behind the pilot is to allow health services to spread their message to residents using the communication links that the ALMO already has with its tenants, such as fun days.

Mr Taylor refutes the idea that the big society is simply a label applied to work that was already going on: ‘It is easy to dismiss it as a way to spin as new something that was there already, but if it gives the impetus to what is going on [then it is a good thing].’

Much of the pilot is led by the council or other public bodies rather than being initiated by residents, which seems to run against the rhetoric of big society, but Mr Taylor points out that it is difficult to work from the ‘bottom up’ when trying to reach groups that do not currently communicate with the ALMO or public authorities.

Sutton has around four months to show the government some big society ‘deliverables’ by December, says a spokesperson for the council.

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