MPs came to Liverpool hot on the heels of a new announcement, expanding the government’s neighbourhood-level funding to £5bn and over 300 places. Accompanying the funding is a new Pride in Place strategy, setting out plans for things like a Network for Neighbourhoods, encouraging peer learning on neighbourhood regeneration, and a Co-operative Development Unit in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government that will foster the growth of the co-operative and mutual sector.
Returning power to the people
This new policy programme signals a recognition by government that what people see outside their front doors influences how they feel about the state of their lives and the country, by extension influencing their engagement with – or disengagement from – mainstream politics. It also seems to adopt a solution that Power to Change, and many others have put forward: that the best way to counter the sense of local decline and disaffection is to put the people who live in places in charge of how to make them better. It’s an approach we know is popular, with 82% of Britons saying it’s important to them that government gives local people more control over what happens in their area, according to new polling by More in Common for our new briefing, ‘Returning power to the people’.
There is still much to be figured out. The question is, how will the intention that communities decide and deliver how the funds are spent actually be realised – especially when local authorities, not community organisations, remain the default ‘fiscal hosts’ for central government investment? And how will government work with places to ensure the changes brought by hyperlocal investment, can be sustained in the decades to come?
Bursting the conference bubble
Despite this, the renewed emphasis on the role of communities in driving change at Labour Party Conference felt like a welcome one. Party conferences are a strange space – like the Westminster bubble has floated up north – as corporate lobbyists and party activists queue for the same mediocre coffee. Among the many competing interests, the voices of local communities, and their ambitions for their areas, can get lost.
This is something Power to Change has tried to help address. Recognising that those best placed to advocate for the change that community business can deliver are those making it – we were joined at the conference by six community business leaders to voice their aspirations for their communities and their messages to government. We also partnered with the Co-operative Party on a roundtable of Merseyside community businesses with Alison McGovern MP, the new Minister for Local Government and Homelessness. And for the second year in a row, we held a reception that shines a spotlight on community business, hosted by the community-owned Baltic Creative, with delicious pies from Homebaked Co-operative Bakery.
The new essay collection by Power to Change, We’re Right Here and the UCL Policy Lab, Britain renewed: Labour and the communitarian tradition, launched at the conference, puts the perspectives of community leaders on an equal footing with contributions from MPs and mayors. Flanked by ministers Kirsty McNeill and Josh Simons, Andy Jackson, who leads the Heeley Trust, reminded a packed room that internal party debates – such as the one that has emerged around the resurgence of ‘Blue Labour’ – are of little consequence to his community in Sheffield. For them, trusting local people to make decisions about their places, free from political ambitions or election-driven timescales, is the route to real, long-term neighbourhood change.
Growth and renewal from the ground up
There were certainly signs that this understanding is breaking through at the highest levels of the government. Indeed, the Prime Minister’s own speech was marked by a communitarian tone, as he called for ‘those with skin in the game’ to make decisions for their communities, and to ‘[grow] our economy from the grassroots’.
We even heard recognition of the contributions of community businesses on the conference stage. When Joe Fortune, the General Secretary of the Co-operative Party addressed the conference on Wednesday, he rejected the view that ‘strong communities are a nice to have.’ He recognised the work of community business leaders like Craig Pennington from Future Yard, who joined us throughout the conference, Annoushka Deighton of Stretford Public Hall and Mark Pepper of Ambition Lawrence Weston.
But now the real test of this policy programme begins. The government has told a new story and now it must translate this into action. As MPs return from their party conferences to Westminster, and community business leaders are back to their daily work of delivering locally-led regeneration, economic growth, and creating opportunities for local people, government must give communities genuine control over local decisions and investment – enabling growth and renewal from the ground up.
