Government ‘upside down’. What does it mean for empowerment?

The department that funds the regional empowerment partnerships is being ‘turned upside-down’, according to a Deputy Director at the Department of Communities and Local Government (DCLG) who came to speak to our national meeting last week. So are its staff, by the sound of it, 40% of whom will be going in a restructuring which will end in 2012.

The restructuring will leave DCLG (note: no more CLG – the ‘D’ is back) with two policy directorates, Neighbourhoods, which will deal with housing and related issues, and Localism, into which responsibility for ‘enabling Big Society’ will fall. That Big Society work will concentrate on three areas: community rights, race equality and integration, and evidence - ‘informing Big Society’.


Immediate priorities - within a financial settlement that leaves DCLG with a 74% capital spend reduction and a 51% revenue reduction – should be announced by Christmas. In the meantime, the Localism Bill expected shortly may give some clues, especially on what is meant by ‘community rights’. This seems to be about bids to run local services, starting with local authorities, and facilities threatened with closure. Look out for a consultation in January.

Big Society, we heard, is an underpinning approach, not a policy. It’s about ‘all parts of society playing their part. It means government getting out of the way’. The part of the approach DCLG is busiest with at the moment, it appears, is ‘barrier busting’. So if you have a barrier, they’d like to hear about it. If it’s money that’s the barrier, though, then the offer is ‘to help groups access finance’. But ministers really do want to hear examples of where local groups have overcome barriers. And as money is short for gathering evidence centrally, they will depend more on ‘working with others’. So do share your learning and expertise with them. A barrier-busting email address is promised, but in the meantime, why not try contactus@communities.gsi.gov.uk.
As you may imagine, there were plenty of questions. With infrastructure being swept away, how do we communicate? Go direct to DCLG, we were told. How will capacity be built, with so many community development practitioners around the country losing their jobs? ‘Priorities on these decisions rest with local government; central government won’t intervene in these’. But apparently the local authority settlement expected shortly will not be ‘as drastic as feared’, and therefore authorities ‘are taking pre-emptive action unnecessarily’.

What is the role of elected members? It’s ‘not for government to say what the role of elected members is . . . it’s for elected members to work out their role’. But if there are barriers to bust there, then maybe they would like to hear from you. And in a note of interest particularly to rural areas, ministers ‘want to boost the powers of Parish Councils and get people interested in them’.

A lot of DCLG’s efforts at the moment are focused on their vanguard areas, to which they have added Balsall Heath in Birmingham. There’s an interesting essay on how it got to where it is today on page 38 of Small State Big Society, a collection of essays published by Localis earlier this year.