area-based poverty and resident empowerment (power 1996)

8/9/2019 Area-Based Poverty and Resident Empowerment (Power 1996)

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Area-based Poverty and Resident

Empowerment

Citation Detail

Title: Area-basedPoverty and Resident Empowerment.

Authors: Power, AnneSource: Urban Studies (Routledge); Nov96, Vol. 33 Issue 9, p1535-1564, 30p, 15 charts, 2

diagrams

Document Type:Article

Abstract:

The gap between the poorest people in Britain and the average has grown significantly

since the late 1970s. People in the lowest income groups are increasingly overrepresentedin council housing. Most council housingis built in large, separate, single-purpose

estates. Therefore area-basedpoverty has grown. In these areas, housing, income andsocial factors interact to create steep decline. As conditions became more extreme, local

authorities and central government developed special experiments in localisation whichhad a measurable impact on conditions, involving residents and attracting management

effort towards local problems. Estates with the least favourable conditions and most

polarised populations received more intensive estates services and often improvedthrough concentrated, long-term support. While residents were involved in and

influenced these developments, in only a few cases did they actually take responsibility

for or control over services to their area. Where they did this successfully it had the mostfar-reaching impact on the process of renewal. Localisation, coupled with strong outside

support and links to the city, appears to offer a way out of spiralling conditions and

growing alienation. Evidence that this change is happening in Britain is borne out by theEuropean experience of estate decline and estate rescue. If localisation ofhousing

services, along with policing, social services, health and education was extended to all

large, separate, low-income estates, it would maximise the impact of collective provision

on vulnerable communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Urban Studies (Routledge) is the property of Routledge and its content maynot be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright

holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email

articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given aboutthe accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the

material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Full Text Word Count: 14491

ISSN: 00420980DOI: 10.1080/0042098966493

Accession Number: 9612150020


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AREA-BASEDPOVERTYAND RESIDENT

EMPOWERMENT

Contents

1. 1. Introduction

2. 2. Background: Evidence of Problem

3. Poverty

4. Area Concentration

5. Scale of Council Housing

6. Difficult Estates

7. Housing Associations8. 3. Are the Changes Significant?

9. Area Segregation

10.Three Examples

11.4. Does the Existence of Marginal Estates of Social Housing Matter to the Rest of

Society?12.Violent Trends

13.Wider Reasons for Government Concern

14.Chasing the Problem Around

15.5. Does Local Action Work?

16.The Priority Estates Project

17.Local Authority Decentralisation

18.A Role for Tenants

19.Multi-faceted Programmes

20.Police, Schools, Health, Social Services, Shops, Transport

21.6. The Localisation Process

22.Consultation

23.Resources for Local Services

24.Front-line Staff and Local Employment

25.Enticement of Services to Estate Level

26.Cooperation Between Services at the Local Level

27.7. How Localisation Works

28.Resident Organisation

29.Preventing 'Dumping' and Criminal Behaviour

30.Protecting and Sustaining Fragile Change

31.8. Lessons of the 1980s

32.Resident Take-over and Local Control

33.Social Instincts, Pooling Effort and Local Leadership

34.Barriers and Effects35.9. Requirements for Success: European Models
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3/43

36.A Patchwork Approach

37.Constant Renewal

38.11. Conclusion

39.References

[Paper first received, July 1995; in final form, May 1996]

Summary. The gap between the poorest people in Britain and the average has grown

significantly since the late 1970s. People in the lowest income groups are increasinglyoverrepresented in council housing. Most council housingis built in large, separate, single-

purpose estates. Therefore area-basedpoverty has grown. In these areas, housing, income and

social factors interact to create steep decline. As conditions became more extreme, local

authorities and central government developed special experiments in localisation which had ameasurable impact on conditions, involving residents and attracting management effort towards

local problems. Estates with the least favourable conditions and most polarised populations

received more intensive estates services and often improved through concentrated, long-term

support. While residents were involved in and influenced these developments, in only a fewcases did they actually take responsibility for or control over services to their area. Where they

did this successfully it had the most far-reaching impact on the process of renewal. Localisation,coupled with strong outside support and links to the city, appears to offer a way out of spiralling

conditions and growing alienation. Evidence that this change is happening in Britain is borne out

by the European experience of estate decline and estate rescue. If localisation ofhousing

services, along with policing, social services, health and education was extended to all large,

separate, low-income estates, it would maximise the impact of collective provision on vulnerable

communities.

1. Introduction

This paper will examine the problems of area segregation, concentrations ofpoverty and socialdisadvantage, the impact of these problems on the wider society, and the role of self-help in

disadvantaged communities. There are four main questions: to what extent are the concentrations

ofpoverty and related problems in identifiable areas significant and getting worse; does theexistence of marginal areas and a growing gap within society affect society as a whole; what if

anything has been shown to work in addressing these problems; can people in poor areas control

their own conditions and shape their own future? In attempting to answer these questions, eightstudies of unpopular estates, seven in Britain, one in northern Europe, are used as a source of

detailed information and evidence of the issues involved. The surveys are: Power (1984,1987b,

1988b, 1991a, and forthcoming); Power and Tunstall (1995 and forthcoming); and DoE (1995).

2. Background: Evidence of Problem

The Income and Wealth Inquiry of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation has exposed substantialevidence about the problems ofpoverty and the growing gap between rich and poor (Barclay,

1995; Hills, 1995). The Inquiry lends detail to relatively inaccessible government statistics

showing the strong link betweenpoverty, social problems, council estates and certain
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disadvantaged groups such as lone parents, unemployed, minorities and welfare recipients of all

kinds. Some well-recognised facts are important for this discussion.

Poverty

We define people inpoverty as those with less than half of average incomes, after allowing forhousingcosts. By this and other definitions, more people are poor today than 15 years ago

(Barclay, 1995). A higher proponion and far greater numbers of children are growing up inpoverty today than 15 years ago. The gap between the bottom 10 per cent and the top has grownsignificantly in the last 10 years. Afro-Caribbean house-holds are strongly overrepresented

among lone parents, among council tenants and among those accepted as statutorily homeless.

Many more people are unemployed than in 1979. Table 1 illustrates the trend inpoverty on this

definition; other definitions show similar trends.

Area Concentration

From Table 1 we can see that the concentrations ofpoverty, of children in poor households andof unemployed people, are much greater in council housingthan in society overall. It may be

thatpoverty 20 years and more ago was concentrated in a different way in old, private-rentedareas in innercities. But 70 years of government intervention led to the virtual demise of private

renting, very rapid expansion of owner-occupation and the creation of large council estates to

replace older, private-rented areas. Large areas of land were consolidated, creating dormitoryestates with few, if any, other functions than housing. This rigidified the separation of poor

households from economic activity, cutting many .people off from work opportunities (Daunton,

1984). As council housingbecame more dominant, it became more polarised, housingmainly

people dependent at least in part on the state.

This area-based view ofpoverty was contested by Peter Townsend in his influential study ofpoverty (Townsend, 1979). But his analysis of the "structural causes" ofpoverty and its

widespread incidence across many different types of area does not contradict the case presentedhere that large sections of the lowest-income groups are concentrated in the council tenure

(Murie, 1983) and therefore as a result on large separately built and located estates (Holmans,

1987; Daunton, 1984; Dunleavy, 1981).

A recently completed study for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation shows how extreme theseconcentrations of deprivation are on unpopular estates (Power and Tunstall, 1995). Census data

for 1981 and 1991, covering 20 unpopular estates and the 18 urban local authorities in which

they are located, reveals the differences between the national average, the local authority

averages and the estate average. Table 2 summarises that evidence.

Scale of Council Housing

The Right to Buy reduced the council stock by over 1.5m but it mainly affected better-quality

council housingin better areas, particularly houses rather than flats; and stock in suburban and

semi-rural areas. Therefore it has largely failed to increase the social mixor social stability of theleast popular estates in major urban areas and it has made council housinggenerally poorer, as
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better-off households have bought where they could (Forrest and Murie, 1988). As an illustration

of this, the incidence of Right to Buy sales ranges from 26 per cent nationally, to 19 per cent

within the 18 study local authorities, to 5 per cent on the 20 estates (Power and Tunstall, 1995).

Other government strategies to transfer council housingto alternative owners have failed either

to break up large council landlords or, by and large, to reduce concentrations ofpoverty on largeestates. Although over 1.5m council properties have been disposed of, there are still over 5m

council properties in Britain, more than half of them in major cities, and about three-quarters ofthem on identifiable estates or separate areas of public housing, nearly 40 per cent of them flats

or maisonettes (Power, 1984). Therefore, in spite of sales and transfers, the largest cities still

have very significant stocks of council housingwhich dominate the rented market (Table 3).

Britain still has a higher proportion of social rented housingthan other European countries ofcomparable size, level of urbanisation and industrial development, such as France or Germany,

although unification has greatly increased the German social housingstock (Power, 1993).

Difficult Estates

There are around 2000 large, unpopular council estates, of 500 units or more, housingalmostentirely low-income, dependent households (Power, 1991b). Extreme problems abound on these

estates, including cases where over 80 per cent of the population is unemployed, over half the

families with children have lone parents, crime is four or more times the average, and themajority of young people leave school with little prospect of work (Welsh Office, 1987a). Such

bleak areas have been constantly portrayed in the media as 'no-go' areas, housingan 'underclass'

of dependent and alienated people with no stake in society but who are a burdensome and

troublesome charge on it. These problems, though they may have got worse in the 1980s,certainly existed in the 1970s (see Burbidge et al., 1981).

Housing Associations

The problem of estate decline was a major reason for government switching support to housing

associations which were seen as smaller, more sensitive, more community-based and moredispersed within the urban fabric (Young, 1993).Housingassociations have more than doubled

their stock to nearly l m units since 1979, although they still own only one rented property for

every six owned by local authorities. But as their growth has accelerated in the last few years,they have increasingly copied the mistakes of local authorities, making their role much more

controversial. Large associations have built large, separate, single-class, single-function estates,housingalmost exclusively low-in-come households.

In a small way, housingassociations are beginning to compound the problems of areasegregation, strengthening the overlap betweenpoverty and social housing. They, too, are

becoming a polarised sector with severe management pressures (Page, 1993). Based on this

repeated pattern, it seems clear that some of the problems of area polarisation and decline areintrinsic to urban change and urban settlement rather than directly related to social housing

ownership.
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3. Are the Changes Significant?

The changes in income and wealth, the changes in council housingand in housingassociations,

have had mutually reinforcing consequences. Tenure has become far more tightly tied to incomeand economic activity. Since the whole rationale for social housingis to help those in need who

cannot independently house themselves adequately, it makes sense--both in basic justice and inusing subsidised housingto greatest effect--to concentrate on helping the poorest and most

vulnerable households. However, this has serious long-term implications for the management ofsocial housing. Being a landlord for households in great need carries with it many wider

implications through a combination of factors, such as more children and young people, higher

turnover, fewer resources. The management difficulties include: difficulty in paying rent;shortage of funds for repairs; greater wear and tear on property; non-vi-ability of services, such

as shops; need for specialist social support; unstable community relations.

These problems are not new in poorer areas (Steadman-Jones, 1994; White, 1986). Traditionally,housingin these areas was rented privately. As owner-occupation has become the dominant

tenure and as private renting has shrunk to less than 6 per cent, social landlords, particularlycouncils, have become landlords of last resort. This has led to the growth in area segregation and

area decline because of the way social housinghas been built, largely in separate and oftendisfavoured areas.

Area Segregation

Tenure, housingconditions, income and social need increasingly overlap to make area

segregation extreme. We will try to plot the housing, income and social factors that are mutually

reinforcing in separate areas or estates of social housing. These factors do not apply to mixedareas or owner-occupied areas in the same way, since the concentrations are less uniform and

therefore less intense.

Housingfactors.Housingfactors can be divided between physical and management factors.Physical factors include: the quality of the housing; its location in relation to transport, jobs,

services; whether it is built in the form of 'estates'; the size of estates; how separate and

identifiable they are; their design and lay-out. Management factors include: who gets housed and

what demand there is for the housing; who owns the housing; how it is run; what role tenantsplay; what scope there is for resident involvement; what priority is accorded to estate-level

problems and tenant needs.

Social housingestates are often immediately stigmatised by being built in recognisable

concentrations, as illustrated by the damaging experience of some new housingassociationestates (Page, 1993). Council housingis often in the poorer and more marginal neighbourhoods

with poor transport links. The more physically separate, large, identifiable and undesirable a

social housingarea is, the greater its management problems (Power, 1984). The weaker itsmanagement, the more housing, repair and lettings problems will mount, pushing up costs and

reducing services to tenants. Therefore the physical structure of estates is directly linked with

social stigma and management difficulty.


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Although there has been significant decentralisation ofhousingmanagement services, most

estates have far too few front-line managers, caretakers or ongoing repairs. Many do not have

offices on the estates. Bureaucratic, procedure-led management still dominates and the power ofthe town hall and central government over budget decisions is strong. Therefore, front-line

management is generally without sufficient leverage (LSEHousing, 1993). This leads to weak

control over area conditions and intensified area problems.

Income factors. Income factors include: the proportion of households on benefit or out of work;the type of work available and the type of jobs residents do; the level of employable skills among

residents; the nature of the local economy and the changes over the previous generation.

Most council tenants have come from a manual and unskilled work background. They therefore

generally command low-paid work. Even where the local economy is flourishing, tenants aredisadvantaged, partly because of low skills, partly because of the location of estates and their

reputation (which can deter employers), partly because whole categories of work previously

available to unskilled and semi-skilled manual workers have shrunk dramatically--mining,

textiles, shipbuilding, steel, engineering. Slum clearance and decline in cheap private-rentingareas have concentrated the victims of industrial change in council housing.

These groups are seriously disadvantaged in the education system and have few qualifications.

Our study of 20 unpopular estates highlighted the serious lack of educational qualificationsamong school leavers, compared with the national average, as a direct cause of future

employment problems. Table 4, based on the performance of secondary schools serving

unpopular estates, shows this problem clearly.

The high proportion of tenants without work leads to much lower average household incomeswhich affects the morale of communities by creating an atmosphere of dependence. Large

numbers of low-income people, a majority dependent on state support, when concentrated inparticular areas, cannot command quality services (Donnison, 1994). They pay more for shops,transport, insurance; they have low school attainment; and they suffer many social consequences

ofpoverty. McArthur (1993) discusses some of these elements in area decline in his study of

community business. When low income is combined with housingdesign, location, scale andmanagement problems, social housing then becomes rejected by households who can escape.

Many will accept overcrowding, insecurity and inferior accommodation rather than move to

stigmatised, poor estates (LB Hackney, 1994). Therefore a lettings spiral is set in motion fromwhich many social consequences derive as Figure 1 shows.

Social factors. Social factors in part result from lettings difficulties, but in part cause them too.

Social factors include demographic change and polarising trends, which separate certain groups

and concentrate them in disfavoured areas. The following are among the most significant: theage structure of the population and the proportion of dependent people--children, elderly,

disabled; the proportion of young people between 16 and 25; the proportion of ethnic-minority

households; the proportion of lone parents and of children from broken families;poverty; the

performance and problems of local schools; the role of social services and support agencies; thelevels of crime, vandalism and police activity; the level and quality of social facilities; turnover,

rehousing problems and community instability; the number and intensity of neighbour disputes


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and other forms of social conflict and breakdown; racial tensions and other community tensions--

for example, between families with different child-rearing patterns; local leadership problems;

'dependency culture' and lack of local control over the area or conditions (Reynolds, 1986).

The age structure of households on estates is often different from the average with more children,

more young people, and occasionally more elderly, all dependent within predominantly poorhouseholds. This creates an added burden for already marginalised areas (Page, 1993).

Particularly important is the low proportion of identifiable adult males because of theconcentration of lone parents, who are primarily women (Power and Tunstall, 1995). The 1991

Census shows that the concentration of lone parents on unpopular council estates can be as high

as four times the national average. This not only reduces the proportion of able-bodied adults tochildren and young people, but it also leaves lone parents with a major responsibility for care,

supervision and authority. Adult males may have a shadow presence in female-headed, lone-

parent households. For fear of losing benefits, relationships are often not declared. With nofinancial or legal responsibility, it is more difficult for men to play a strong father or husband

role, even if they are the fathers. This also happens (as is increasingly the case) if the woman has

part-time work but the man is unemployed. (Beatrix Campbell explains the marginal role of menin such households in her graphic book, Goliath; Campbell, 1993). In this respect, more than anyother, a diluted form of the American welfare syndrome may be emerging in Britain. These

mutually reinforcing effects are certainly significant (Dahrendorf, 1993).

Poor areas have a much higherconcentration of social problems than other areas, throughcumulative competitive pressures leading people with disadvantages to fail. Failure compounds

itself by pushing weak individuals into disadvantaged areas which successful, ambitious and

hopeful people try to leave or to stay out of. This process can be termed "the double handicap of

the weak" (Power, 1992), where unsuccessful, failing or disadvantaged individuals becomeconcentrated in unsuccessful areas. The barriers to progress are then doubled.

Three Examples

If we take three estates with serious problems, we can show how housing, income and social

factors worked together to create a spiral of decline.

All of these highly stigmatised estates reached such a state of crisis in the 1980s that their futurewas in jeopardy. All three estates were considered 'no-go' areas by the wider community and

were regarded by the police as in serious danger of break-down. They did not decline only for

physical or design reasons. In all cases, the management of the estates had been totallyinadequate until the 1980s--in the Tyneside case, 50 years after the estate was built! The lettings

in all cases had from the outset been to households with little choice. Therefore the estates

combined serious physical problems withpoverty, major social stigma and an almost completelack of ground-level management. Over time, these problems compounded each other to the

point of virtual collapse in management. All the local authorities recognised the serious wider

consequences of the loss of control (Power, 1987b).

The three estates serve only as illustrations of the problems. Many other examples could be used(see Power, 1991a; Burbidge et al., 1981; or DoE, 1990-94). We will return to these three estates
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when considering why area segregation and decline matter to the wider society and whether

anything can be done about it.

4. Does the Existence of Marginal Estates of Social Housing Matter to the Rest of Society?

In 1991 and 1992, there were serious disturbances amongst disaffected youth on at least 13mainly outer-urban, low-rise estates in virtually all-white areas (see Table 6).

There had been intermittent riots over the 10 previous years in a string of inner-city areas--

Brixton, Haringey (London), Bristol, Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham--involving poor,

multi-racial and seriously declining communities, often closely linked with unpopular estates.The 1980s' riots appeared to reflect a sense of injustice and discrimination, unresponsive systems

of policing, inadequate local representation or accountability, an assertion of citizenship rights

and a claim for equality, albeit through violence and destruction of property (Scarman, 1981;Gifford, 1986).

The 1990s' riots were far more puzzling--they were often about conflict within communitiesbetween alienated young men and boys and community activists. They often broke out over joy-

riding. They seemed to reflect deep alienation and reckless self-annihilation--indeed, severalyoung joy-riders were killed in suicidal get-away attempts. The police seemed powerless and,

unlike in the 1980s, community leaders began to denounce their own young men, as well as the

outside world. The actions of the youth were an attempt at short-term power against long-termhopelessness (Campbell, 1993).

A particularly noticeable and puzzling feature of the 1990s' riots was that most of the estates

comprised houses with gardens. They appeared fairly acceptable in design, condition and

standards of accommodation. In at least half the cases, conditions on the estates were not

extreme in the way that media reports had portrayed the more explosive examples. However,they all experienced very high unemployment and dependency levels, serious alienation among

groups of young people and high proportions of lone parents (Campbell, 1993).

The riots of the 1980s and 1990s affected the country as a whole in several ways. Mediaattention brought images of police vulnerability and impotence before the nation, creating fear

and loss of confidence. Faith in government, police and in democracy was undermined. Many

people in the wider community had uneasy consciences about what was happening to our societyand to poor areas. There was a feeling that reducing services, youth clubs, social housing

programmes, was having serious social consequences. Community leaders saw their efforts,

hopes and morale wrecked, at least temporarily. Property was damaged including many

communal facilities and the bill for the riots was high.

Unemployment and idleness were seen as major threats to social cohesion. There was talk of

American-style ghettos, underclass and violence. Young rioters momentarily seized the national

stage and clearly sometimes enjoyed the instant fame (Power and Tunstall, forthcoming).

Violent Trends


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The riots were coupled with other trends that greatly alarmed the wider community. Serious

crime affected people from all walks of life. Police were unable to control conditions. This was

epitomised by John Harvey-Jones trouble-shooting at a Sheffield police station (Harvey-Jones,1992). On 1 of the 20 estates in our study, children under 14 were so out of control that the

police and residents were powerless to stop them burning property, wrecking cars and generally

holding the community to ransom.

Conflict between government and teachers, government and councils, government and otherpublic services was undermining the coherence of the welfare system, while the growing

incidence of lone parenthood was creating additional anxiety. There was clear evidence of poor

British educational standards and low investment in training, made worse by an extremelyserious and long recession creating anxiety over future work and economic stability. The rising

social spending seemed to have little effect as most of it was consumed by benefits to

unemployed people who nonetheless remained poor. There was a sense of being swamped withproblems, loss of confidence and lack of direction (Hutton, 1995).

These deeper trends were picked up by the media during and after the riots. They indicatedprofound unease with the state of the nation, provoking strong statements from government

ministers about the need to return to core values. Riots are the most extreme manifestation of thefailures of democracy. Therefore, preventing disorder and reacting to riots are intrinsic to

democratic government.

For all these reasons, the existence of increasingly marginalised areas of social renting not only

created violent eruptions. These in turn proved to the wider society that such areas could notsimply be left to fester (Turner, 1992). Government cannot stand back, in the face of incipient

social breakdown; it is obliged to intervene where the established social order is threatened.

Marginal estates, like the old slums, subsisted alongside more successful areas for a long time,but today their problems are seen to reflect growing society-wide problems. Marginal estatesthreaten social cohesion by reflecting back to the wider society some of its most entrenched

problems. As a country we seem beset with loss of rank, loss of confidence, inertia and rigidity

(Briggs, 1987). The problems are general, rather than simply the problems of poor areas.Marginal estates also matter because they are public property, expensively subsidised by the rest

of society to the tune of around 25 bn a year (Maclennan et al., 1989; Power, 1992). Reducing

support clearly creates the conditions for violent conflict. Therefore the costs are inescapable buta better return might be attainable.

A further reason for doing something about marginal estates is the sheer scale of the problem. At

least 5 m people's lives are affected. Hundreds of thousands of jobs are at stake. The investment

already made in schools, hospitals, roads, as well as housing, in those areas is irreplaceable. It istoo expensive an investment to be repeated in the foreseeable future. Therefore it cannot be

wasted and most of the homes are needed (Power, 1993).

Wider Reasons for Government Concern


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Many government policies have made the problems of marginal, separate areas worse by

increasing polarisation andpoverty. But the creation of segregated areas and the growing

polarisation of state-subsidised housingis part of a much wider trend across Europe, linked togrowth in long-term unemployment, family change, migration and rising standards for the

majority. Far from being alone in these matters, Britain shares with her European partners the

problems of 'social exclusion' and increasing polarisation (Power, forthcoming).

Governments feel obliged to respond to the problems of segregated areas for several reasons:first, their policies helped build them; secondly, in the case of Britain, it owns most of them

indirectly through local authorities or other social bodies; thirdly, governments pay very large

subsidies for their support through housingbenefit, income support and other social services;fourthly, extreme area decline leads to empty housingunits alongside continuing need, an

obvious contradiction, a waste of resources and a damaging indictment of social housing

management. Most importantly, in a democracy, governments are forced to respond to minoritypressures and to attempt the integration of marginal groups, even when their own declared

policies--and in some cases, laws--created or enhanced sharp divisions. The American Civil

Rights movement, equal opportunities legislation and German unification are conspicuousexamples of the pressures on democracies to act for unity even where the costs are high.

Table 7 summarises why extreme conditions in the three example estates already discussed

mattered to the wider society and influenced government to take action.

Chasing the Problem Around

Previous action in marginal areas that led to the building of social housingestates simply moved

the problem on--from poor private-renting to slum clearance; from slum clearance to councilhousing; from council estates to housingassociations.

We might now be at the end of the road. Moving the problem around is expensive and wasteful.

It might solve very little and recreate a similar set of problems. In the past, pressures for radicalredevelopment overrode the need for community involvement in decision-making, but total

redevelopment may have added to problems by breaking up existing communities. Now there

simply is neither the public money nor the public will to chase the problem on--where to next?

Therefore we need to identify localised solutions: upgrading physical conditions; bettermanagement and use of resources; increased income within areas; social support and

development; a re-emphasis on urban linkages. All these elements require an area focus and a

local organisational approach. There is powerful evidence that action on marginal estates works--

not always and everywhere, but often, and even in the most difficult circumstances (Power,1987a, 1987b; Power and Tunstall, 1995).

5. Does Local Action Work?

In the late 1970s, both central and local government became so worded about spiralling

conditions on estates that they jointly mounted experimental projects (Priority Estates Projects)to address these conditions directly with the explicit involvement of residents. Landlord services


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were pivotal because of their direct responsibility for area conditions.Housingtherefore was the

lead service but it also provided a model for other services.

The Priority Estates Project

The Priority Estates Project during the 1980s worked on some of the most marginal, stigmatisedand segregated estates in the country. In most cases, the impact was significant and measurable

to residents, to local authorities and to government. This is borne out by a number of independent

resident surveys and other studies measuring performance, costs and benefits, spreading from1984 to 1993 (Hedges et al., 1980; SCPR, 1984; Young et al., 1986; Gifford, 1986; Glennerster

and Turner, 1993; Hope and Foster, 1993; Capita, 1993). The main reason for success was that

resources were drawn out of the central system and down to estate level. Organisationally it

became possible to tackle problems directly and to put into reverse neglect and decay. Theharnessing of resident energy and the localisation of staff created a totally new dynamic on the

estates which rapidly affected conditions (Power, 1984). Local authority housingdepartments

were the pioneers of this approach (LB Islington, 1978).

There were four elements to the approach to estate problems. Locally based management offices

were opened on estates and other services were drawn down to estate level. Tenant and resident

involvement lead to detailed consultation at all stages of development. Cooperation between

central and local government was reinforced by high-level political commitment to change andexperiment. In all cases, an outside catalyst worked alongside a supportive community

facilitator, residents and local staff.

These four elements made it possible for front-line services to expand and reach people directly;

for residents to have a real say, resulting in improved performance; for political divisions tobecome less important than service delivery; for new ways of addressing problems and managing

scarce resources to emerge, so that benefits outstripped costs. Figure 2 shows how the fourelements of localisation created an impact on estate conditions, thereby winning the support ofcentral government, local authorities and residents of marginal estates.

Local Authority Decentralisation

Local authorities, alongside the PEP experiments, decentralised theirhousingmanagement at a

fairly dramatic rate. They increasingly accepted the need to provide a local base for directservices and to involve tenants if action was to be properly targeted and if staff motivation,

morale and performance were to be increased.

Housinghad often provided the leading focus for decentralisation because by 1980, difficult-to-let council estates had become the most problematic housingareas. Social and communityexperiments in the 1970s had failed because they had not addressed housingorganisation and

management problems directly, although they had underlined the growing problems of council

estates (Community Development Project, 1976; Burbidge et al., 1981). There was evidence thatremote, large-scale, bureaucratic management was rapidly generating slum problems in social

housingthat had previously only existed in private housing(Burbidge et al, 1981). Some


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problems were made worse by political interference and by highly polarised lettings (Corina,

1974).

Housingformed the basis of change because the core landlord functions of rent collection,repair, letting property and tenant liaison were essential prerequisites of estate improvement

(Power, 1991a). Therefore localisation was seen as a possible remedy. Pressure for action oncouncil housinghad become irresistible by 1979.

The alternative idea that physical conditions on estates shaped the behaviour of occupants, thuscreating the essential core of the problem, was expounded by Professor Alice Coleman

(Coleman, 1985), but was disputed by practitioners, professionals and academics alike. It was

clear that while inhuman design played a part, far more complex social and economic pressures

were at work, making "design determinism" an over-simplified escape from the long-termlandlord task of management (Coleman and Power, 1984).

However, housingprovided only the organisational framework for a much bigger set of actions

on problems, linked to income and social conditions as well as housing. Only where the widerproblems were addressed as well as housing, was it possible to make a real difference to the

worst areas (Power, 1989). This made the role of tenants become more significant.

A Role for Tenants

On most estates, some tenants' organisations and tenants' activity exist. Quite often there is a

large range of fluctuating groups, some of them providing direct services. However, tenants arerarely in control of significant resources, receive little training in running organisations and are

rarely supported in a sufficiently long-term or sensitive way. The gap between tenants and the

main system is often the biggest obstacle to success.

Tenants come to be seen as useful allies when landlords feel threatened. As a result, tenants playa growing role in council housing. Nationally, over 150 tenants' groups have taken over the

management of their estates, as Tenant Management Organisations, and the whole idea of tenant

participation and control has become accepted by left and right as a way out of alienation, loss ofcontrol, community disintegration and joblessness.

Evidence has been collected, not just from Priority Estate Projects, but also from local authority

estate-based initiatives and from continental programmes of estate rescue, to show that a multi-

faceted programme of physical renovation, management localisation, social initiatives andresident involvement can transform an estate from a situation bordering on chaos to relatively

stable conditions (Power, 1991a, 1993).

Multi-faceted Programmes

A report prepared by the author for the OECD showed that every estate of 1000 units receivedaround 10m revenue funding a year in publicly supported services and cash benefits. This very

large sum should support at least 300 jobs, at least half of which should be locally based.

Potentially, many others could flow from this activity (Power, 1992).


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The services this public subsidy supports can be made to work in poor communities by linking

their input with resident representation and involvement; by creating a local budget so that the

service can respond directly to local circumstances; by having a visible presence on the estatethat is directly accessible to users; by abandoning the minimalist stance of unidentifiable officers

and adopting a customer-oriented, problem-focused, result-oriented accessible stance.

Police, Schools, Health, Social Services, Shops, Transport

The role of the police illustrates this point. Difficult estates usually require more police time thanother areas, yet often earn the police a negative reputation for failing to curb crime and disorder

(South Wales Constabulary, 1987-91). As soon as a line of communication with the community

opens through a localised housingoffice, police often move out to the estate, work with the local

office, meet residents and make themselves visible. Beat policing is popular on estates andcertainly reduces fear, making other community development more possible (see Hope and

Foster, 1991, 1993, for full study of this; also Downes, 1989). If the police were re-oriented

towards the front-line, each estate of 1000 dwellings would have 8 full-time policemen, allowing

24-hour, 7-day cover with 2 police permanently on duty. There is evidence that localised,resident-linked policing stabilises or reduces crime. On two-thirds of the estates in our survey of

20 highly unpopular estates, crime and security problems had stabilised or fallen according toresidents and local staff (Power and Tunstall, 1995).

Schools are increasingly being pushed into community building, as parent governors become

more important and as failing schools are threatened with closure. A challenging study of

Birmingham's inner-city and outer-estate schools offers strong grounds for supporting self-government and community-based education, coupling budgets, targets, tests and national

curriculum, with parental involvement, student and staff motivation, and greatly improved exam

results (Atkinson, 1994).

Health visitors often play a vital role with mothers and young children, the elderly and thedisabled. Estates have many vulnerable health groups. Where estates have clinics and chemists,

residents can gain vastly better services. Where the health service is consolidated and localised,

far more can be achieved. An estate of 1000 units with young families can have three full-timehealth visitors (Welsh Office, 1987a). On the Tyneside estate in Table 5, a special women's

health project has helped over many years. On the Welsh estate, after 25 years, residents had a

local doctor for the first time; and eight dispersed health visitors consolidated their cover intothree locally based full-time staff.

Social services' social work is a very expensive, specialised and often thankless profession,

pouring effort and resources into picking up society's broken pieces. Many attempts have been

made to convert spending on support into more positive programmes. Community carecomplicates even further the problem for deprived areas, while representing a serious attempt to

help the most vulnerable. At the very least, localised budgeting, home-helps, voluntary support,

fostering networks, family and parenting support and community development, can be

encouraged, measured, costed and developed. There is probably more scope to extend servicesby redirecting existing resources in this field than in any other.


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Shops on estates are usually expensive, poorly stocked, sometimes barricaded and beleaguered.

Poor shops with high prices were the trigger for the Ely riot in Cardiff and also for disorder in

Lancashire (Power and Tunstall, forthcoming). There were of course other factors. In France andGermany, on estates, shops are encouraged at the base of blocks. This makes a visible difference

to the atmosphere of estates as well as services. A large Islington redevelopment area lost 90

shops when it was pulled down; 6 were provided in the new estate, with high rents due to thesuperior conditions. They soon become unviable. The area has fewer services, fewer jobs and

less variety or interchange as a result.

Transport links to estates are often poor. It is a rare estate that is both hard to let and on a good

transport route. Poor transport has a major effect on access to work, training opportunities andthe atmosphere within estates. In Easterhouse outside Glasgow, the inadequate bus service means

that private taxis largely replace them, but high transport costs lead to the chronic isolation of 40

000 people. A well-organised bus service could almost certainly be made to work.

This brief discussion of services illustrates the potential for localisation on many fronts.

However, models for transformed services need to be developed rapidly (Osborne and Gaebler,1992). One useful finding from the European and British estate surveys is that full localisation ofhousingand related services encourages and generates other activities at estate level, leading toimproved local conditions. There was a steady increase in locally based activities and services on

the 20 unpopular estates studied over the period 1982-94. This change related directly to the

change in housingand support services linked to tenant involvement. Table 8 illustrates this.

6. The Localisation Process

Many of the central ideas that emerged from successful experiments in estate regeneration arenot new. But the process of localisation involves a major restructuring of service organisation

and a different approach to area-based renewal. The process of disaggregation from the centreand coordination at ground level is complex, unorthodox and usually incomplete, limiting thepotential for viable local services (Glennerster and Turner, 1993). Combining inputs and support

locally to target area-based problems is a logical outcome of the greater area segregation and

polarisation on estates. The most salient elements are outlined in the next section.

Consultation

Local residents have a clear perspective when consulted on problems and priorities. Involving

them will be a precondition of cooperation and support for any local initiative. It will give local

managers insight into what is needed and what might work. It is the essential first step in

developing local representation and long-term change. Tenants register much higher satisfactionlevels with services and conditions if they are involved in the process of decision-making and if

they identify with the changes (Hope and Foster, 1991; Glennerster and Turner, 1993).

Racial minorities are often left out of the process unless special efforts are made. So are youngpeople. Yet the involvement of these two groups is central to healthy communities and to

avoiding disorder and breakdown. Novel and informal methods of consultation work better than

traditional methods (see Power, 1991b; Bell and PEP Consultants, 1991). Children and young


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people are the greatest source of energy, optimism and potential for growth, while at the same

time creating demands and causing problems, if not made part of the process of renewal. Yet

government and academic reports, particularly relating to crime and vandalism, use the numberand proportion of young people as a measure of difficulty. This not only reflects the damage they

actually cause (see Wilson, 1978), but the problems families face (see Utting et al., 1993). On the

other hand, the most successful Priority Estates Projects, such as at Broadwater Farm, involvedyoung people in a dynamic and direct way, thereby reducing crime and danger, increasing work

and restoring community relations (Gifford, 1986).

The work of the Balsall Health Community Education project in Birmingham (see Atkinson,

1994) reinforces the belief that schools have large, unrealised potential in poor areas and thatchildren regarded as early and lasting failures can often succeed in totally unexpected ways.

Progress in areas of low educational achievement hinges on linking children and their families,

however imperfect, with schools and the surrounding community. Using children as a negativemeasure undermines the future. Engaging tenants in the future of estate children--as has

happened, for example, on the Stockwell Park estate in Lambeth--can transform their self-image

and their ability to contribute (presentation by J. Fawcett, to Rowntree meeting, London, 1995).

Resources for Local Services

Based on housingexperience, it is likely that less than half of the public resources targeted atpoor areas are actually used to provide direct services locally (Power and Tunstall, 1995). The

central bureaucracy not only consumes disproportionate resources, but can cripple action on

problems and can divert professional skill away from the front line into centralised power elitestalking to each other about distant problems. By identifying how much is officially allocated for

an area--e.g. rent income, the school capitation budget, the per head cost of policing and health--

it is possible to see what resources are available to tackle an area's problems. These existing

allocated resources will be fought over. Capita, in its study for the DoE on the costs andeffectiveness ofhousinglocalisation, analyses the problems of local budget creation (Capita,

1993). Yet this is essential if the local services are to be funded for the local area; if wasteful

central administration is to be cut; and if local problem-solving is to become possible. GlasgowCity Council has found it possible to reduce overall costs in the course of creating a large

network of neighbourhood offices (Interview with Director ofHousing, 1994). It is possible to

direct more resources to front-line services and less to central bureaucracies.

Front-line Staff and Local Employment

If more available resources can be localised, it then becomes possible to deploy more front-line

staff, such as caretakers, guards, cleaners, communal maintenance and open space workers,

home-helps, play and nursery assistants. Roughly two front-line workers can be employed for theprice of one town-hall-based senior worker. Opportunities for local residents also open up as the

local initiatives take root (see Power, 1988a). The recent success of the Waltham ForestHousing

Action Trust in securing 25 per cent of their jobs for local residents illustrates this point (InsideHousing, June 1995).


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But skills gaps need to be identified and training provided for local services and local

responsibility. Work that we commonly think of as unskilled, such as cleaning, acquires new

dimensions when part of the cleaner's role is to report any damage or missing part, to tracetenants causing unreasonable and illegal nuisance through anti-social rubbish dumping, to win

the confidence and cooperation of children in keeping the estate clean, to build pride in the daily

repetition of a normally despised task--cleaning up after others (Burbidge, 1992). The continentalapproach to estate-based caretaking and custodial services is significantly more successful than

the British because it involves detailed training, close supervision and many more locally based

jobs (SCIC Gestion, 1995).

The same principle of job enhancement can be applied to making good and finishing off simplerepairs, responding courteously and calmly in threatening situations, resisting the pressure to

cover-up over low standards of work, and so on. Making estate-level jobs a real contribution to

quality is a critical challenge for localisation. The training of senior caretakers on the BroadwaterFarm estate, Haringey, London, in the early 1980s turned the estate into a teaching model for

groups from all over the country and Europe (Gifford, 1986).

Enticement of Services to Estate Level

The viability and impact of localisation should encourage moves to ground level in the police

and social services which tend to suffer from the twin problems of overdemand and inadequatefront-line support (Harvey-Jones, 1992). Health authorities, with their own large structures and

commitments, can localise some services if they see the benefits and feel the pressure (Mid

Glamorgan Health Authority, 1985). Schools are geographically local anyway and it is a matterof emphasising a positive approach to the community such as is now being advocated by Labour

leaders. Inspiring heads to have faith in the children, rather than to assume a battle stance in the

face of overwhelming problems and failing performance will of itself help to change the

educational climate. Primary schools on estates often succeed in this, but the system frequentlybreaks down at secondary level (Power and Tunstall, 1995). One pivotal and virtually

undiscussed factor is the size of most comprehensives. There may be a case for making some

beleaguered secondary schools in difficult areas smaller and more community-oriented(Atkinson, 1994).

Cooperation Between Services at the Local Level

There are many techniques for increasing the volume and raising the quality of local services, as

long as the transfer to the local area is a true transfer and is not expensively backed, as happenedin authorities like Islington, by tiers of senior managers and by sectional heads for every part of

the local service. This duplication eventually becomes unfundable (LB Islington, 1994, 1995).

Housingprovides the basic structure and physical conditions of an area. The landlord service has

immediate resources of rent income and the stock itself around which local bases can be created.Therefore housingcan take the lead. The other obvious services to link with housingare

education, social services, police and health. The police have long admitted that they could only

police housingestates effectively if there was a local housingoffice to control lettings, run thecore custodial services and provide links to tenants and other local workers (Power, 1980). The


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same is true of social services, though their historic relations with housingdepartments have

usually been poor, bordering on hostile.

The two major advantages of localisation are that it brings skills and service to the place wherethey are needed, making the service accessible, responsive and direct; and it forces service

workers to give priority to the local area, as only by performing well locally is it possible todemonstrate effectiveness. This contrasts with centrally based administrative jobs, where

producing the fight pieces of paper or operating the right part of the procedural system is themain measure of success. These increasingly computer-based tasks may be important for overall

organisation, but they are virtually meaningless unless the core tasks relating to housing, income

and social factors which we identified as so damaging are also tackled directly. In order to makea real difference on the ground, localisation has to be permanent. It

area-based poverty and resident empowerment (power 1996)

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