Official Report 670KB pdf
Item 3 is an oral evidence session on our inquiry into the delivery of regeneration in Scotland. This is the first formal evidence session that we have held in this important inquiry, although the committee has already undertaken fact-finding visits to Aberdeen, Cumbernauld and Glasgow to meet local communities and learn from their experiences of regeneration. We plan to undertake further fact-finding visits after the summer recess and to hear from community representatives at our meeting next week.
I am happy to go straight to questions.
Does anybody else want to say anything? It seems that you want to go straight to the questions—I like you guys straight off. I will start the ball rolling.
That is fine. I will probably bow to some of my colleagues due to their experience on the ground, but I can give my perception of community planning partnerships in Edinburgh.
The main point that the SFHA membership would make on that question is that we have found that the community planning partnerships do not often include housing as standard in their membership, and we would really like to see housing at the table because of our involvement with health and social work. Everything has to be there, and housing is an integral part of community planning.
I agree. Since the demise of Communities Scotland, there has not been a high enough representation of housing interests at community planning partnership level. Communities Scotland used to have a place on all the partnerships, but the housing contribution to the debate is now sometimes missing.
My experience tells me that some of the work that is done with housing is often done in sub-groups of the community planning partnerships. Is that your experience?
That is correct.
At that level, does the system work okay? Is information fed up the chain?
Sometimes, yes. I could name local authorities that are doing better than others, but I will not—
Please do.
No, I will not. [Laughter.]
I echo the previous comments. The issue of representation and having a seat at the table has been a problem for our members. However, the community planning partnership structure in Glasgow is in the process of changing, and we hope to get a seat above the sub-group level. Our members want that representation, and we feel that it is an arena where we need to be represented.
I broadly agree with what my colleagues have said. I know from GHA’s engagement, both at strategic level and at sub-group level in the Glasgow community planning partnership, that a lot depends on how organisations resource their involvement and what they invest. There will be an understandable mix of experience, even across the city, in that regard.
Are there representatives from regeneration communities in the membership of the bodies that the witnesses represent? If so, at what level are they represented?
At city level, our chief executive and the chair of the board engage in strategic forums in community planning. Below that, at sub-city level, Glasgow splits into three strategic planning areas. Our respective area directors, who have housing management and regeneration staff within their functions, routinely attend the meetings at that level. You are correct that there is sometimes a plethora of other sub-groups and working groups that present themselves at more of a neighbourhood level. Area housing managers and the like normally participate at that level.
Are there no ordinary punters, if you like, at board level or some kind of other senior discussion level in your organisation?
In our own organisation?
Yes.
Yes. There are tenants at board level and tenant-led area committees.
Do they have a strong voice in your organisation?
Very much so. We try to reinforce that with some devolvement of moneys directly to tenant members in the area committees in order to support local programmes of activity.
What about the others in your organisation, Dr Rowan?
Could you clarify the question?
How many ordinary folk from regeneration communities take part at a high level in the organisations that you represent?
Local people involved in regeneration in communities are represented throughout our member organisations. Very often, they carry out projects and initiatives in conjunction with our members.
Is that at significantly high levels in those organisations?
Yes.
Link has a group structure. The parent company currently has three tenants on the board. Our subsidiary company, which performs all the housing management function, has a majority of tenants on its board. A lot of those tenants come from areas in which we are hoping to undertake regeneration activities.
Pauline Barbour, what is the case with your member organisations?
A number of members of the SFHA council are tenants. There is certainly quite a mix at board level.
I do not suppose that the question really applies to Shelter, Gavin Corbett.
That is right; my organisation is probably a bit different from the others here, in the sense that they represent organisations that work with neighbourhoods as neighbourhoods. Our role is primarily to work with disadvantaged people, most of whom live in disadvantaged areas.
Good morning. I have a supplementary question that relates to community representation on the GHA board. My historical experience of GHA is that it tended to be very top heavy and top down in relation to communities. When community representatives came forward who were critical—or what GHA might describe as overly critical—of the strategy and direction of GHA, they were refused a hearing and, in some cases, removed from the GHA. Does that practice still exist at GHA? Do you still vet who comes on to the area boards or the GHA board itself?
No; we do not have that practice. I recognise that the question has been posed in a particular way, but for the avoidance of doubt I confirm that the chair of the GHA board is a tenant member. There are five tenant members on the board just now. In fact, tenant members make up the majority on the board and have done so over the life of GHA. That representation has been reinforced further by the area committee structure, which is also tenant led; tenants form the majority on those committees.
For the record, you said that five tenants make up the majority of members. Does the board consist of nine people?
I will double-check that, but I think that that is the case.
I sought that clarification because there is an issue about people who are trying to be representatives for their communities. Experience in the past was that some of those members felt that they were being blocked from going further or from taking up what they saw as their rightful place as elected representatives of their communities.
Good morning, everyone. I will focus on some of the evidence that we received from Dr Rowan that I think reflects the discussion so far.
Yes. I will first give a bit of background for those comments in our written submission. Our members have been doing regeneration in one form or another for the past 30 years, so we have a lot of innovative examples. We work with communities, because it is local people who govern community-controlled housing associations.
Can you give examples of some of them? I think that that would make the issue come alive.
Yes. For instance, in the New Gorbals Housing Association area, the local credit union was going to be shut down because of its premises—I do not know the exact story with the premises; perhaps they were condemned—but the housing association gave the credit union new premises, refurbished them and gave the credit union a start-up amount of money. The credit union is now up and running again. The housing association refers people to the credit union, and they work in tandem in that way.
That is good. I would like examples from other panel members, but I have another question for Dr Rowan first. You referred in your submission to the idea of community anchors. I think that you feel that the consultation paper on the proposed community empowerment and renewal bill missed an opportunity by not referring to community anchors. Can you expand on that point?
Yes. We were delighted to see community anchors referred to in the document “Achieving A Sustainable Future: Regeneration Strategy”. We feel that not only community-controlled housing associations but other agencies such as local community development trusts have carried out the community anchor role over the past 30 years. That reflects that our organisations are very much rooted in their communities: they have trust relationships with communities; they have assets in communities; and they are self-funded.
That ties in very neatly with a suggestion in another written submission that, rather than all the funding going to CPPs, it might be better to fund directly identified community anchors—organisations that are well placed in the community—to deliver projects.
Yes, there are thousands—I am sure that we could easily spend a full hour giving examples.
One example will do.
The purpose of the strategy—which I hope will come out in the inquiry—is to assess whether those examples have been transformative and led to lasting change. That is why the strategy is important. Other people might have examples, too. The real problem is not innovation—there is plenty of that—but the lack of sustained change.
Are you not going on to the outcomes a little? Unless you can say, “Here is an example of what we did and this is what it delivered”, there could be a danger that people are simply talking about strategies at that level and not actually delivering.
Yes, but equally there have been particular projects that were proven to be successful in their own right and were well received and even internationally applauded, and yet the area itself did not change. The main purpose of regeneration is to transform the area.
Can you give me an example of that?
I cannot think of anything off the top of my head. I just want to emphasise that, although it is useful to celebrate innovation, that is not where the challenge lies. We could easily fill a big report with good examples of successful projects and initiatives, and I am sure that the projects that colleagues who are here today have undertaken would be among them. However, the question is whether a project has actually changed things and contributed to change in a whole area.
You spoke about successful projects. That is interesting, because projects and regeneration areas are often deemed to be successful while the outcomes for people have not been that great. A project may be internationally renowned while making little difference in terms of outcomes. Would you agree that that is often the case?
Absolutely. We have tended historically to judge outcomes on the number of buildings that are improved or the way in which the investment has been spent. One of the emerging themes, which has been emerging for a while—
So we are looking at objects rather than people?
Yes, absolutely. A key point—which I am sure is a widely held view—is that regeneration is not about places or property but about people, and the way in which we measure it must echo that.
If you think of any examples and want to give the committee that information afterwards, it would be very helpful.
As Gavin Corbett said, there are many examples. One example that I can give the committee straight away is Easthall Park Housing Co-operative, and its approach is echoed throughout the association movement. The housing association is linking up with a local college to provide opportunities for apprenticeships and jobs, and it is working on procurement issues with local contractors. Those are on-the-ground initiatives that work exceptionally well in getting people into employment and further education, and there are a lot of aspects to that work.
I submitted a number of examples of things that Link Group has done over the years. If I was to choose one of those, it would be the dental surgery in Kirkshaws in Coatbridge.
That is good.
There are plenty of other examples. We can do such things because we are fortunate to have been in business for quite a long time and we have built up reserves, some of which are free reserves, and we have surpluses. We feel that it is incumbent on us to reinvest those into the business, which is why we get involved in those sorts of things. Not every association can do that, but we think that we have an obligation to do so. Because we are in the fortunate position of being able to do that, we feel that we should do it.
That is helpful.
Like Link, we have invested quite a lot of our investment moneys in supporting community regeneration schemes. Earlier, I briefly mentioned the area committee moneys, which are disbursed and prioritised by local communities to support projects from community garden initiatives to village halls and conservatories for sheltered housing complexes. Those are small-scale projects that are prioritised and significant locally.
John Wilson has a supplementary question.
Mr Sanderson mentioned the Kirkshaws dental surgery and a package of funding for it. Who owns the building?
We do.
So the Link Housing Association has taken ownership of the building. What was the financial contribution from Link Housing Association to the creation of the building? I am trying to get to the issue of funding. You mentioned the funding streams, which included Lanarkshire NHS Board funding, wider-role funding and some of your reserves. I just want to find out what housing associations are doing as a package. I am aware of the history of housing associations and the wider access role that they have played, and that moneys have come into them. As a percentage, what was Link’s financial input into the project?
I cannot tell you that now, but I could submit that information to you.
That would be useful.
Good morning. Mr Fletcher mentioned the housing stock transfers just a moment ago. I have some questions not on any one particular transfer but on transfers in general. With such transfers, do problems or issues with regard to the ownership not of buildings as such but of common areas, pavements and so on arise, and is the issue used as an excuse—I was not going to use that word, but I have done so anyway—when it comes to regenerating a particular area? In short, is there any confusion about ownership of the areas around the buildings, with the local authority saying, “We still own that area,” or, “We don’t own it—you do”?
We certainly encountered that issue with the common estate and, since the transfer, have deployed a number of strategies to improve joint working and the approach to the estate. In our experience, the footprint of the buildings and the hard-standing areas were transferred while, in the vast majority of cases, the green spaces and common areas outwith the immediate GHA estate remained with the city council. There must be strategic and good local working to ensure that we do not miss out any spaces that need to be maintained.
Mr Sanderson?
Can you repeat the question? I thought that you were directing it only at David Fletcher.
With housing stock transfers, can issues arise not so much with the buildings—those contractual elements will be easy to deal with—but with the common land, the pavements and so on?
Yes. We do not have David Fletcher’s experience of stock transfers, but when we merged with what was then called Port Glasgow Housing Association we found that the owners of garages that were relatively removed from the houses did not want to contribute to the overall maintenance costs. Although that happened five or six years ago, we have still not resolved the issue.
Are there any more examples?
Perhaps as a brief supplementary comment I should set some context. First and foremost, local communities have seen direct and tangible improvements in their housing conditions through stock transfer. However, over time, the focus will understandably move to the wider environment and we have tried to reflect and respond to that in our own priorities, budgets and programmes. I know that you will take evidence from Professor Carol Tannahill from the GoWell programme about the longitudinal research, which has demonstrated—as if there were any doubt about it—the impact of the wider neighbourhood on wellbeing, confidence and people’s place both in the world and in their neighbourhood.
Before I bring in Dr Rowan, I highlight our concern about cases in which general maintenance that should have been carried out over the piece has been billed as regeneration and has received regeneration moneys. Have you done anything like that? Have you had certain areas that you have regularly maintained and other areas where stuff might not have been going on but where you have billed maintenance as regeneration and therefore received regeneration money? Does anyone have any admissions that they wish to make?
I mentioned the area committee funds. We have tried to use those to respond to communities’ concerns when they think that a particular environment—whether it involves walls or planters—is not appropriate. For example, the environment might have been appropriate when it was designed in the 1960s or the 1970s, but it no longer meets the community’s needs. Such activity could be regarded as local regeneration, but we try, where possible, to make the best use of mainstream budgets.
That is what I was asking about. Such activity is often billed as regeneration when, in other places, it would have come under general maintenance and would have been funded from mainstream budgets. Are you saying that, in Glasgow, such maintenance issues have, in the main, been dealt with using mainstream budgets rather than regeneration moneys?
We use both. When we can, we tailor such activity to mainstream budgets.
We will probably deal with mainstreaming versus regeneration in more depth later. For many years, I have been annoyed by regeneration moneys being used as a cash cow to prevent mainstream funding from being used for certain things.
I will pick up on what David Fletcher said. The same problems arise further down the line, with the second-stage transfers from GHA to our members. There is a bit of woolliness about who is responsible for some areas, which is to do with ownership and so on.
In conjunction with communities, a lot of associations are doing innovative work on areas that might have been lying waste for a long time. Recently, I heard about an example of that at one of the wider-role meetings—we still call them that. The Shettleston community growing project took a bare patch of land that was owned by the association in the area and where nothing was happening and turned it into an extremely impressive community garden, in a section of which people have their own allotments. The project involves a bit of employment and training. It is quite an interesting little project. I am not saying that it deals with all the issues to do with common land not being attended to, but there are things that a community sees and such proposals come from the community. If a community wants to do something about an area because it is not happy about it, it can turn to the local community housing association—the anchor—and ask it how it can help people to approach some of the issues. That has worked really well, and not just for the Shettleston project—there are a few similar projects around.
I want to pick up on where Colleen Rowan was going with her response. In some ways, the bigger fault line in policy is not to do with whether stock transfer has taken place. In some ways, the housing revenue account is meant to be self-contained, although stock transfer sharpens that analysis. The issue is more to do with the fact that there is no such thing as a council estate or a housing association estate, and that has been the case for quite a long time. All the estates are mixed tenure.
You must have read my mind because my next area of questioning is going to deal with that. I would like to ask the housing association representatives, in particular, whether they have any examples of extreme difficulties that have been encountered in liaising with the landlords in the areas that they cover.
I will give an example that is close to Mr Pentland’s heart. In Forgewood in Lanarkshire, we took on responsibility for factoring a large area of mixed-tenure properties. Our ability to maintain that area relied very much on contributions from owner-occupiers, but we did not get those contributions. Much against our wishes and the wishes of Mr Pentland, we eventually had to withdraw that service because we were subsidising it so heavily.
I do not have any direct examples to offer. On alternative tenures and new housing provision, YourPlace Property Management, which is our large factoring subsidiary within the city, recently encountered some tricky issues with a new estate in north Glasgow where a private developer had responsibility. The developer had been perceived by the existing local communities as shirking from providing its services and not delivering for the community. We are collaborating with the council to broker delivery of a service that is more efficient and, we believe, better value for money than the existing poor and badly presenting service.
On what we do about such issues, I feel strongly that, at the local level, if the price and condition are right, and if doing so fits into the stock strategy, there is a case for buying back properties. Some properties are so badly managed and in such poor condition that they are acting as a brake on regeneration and our ability to house some of the most vulnerable people.
A number of associations have been approached by people who have bought their properties and want to rent them on, with the association being asked to take on the management of those properties. That is quite interesting. I am not saying that the practice is widespread, but people have come to us to ask for advice on how it could be done. There are appropriate mechanisms that allow a local housing association to manage properties that people have bought and want to rent out.
On the back of that question, I want to ask about people who have bought their property but are unable to sustain the mortgage. Are you familiar with buying over such properties?
Such situations are very familiar. We get a number of inquiries—I was going to say every day, but certainly every week. We are participants in the Government’s mortgage to rent initiative. In the past year, we have purchased around 40 properties throughout the city. That is very much in keeping with what Gavin Corbett said. People—sometimes individuals and sometimes, following a bereavement, family members—approach the association, looking for a bit of support. We see that as a growing role for us in the city.
At the very start of the meeting, David Fletcher mentioned community involvement and the fact that communities are not really participating to their full capacity. How can we best improve the situation?
I mentioned that in the context of community planning and the strategic structures, below city level but still involving large geographies, in which senior officers often operate. It is about finding a way of engaging at a neighbourhood level. Later, the committee will hear from Dr Peter Matthews, who has put together a paper with examples of different engagement structures that have come and gone over the past couple of decades.
Does it not always seem to be just the same group of people who are on all the committees within the community? How representative of that community are those people?
The national standards for community engagement strongly recommend guarding against going only to people from a particular walk of life or a particular group of tenants or residents. That is a risk.
I have a question for the other witnesses about that. How do you encourage new people?
That question goes right to the heart of what the regeneration strategy is about—building community capacity. We have all touched on the issue of burnout already—it is a big problem.
A lot is to do with—I hate to say it—what funding is available when we are trying to encourage people in the community to get involved. As far as I am aware, a separate stream will run parallel to the people and communities fund to help community capacity building.
Gavin Corbett mentioned our housing support services. At one time, we were probably funding those services to the tune of about a quarter of a million quid a year in order to keep them going.
Our members are based in their local community and people see them as being part of their local community. Staff are very often local residents as well, which is important. The relationship of trust that I think I mentioned in our written evidence is key, and it has been built up over years and years.
As a former community worker, that is music to my ears. I really enjoyed hearing about the project that you talked about and the idea of shadow boards, because young people need to learn from others.
Exactly.
Super. Thank you.
On the issue of engagement in Glasgow, could Mr Fletcher tell me how many tenants and residents associations there are in Glasgow?
I would need to check the exact number, but my estimate would be 60 to 70, across the city. Previously, there may have been a larger number. I am happy to submit a written response to your question.
That would be useful
I assure Mr Fletcher that, 15 years ago, there were more than 200 tenants and residents associations in Glasgow—I know because I conducted a survey to find out how many of them were actively engaged with Glasgow City Council at that time.
As I said earlier, I do not think that we pay enough attention to outcomes such as building social capital, as opposed to the issues of how much we have spent and how many houses we have improved.
As most of us would recognise, it is easier to measure the bricks-and-mortar side of things rather than the social aspect. It is important to highlight that there is a duty on associations to report to tenants on their performance within the charter. I am not saying that that is a panacea or provides a solution to all the problems, but there is a duty on associations to say what they are doing in an area. Tenants have been involved in the development of the charter. That element has been present, but I am sure that more could be done.
Traditionally, there has perhaps been too great a focus on the numbers of houses that have been built and on the finances of an association. We are experiencing a wee bit of tension—that is perhaps too strong a word—because the Scottish Government is encouraging us to embark on innovative projects and do good things with the money but the regulator is saying that we should not do so much of the wider-action stuff and should focus on keeping our nose clean and building more houses. There is a bit of a dilemma there.
You said that the Government is encouraging you to use your reserves but that the regulator is saying that you should keep your nose clean and build more housing. Is that right?
I would not say that the regulator is saying that outright, but it is implying that.
The regulator is implying that.
Yes. That might just be our experience, though. Others might want to comment.
If anyone has any other comments on that, I would be glad to hear them.
I echo what Craig Sanderson said. That is our members’ perspective, by and large.
I do not have direct experience of that, but I understand exactly what Craig Sanderson is describing.
Gavin Corbett picked up on the point that I want to raise. In a lot of communities, we carry out regeneration but do not measure the economic benefit of that to the individual household in the community. A lot of displacement has taken place over the years, with a lot of new-build owner-occupied projects progressing in tandem with the housing association work. That skews the overall economic impact for the existing residents, who do not see any real economic improvement in their household incomes despite all the money that we have spent on regeneration projects. There are areas throughout Scotland where, despite our having spent £20 million or £30 million on improving the area, the existing residents have not benefited economically. How do we measure that? Is enough being done to measure the economic impact not only on the area but on the individual households of the people for whom we are supposed to be carrying out regeneration to improve their lives?
The research would probably need to be longitudinal rather than short term and would take quite an investment. Others may be better placed to comment on how valuable that would be. We would need to be able to trace things over time and follow individual people, not just the area as a whole.
You are saying that some of the moneys that Government directs towards regeneration would be better off in such projects than in the physical projects that we have seen again and again in some places.
Let us have the physical projects, but we must also consider how they can provide added value by directly engaging some of the people who might otherwise be quite distant from them. It is not a question of either/or; it is about how we can add value to those projects.
Grand.
We have embraced the GoWell programme, about which you will hear more from Carol Tannahill and her team. The programme has sought to follow people as they have stayed in their communities or moved. The committee will be aware that it is common in regeneration areas that are going through turbulent change—a lot of rehousing and demolition—that there is churn in the neighbourhood and a turnover of the housing stock. There are many challenges involved in trying to follow an individual on that journey. As Gavin Corbett acknowledges, it involves a significant amount of investment and requires the skills and experience to be able to do that right and follow someone over a decade or possibly more, as the GoWell programme has sought to do. We have sought to invest in that programme and learn lessons from it not at the end of the period but as we go, through interaction with the principal investigators.
We are getting quite tight for time now. I will allow a brief supplementary from Stuart McMillan.
I have a question for Mr Corbett. A number of people have contacted me in the past regarding proposed developments. They are perhaps not happy with one or two of the outcomes, but they genuinely feel that they have been consulted. Is that common or is Mr Corbett aware of less consultation with tenants and residents?
I suspect that every evaluation of a project will say that there were some things to learn about communication and consultation. Those can always be improved.
For the record, I say a big thank you to Mr Sanderson for his support and, indeed, tolerance during the hard negotiations that we had on Forgewood.
Tolerance. [Laughter.]
I have never been called tolerant before.
The witnesses will be more aware than anybody that we now live in a difficult financial climate. Is their role in regeneration restricted because of the significant cut in the cost per unit for houses? I ask them to advise the committee what that means to them and what it has done.
We are managing to keep the development programme moving forward at some scale in Glasgow. That creates other pressures and tensions but, so far, we have managed to do it successfully and we see our work in Glasgow at this time growing.
If the grant levels were raised, associations could do more and could unlock private finance in light of the current lack of bank lending. Albyn Housing Society has discovered that, with £40,000, it can build 25 houses but, with £60,000, it can build 75 houses. If the grant was set at about 65 per cent, that could make a major impact on social housing provision.
How would more grant money unlock more private finance?
It would lever it in.
We have heard that leverage is much higher now than it has been previously. Is that the case?
I would have to check on that, but the example from Albyn Housing Society may be interesting to you because it has done some research into how it could manage with different levels of grant.
That would be interesting, but we would need more than just the basics. We would need to see the business plan.
I am on record as saying that, for there to be a long-term future for social housing, the subsidy level has to go back up to the 60 or 65 per cent level that it was at in 2010. Since 2011, it has been brought down to about 40 per cent. We cannot make social housing stack up in the long term at those grant levels.
Has there been any investigation of the use of pension fund moneys?
Yes.
How have you got on with that?
We have looked at that and at bond finance. It is less convenient, if you like. At the moment we borrow from a bank by having what is called a loan facility, so we only have to draw down that money when we need it. If we hit planning delays, for instance, it does not matter. We are increasingly hitting planning delays; if we borrow money through a bond, we have to start repaying that the day we get it. Therefore we lose money if we cannot start on site and finish on time.
Perhaps that will lead to more efficiency.
I would refer the panel to our submission to the Infrastructure and Capital Investment Committee, which I can submit again. We gave written and then oral evidence last year that outlines our concerns and some of the barriers to reduced investment that our members see.
Again, that would be useful.
Mr Sanderson, am I right in thinking that you said just now that if the unit cost does not rise in the next three years, some housing associations could fall off a cliff?
No—I said that the delivery or provision of social housing may be impossible. We are already making more of our development programme available for what is called intermediate, mid-market or, sometimes, affordable rent. However, we feel that the greatest need, especially in regeneration areas, is for housing at social rent levels.
I have another question that follows up something that was asked earlier.
If you are going to change the subject, I will bring in Mr Wilson for a supplementary question and then come back to you.
I want to ask about the subsidy issue. I have worked alongside housing developments as they took place. Can anyone on the panel comment on whether, when housing associations were being promoted, the wrong model of housing funding strategy was adopted? If we could start again, should we look at a different model? Some of the housing associations were started with almost 95 per cent grant funding, on the basis—as I understand it—that 95 or 98 per cent initial stage grant funding would allow them to become self-sustaining over a period of time. Given the levels of subsidies about which we are talking now—65 per cent, for example—are housing associations not self-sustainable? Will they continue to need high levels of subsidy? We are told that local authorities can deliver a house for a £25,000 Government subsidy, yet the committee has been told today that housing associations need a subsidy of anything up to 65 per cent.
I will give that question a bash. You have got to be careful that you are comparing apples with apples. The reason that local authorities could build with less subsidy was because they already owned the land. When we are working out the feasibility of a project, we have to include the cost of purchasing the land. That is one reason why local authorities could deliver houses more cheaply.
For clarification, we need councils to tell us how much they pay for land. My experience is that unless the land is in the housing revenue account, which is often not the case, councils have to purchase land. We need to clarify that point.
We were given GHA’s area committee fund post-evaluation survey, which shows the before and after of a completed project. Is your association’s role in regeneration restricted by the pressures to maintain and improve existing stock and its energy efficiency? Are you using some of the grant moneys to pay for that?
Can you go through that very briefly? I want to get all the other questioners in, if possible.
I am not quite sure what grant moneys John Pentland is talking about, and it would not be our philosophy to be restricted. We would see our role as going far beyond the stock. We hope that it has been useful for the committee to see the examples and I hope that it endorses and supports some of my earlier comments about our role as champion or advocate in neighbourhoods in which often no other community structures exist. Where such structures exist, we do our best to work alongside voluntary sector organisations and others.
Is your time being consumed by bringing up your older stock to the standard that meets energy efficiency targets?
No; that is not the case. In the early years of GHA’s programme, there was a massive push towards delivery of the investment programme, because much of the stock in the city absolutely needed to be brought up to warm, affordable standards.
Does anybody else want to have a crack at that?
I echo what David Fletcher said. There are some problems with older tenemental stock in Glasgow, especially with wall insulation. We are trying to access innovative ways and funding to deal with that, in conjunction with the Scottish Government and energy companies. That is an on-going, rolling process, but most of our members’ stock is already at that standard.
I think that you all indicated that you are in favour of community audits, but perhaps we did not tease out what they should include. There is an opportunity there, given what you have said about single outcome agreements, for example. I am drawing particularly on the Link submission, which indicated that there is not sufficient recognition of regeneration and there is sometimes conflict between the long-term aspirations of housing associations and other registered social landlords and the community, and the political realities, which tend to move the goalposts a lot. The people’s community fund was mentioned, which gave a sizeable amount of funding for regeneration. That has now been withdrawn and a smaller pot of money is divided more widely, which has brought challenges. Will you comment more generally on the political realities of goalposts changing with different funding initiatives?
Can we have very brief responses, please? Gavin Corbett can have the first crack.
You mentioned community audits. My heart sinks when I hear the word “audit”; as I indicated earlier, I am much keener on more active forms of understanding communities. My experience is of using things at a small village level, through a rural project. If something is seen as being done to people, it is less useful than if it is more active.
Community audits are positive things—after all, it is good for communities to see what others are doing and to learn from their peers—but other panel members will probably have more involvement in their ins and outs and what they entail.
It is just that things are always moving. For example, the people and communities fund, which seems to have been very good, has been replaced with something that might not be so generous.
One example that unfortunately has not worked out so well is the Raploch area, which David Fletcher mentioned. With the cut in the association’s budget and a lack of financial capability and grant funding, the project stalled slightly. The problem is that the community’s expectations are not being met and an association, if it is in the local area, tends to be the first port of call for people wanting to know why these things are not happening and why promises have not been kept. Despite all the good things that associations do with regeneration, such problems and issues still have to be addressed.
Are you able to make your case more strongly through the single outcome agreement to ensure that regeneration and how this or that project is achieving it are factored in?
I must ask for a brief response.
I can find out a bit more and report back to the committee.
The fund that I was referring to that had been withdrawn was the wider-role fund. At one time, it was worth £12 million a year; it was cut to £6 million and then replaced with the so-called people and communities fund. Wider-role funding was available only to housing associations, while PCF is quite rightly—probably—available to others as well. It just means that there are more mouths to feed with a reduced amount of money.
The two members of our forum that as I mentioned earlier have carried out community audits—New Gorbals and Govanhill—found them to be very useful indeed. Moreover, they were not done to the community and they were not a matter of simply going round and counting assets. Focus groups were established, local priorities identified and partner agencies in the area spoken to about how they could work together better for the area.
Like Gavin Corbett, I get a heavy heart when I think about community audits, but I think that they have a role to play. It is tricky, because in the single outcome agreements the leadership on community planning was rested with local authorities, and I think that the audits need to be designed carefully to ensure that they fit. Earlier, we discussed how mainstreaming had been a key driver, and it is tricky to link both things together successfully.
I have already talked about how in certain areas regeneration moneys have funded things that in other areas would have come from mainstream budgets; indeed, Peter Matthews’s submission highlights the same point. Do you have any examples of regeneration moneys going into projects that should really have been funded from mainstream budgets? As a former chair of a social inclusion partnership, I have many, but I would like to hear from the panellists.
I do not feel that I can comment on that.
So you have no examples of projects funded by regeneration moneys rather than mainstream budgets. I believe that Mr Fletcher mentioned the point earlier.
I agree with your earlier sentiment, convener. In a number of areas, we are responding to community priorities. Having been involved in the social inclusion partnership in Easterhouse for many years, I know that such partnerships often had to take a step forward and draw other mainstream partners to the table to deliver a community project. An example from a couple of years ago that comes to mind was Easterhouse’s cultural campus—as it was known—called The Bridge, which linked the library, the swimming pool and John Wheatley College. The social inclusion partnership used significant resources from its own budget as the lever to create that initiative.
I just find it very interesting that none of you can cite any examples.
They do not necessarily need to be defined in law, but it would not do any harm for them to be acknowledged as community anchors.
But what happens if an organisation that feels that it is a community anchor is defined as such and another or an individual is not?
Well, I think that it is—
I am sorry—I am just playing devil’s advocate.
I suppose that that will always happen. However, it would be useful to have a set of criteria that people can see.
Does anyone else want to have a go at that?
The issue was raised during discussions around the formation of the people and communities fund, and everyone found it difficult to thrash out a definition of community anchor. A set of definitions has been formulated; some associations meet them absolutely and others such as development trusts meet all or most of them. The criteria exist and it is useful to have them.
I heard the scepticism in your question, convener, and share your sense that the label of “community anchor” can be as much of a dead-weight if the organisation that bears it does not show how it has earned and continues to earn the title. Enshrining it in law would not be helpful because such an approach tends to fossilise things, but the metaphor is useful if it is used as a springboard rather than as a dead-weight.
I thank the witnesses for their evidence. The session has run on a bit longer than you might have expected, but that probably shows that you were good witnesses.
We move on to our second panel. I welcome Professor Carol Tannahill, director of the Glasgow centre for population health and a member of the GoWell project; Dr Peter Matthews, lecturer in the school of the built environment at Heriot-Watt University; and Annette Hastings, senior lecturer in urban studies at the University of Glasgow.
First, the principle of bringing together all the main partners that work in an area in something like a community planning partnership is undoubtedly a very good idea. If community planning partnerships did not exist, we would all want to invent something like them. The principle is therefore very good, but there have been concerns and tensions about the two different roles that community planning partnerships often look to fulfil. The first role is about co-ordinating the resources, strategies and services of players at the level of the local authority. The second role is about the community bit of community planning: community involvement and reflecting the needs and priorities of the different communities that sit within a local authority area.
I share those concerns. There is a key challenge in accessing the strategic local authority level in community planning. It is difficult for anybody to engage at that level, and the Local Government in Scotland Act 2003 says that local authorities also have to deliver local community planning. My experience of watching community planning happen at strategic local authority level is that it is very much about the leaders of those organisations coming to talk to one another, just to make sure that they are on the same page at the level of partnership working. It sometimes gets towards deeper partnership working, but much of it is about ensuring, for example, that other organisations know what the health board is doing or what the police are doing.
I would not disagree with either of my colleagues; I would add to the list of issues and concerns. At a city-wide or local authority-wide level, and at a more local level, community planning is a useful instrument for understanding the different levels of need for particular services. As a strategic body, the community planning partnership can bring services together, think about the multidimensionality of needs, and assess whether there are different levels of need in different parts of an area for particular services. They are useful as a strategic instrument, and that is at the heart of my submission. They are also a good instrument for tailoring provision appropriately to meet those needs.
Exercises in planning for real have been carried out in many areas. Is that the right way to do things so as to better inform community planning partnerships about what is required in communities, rather than having things done to them, as was said earlier?
I know of planning for real. It is a copyrighted product, and although I have not been involved in it myself, I know the type of approach that it involves.
It is copyrighted by Aberdeen City Council, if I remember rightly.
There is a range of different methods of engaging communities and of allowing communities to come up with their own vision of where they want to be in the future.
So, you would like planning for real with some kind of advocacy involved as well.
Yes.
Grand. Thanks.
Will the panel define the role that the community plays in CPPs? Way back in 2002, when the matter was first discussed, it was advocated that CPPs should be about planning by the community and not just for the community. What is your view on that?
Who wants to go first?
I am happy to kick off. My experience is particularly in the Glasgow context. As was mentioned, community planning operates in different ways across the country, so I have a partial view of it. In Glasgow, we have seen a number of different approaches and efforts to enable community involvement in community planning, particularly through the more devolved, sector-based community planning structures.
I have done no direct research on community planning in Scotland, so my comments are based on research on community engagement in other spheres that is more historical than current. Nevertheless, I speak to people who are involved in community planning and I have formed an impression of some of the difficulties.
I will link my answer to the question in the previous session about the usual suspects, because that is an undercurrent here, as well. When we talk about the usual suspects, one of the challenges is that we come at the debate uninformed about what representation is and what it means to be a community representative.
I am glad to hear that you think that MSPs are legitimate.
Good morning. Dr Matthews talked about how we deal with the usual suspects. I remember from my time working in community development that we used to refer to some of the usual suspects as the fingered elites—people who were selected by certain bodies and organisations to become legitimate community representatives.
The question of accountability is difficult. As you say, such representatives are not elected. It is important to recognise that the issue affects not just regeneration areas but communities across Scotland.
We need to make the role of community activist more attractive. If we did so, more and more people would want to take it on. For that to happen, people must see value and influence in the role. That will require changes in the organisations with which such activists engage, as well as more community capacity building.
Implicit in John Wilson’s question is the point that the problem is not the fact that certain people have the energy, enthusiasm and interest to come forward and become engaged in issues but what happens to them when they come forward. If their view differs from that of the senior managers or politicians around the table—they might have a more critical view that desires to hold other partners to account—to what extent is that valued and seen as a valid way in which to engage?
Good morning, panel. I have a couple of questions. My first question is directed to Professor Tannahill and follows on from her comments about the need to make the community activist role more attractive. If a community has had little attention or investment for decades, many of the folk in that community may feel totally disenfranchised. They will not vote, as you mentioned, but they might also have lost hope in their community. How do we then make the role attractive, as you suggested?
I will use some of the GoWell data, as that is the evidence that I am here to talk about. When we have looked at processes of community empowerment for GoWell, we have found that there has been more progress on community involvement in governance processes, such as tenant representation on committees. Some of that involves the people who have been called the usual suspects.
As well as the educational aspects that you have mentioned, what about the practical aspects that stop people engaging? For example, young women with kids find that certain bodies do not provide crèches or whatever that would allow folks to participate. Folks might have older relatives who need constant care. How do we get over those practical issues? Are they a real impediment, or is that just exaggeration on my part?
There is no doubt that those issues are an impediment. You asked for practical examples, and I have a good one to share. I have been struck by an initiative led by the Poverty Alliance, with Government support, called the evidence, participation, change—EPIC—project, which is about evidence of and participation in change.
What springs to mind are other ways in which people can be engaged. We tend to think about community engagement as communities—representatives of groups—engaging in formal partnership processes, and we do not explore how else people can engage with activities about their place and the local state.
On fostering wider engagement, the convener opened the questioning by referring to planning for real. Although such projects have shortcomings—they can raise expectations beyond what can be delivered—at their core is the provision of outreach work to a broader range of people. That allows those people to develop a sense that they are valued and respected, that their views might be welcome and that there is a possibility of change in their neighbourhood. That can set in course a virtuous cycle in which people who are further away from engagement processes realise that they could have a voice where they have never had one before.
There have been various types of regeneration over the years. What lessons should we learn from what has happened in the past? What can we learn from the current regeneration models? How should urban regeneration companies amend what they do, bearing it in mind that the economic situation is different from that six years ago, when many of them were established?
Again, I qualify my remarks by saying that I have not done direct research on the URC model, although I have spoken to people who have been involved in URCs. I will make general remarks about one or two of the lessons that we have learned.
As I stated in my submission, it is important to unpick fully the place-based interventions, such as the urban regeneration companies, to see what impact they can have in changing places, building new homes and transforming what were pretty unpleasant urban environments to make them better. URCs can have an immediate benefit just in material wellbeing—GoWell has fantastic evidence on that—because moving from a house with damp to a modern house completely transforms someone’s life. GoWell and the new deal for communities evaluation in England have shown how important the wider impacts of interventions on health and wellbeing are for families and individuals.
Would doing that regularly or continually promote a dependency culture?
I would not say that basic literacy and numeracy programmes and basic back-to-work schemes result in a dependency culture. Such initiatives make a big difference to people’s lives; they help people to access the labour market, transform household circumstances and enable people to move on in their lives.
Folk who stay outside the areas that you are talking about might have the impression that, if they go to one of those areas, certain things will be done to them or they will be encouraged or forced to do X, Y or Z. I am not saying that such initiatives are bad things—I make it clear that they are very useful, worth while and required. However, the impression of people who live outside those areas might be, “Och well, that’s that part that gets extra things done to it all the time.” That might create a bit of an image such that people do not want to go there.
Annette Hastings might have something to say about that from her work on stigma, but my research indicates that the stigma that is attached to deprived neighbourhoods often helps to reinforce views that are expressed as, “Oh, well, in the past that was just a crap area, but now it gets everything.”
As a resident of a socially excluded area, I do not recognise some of the things that are said about the place that I live in, but there we go.
The large-scale URCs generally focus on infrastructure improvement. I have no doubt that investments of that scale are needed in parts of the country where, without the proposed level of physical transformation, things will not improve. We need to recognise that.
I have a question, if that is okay. It is a very brief one.
It will have to be very brief, because I have a number of folk waiting to ask questions.
Would you recommend that television programmes such as “Skint”, which is on Channel 4, I think, and “The Scheme” on the BBC do not get made and that instead we should promote the positives?
I am talking about balance. The public will not be convinced by some sort of sweet marketing of what life is like in such areas. Life is difficult in a lot of areas. We need balance but, at the moment, the balance is wrong.
How could we get a better distribution of mainstream services to disadvantaged areas? Annette Hastings, your paper talks about quality of place—everyone has mentioned that. In particular, on environmental services such as street cleaning, it would be good to get a little bit on the record about your informal experiment with the Dutch undergraduates.
That is quite a big question. In my informal experiment, I took a number of Dutch students around Glasgow a couple of weeks ago on a nice, sunny Monday morning. We went to a range of neighbourhoods, including four that have received significant regeneration investment over a sustained period, although they remain income deprived. I asked them to try to estimate the level of income deprivation, based on the physical cues in the area. They were, generally, able to do that. They recognised three of those four areas as being home to poor or very poor people. The only one that they were—shall we say—fooled by was the new Gorbals area, which they thought was home to average or quite rich people. Given the comments that they made to back up those evaluations, it seems that it is the quality of public space that is letting down the regeneration areas. One of them wrote, “Nice architecture, ugly grass.” They talked about the lack of maintenance and the many undeveloped areas, as well as dirty streets and roads in disrepair. By contrast, the new Gorbals area looks finished. There is still work going on, but there is lovely architecture and there are good spaces in between the nice new blocks.
Could you comment on the conflict between short-term and long-term aspirations? Often, there is pressure to deal with matters in the short term. How can we ensure that the necessary work continues to be done in order to keep a community or place looking the way that it should?
That goes back to the discussion that you had with the earlier panel about a lack of prioritisation of basic, routine services in neighbourhoods, whether or not regeneration intervention is under way.
Is it because people in those areas are more likely to complain?
It is partly because they complain, but it is also because, over time, managers and politicians build in the capacity of operational staff to pre-empt those complaints and work in ways that ensure that those complaints are not made.
To draw on the earlier session, which we had the good fortune to be able to sit through, in many areas, housing associations do a lot of good work on environmental services. They are willing to put in the investment and recognise the increased need for that. Neighbouring local authority housing and areas can look extremely poor compared with the housing association areas.
We really welcome a focus on neighbourhood quality. That is one of the main priorities in regeneration as we go forward. In addition to the points that have been made about environmental management and ensuring that the green space is good quality, we would add two other dimensions.
Do you have any comments on the procurement process and how it works or does not work for the benefit of communities?
I have not looked at that.
I could not comment on it.
Thank you for your honesty on that.
In what ways has the relatively constant change of initiatives, funding streams—those were mentioned earlier—governance structures and responsible organisations impacted on community groups and the practice of social regeneration?
It is good to highlight the difference between neighbourhoods on that. If I lived in, say, Morningside, in the 1975 local government reorganisation I would have been given my district, region and community councils and those would have stayed the same until 1995, when I would have got my unitary authority. That would have stayed pretty similar until community planning came along and I would have got my local partnership. Over 30 years, there would have been about four or five different governance arrangements. However, if I lived just down the road in Wester Hailes, I might have experienced 10 different initiatives over that time.
Ultimately, it would be a good move to make things simple.
Yes.
Annette, do you want to have a crack at that question?
Not really. The history of change is unsettling for communities. They certainly need stability. Perhaps we will come on to it later, but the uncertain financial climate at the moment is probably as damaging. There is a history of communities getting up to speed with a new initiative and it then moving on, which is challenging.
Something more simplified would be good. We need to be realistic about the timescale over which change happens. Funding is often too short term. However, I would also say that change is entirely appropriate. Priorities change over time. Sometimes new evidence comes out that suggests that we need more focus on new areas. Although we should not see all change as bad, the timescale over which we should look for effects needs to be given more thought.
Good afternoon, panel. Dr Matthews, you told us about a public meeting at which somebody from an allotment site demanded that the police monitor the allotments every night and the inspector stood up and said that he has to go into a deprived area every night because people live there. We are talking about the regeneration of communities. Surely part of that is about people being allowed to live in those communities and about the underlying problems in those communities being dealt with by all the agencies. That is about partnership, so that people in deprived areas do not have to rely on the police coming into the area every night to resolve the problems. It does not need financial regeneration; it just needs something else to ensure that partners work closely together to allow people to live their lives free from the fear of crime, violence or intimidation.
To go back to my story, that is an example of partnership working. It was a community police inspector leading a team of community officers, and that is the sort of activity that they were engaged in. It was not a case of, of an evening, in the neighbourhood—
Sorry, Dr Matthews. I am trying to get at something slightly different. Although the police are going in and policing an area, what about the other partners, such as the local authority housing department and the housing association? I do not know the area that you are referring to, but how are the housing association—if there is one—and any other landlords in the area engaging in the process to ensure that people live their lives in their communities free from the fear of crime? How do we get those partners involved? It is okay to police the area—we can do that and say that it is all the fault of the police—but surely other partners need to get engaged in the process to lessen the threat of criminal activity in those communities.
I can speak only from my experience, which is limited to a certain number of neighbourhoods. I cannot speak on a Scotland-wide basis. Also, I can speak only about the pre-Police Scotland structures. However, what I saw at a neighbourhood level was that, in many ways, they had cracked partnership working on the issue of low-level antisocial behaviour and criminality. Community safety teams were working with local community officers, housing officers and housing associations in a range of ways, such as ensuring that there were diversionary activities for local youth, so that policing was not being delivered as a reactive service—they were not sending the blue lights flashing every night; they were there as a community safety presence in the round in a neighbourhood, supporting that neighbourhood.
I would expand that by bringing the example back to environmental management and environmental services. In my submission, I talk about the opportunity to rethink environmental service provision as a form of preventative action. That is about getting basic, ordinary services right and commensurate with the level of need on the ground. Our research shows that, independent of social deprivation, other neighbourhood factors predispose some neighbourhoods more than others to littering and environmental problems. Environmental problems are related to housing density and proportions of young people. That means that a higher level of servicing is needed to create a level playing field for the people who live in those neighbourhoods. The Christie commission talks about reactive resources being misspent in disadvantaged areas. Top-up resources and regeneration investments are substituting for the lack of mainstream resources. That goes back to the convener’s point. There is a lot of evidence of that.
Can you give us examples?
There are the sort of examples that you mentioned in the context of a social inclusion partnership. There is evidence of substitution as a result of the new deal for communities programme in England. When regeneration provides a higher level of service, the mainstream service withdraws or draws back and pares back its service, so nothing changes.
We have moved on to regeneration money substituting for what should be normal mainstream spending. Do Peter Matthews or Carol Tannahill want to add anything?
Extra regeneration investment is necessary only because the mainstream service is not doing its job appropriately and is not addressing the fundamental problems. If that bit were to be got right—it is in the gift of the Scottish Parliament to get that right—there would not be the deficit that makes you feel that regeneration investment is necessary.
I thank the panel for their answers to my question. I was trying to get at the point that it does not always take additional resources—as the convener said, regeneration resources—to turn a community around. It is about how we utilise the existing resources and how we deal with the issues that arise.
I recognise the scenario that you describe, but it would be wrong for me to suggest that I have the answer. The general understanding now is that one reason for the emergence of the scenario that you describe has been an overinvestment in physical regeneration and an underinvestment in social regeneration. A lot of submissions to the committee’s inquiry have made the case for more investment in the community aspects of regeneration.
Gavin Corbett talked earlier about confidence building in people. The need is not so much to get people into employment as it is to get them to the stage where they are suitable for employment. On Monday, I visited Station House Media Unit. There is an initiative there to get kids involved in media, called ShmuTRAIN, which gives kids the confidence to move on. Have you got good examples of tracking people from the stages of those earlier interventions to when they actually gain employment—in some cases, very good employment?
A word that has not been used today is resilience. It is fundamental for individuals to be resilient if they are to benefit from the skills development and confidence building that you describe. Community resilience is closely linked to that; resilient communities are ones where a lot of the residents have exactly the sort of skills of which you speak.
There was similar work in Aberdeen at one point.
Absolutely. Confidence and resilience come from one’s sense of having a place in the world and the potential to make progress. When we talk about the sustainability of regeneration and how we ensure that that is long term, we always come back to the fact that our society is going through major changes. The better-off and the worse-off are pulling apart; they are increasingly living parallel lives in different kinds of neighbourhoods. It is important to bring the wider picture to this story and, on a practical level, think about the interconnections between people who are on different pathways. For instance, we need to think about the distribution of the state’s resources in relation to the different trajectories that people are on. If we do that—if we revalue people who are in disadvantaged circumstances—the other benefits of increased confidence, a willingness to take responsibility and a sense of personal and collective efficacy will increase. Those things cannot flourish when a group in society feels left out, abandoned and forgotten.
It was put to me by music teachers that the Sistema initiative is yet another way of diverting financial resources from general music tuition in schools to a particular project. If any of you are going to work on Sistema, please bear that in mind.
I asked the previous panel about the concept of a community anchor, which is a new buzzword. Peter Matthews spoke about constant change. Is that concept yet another example of constant change, as it attempts to define something that is already there?
It would depend on the nature of the community anchor and which organisations were to be defined as such. Picking up on the earlier discussion, I would not necessarily support a legislative approach, because of the problems that you highlighted—for example, what if another organisation said, “We’re the community anchor”? A lot of these community anchors are organisations such as community-based housing associations, which have a long history that stems from activism in their neighbourhood to make it better. They still have a majority of tenants on their boards, and they do a lot of positive work to engage those tenants. They have their tenants coming in every day to the front desk to give them reports on what the neighbourhood is like and what the issues are on the ground. Such organisations are often small and dynamic, and they can tailor their services, implement preventative measures constructively and work with other local third sector organisations to develop innovative partnership activities. That is the type of positive organisation that acts as a community anchor.
It is important to emphasise what these organisations offer and what their characteristics are. They provide stability and reach and are there for people whatever their needs are, and they are not hidebound by a particular silo responsibility. I agree that anchor is not a great term, but it is crucial that we foster organisations that do those things.
Community-based housing associations as a type of anchor organisation offer a different and more empathetic relationship between staff and ordinary people. One would struggle to identify many community-led housing associations at present, but what we have is a set of organisations that are very well resourced. We should not forget that much of their success depends on that resourcing regime, and on the positive policy infrastructure around those organisations that enables them to do things.
I thank you for your evidence, which has been very useful indeed.
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