Church Urban Fund response to ‘An Action Plan for Community Empowerment: Building on Success'

January 2008

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The Church Urban Fund (CUF) supports and represents faith-based social action organisations, which comprise an important sub-sector of the Third Sector. CUF supports organisations with an annual turnover of under £150,000 and which work in the 10% most deprived areas of England or with intrinsically disadvantaged communities, such as homelessness, drug and alcohol problems or refugees. The organisations also usually have a link to a faith group. During its 20 year existence CUF has supported over 2500 projects and awarded over 4000 grants in excess of £60 million.

In addition to its grants programme, CUF is also a development, infrastructure and advocacy organisation representing the projects it supports.

• Development initiatives, assisted by funding from DCSF, DCLG and Capacitybuilders, include research, training, toolkits, and consultancy for projects.
• Infrastructure developments for projects include facilitating a network between projects through which they are able to communicate with each other and be empowered to share and learn from identified best practice.
• Advocacy work is enabled by our strategic partner, the ‘Voice' grant from the Cabinet Office's Office of the Third Sector which equips CUF to gather the voices of faith-based social action projects and ensure that they are heard by Government and policy-makers at national, regional and local levels.

As an organisation seeking to engage with and support projects working in grassroots communities, the empowering of local people to meet identified needs and deliver necessary services is an important aspect of CUF's work. The empowering of local people by involving them in such community initiatives and listening to their voice through a participative democratic governance structure, ensures that respect and trust is fostered to build strong and cohesive local communities. Therefore, CUF welcomes this consultation and the opportunity to respond to it.

Widening and deepening empowerment opportunities: Action Points 1-10

Which actions (Action Points 1-10) do you think are most important to increase empowerment in your community and why?

Issues of community empowerment are of paramount importance if local people are to feel like they can successfully contribute and influence the responses to identified community needs. Empowerment refers not merely to the transfer of power to local communities from statutory bodies, but must also encompass the transfer of the required resources to facilitate effective public involvement. Whilst long recognised that bottom-up participation is essential for this to occur, and that a top-down approach to empowerment is no longer appropriate, talking about empowerment is insufficient to ensure progression in the building of sustainable communities.

Therefore, these action points are welcomed in ensuring that the rhetoric surrounding issues of empowerment is translated into practical action.

• Action Point 1 (p29-30) highlights the significance of commissioning services from local authorities, the private sector and the Third Sector. Whilst the need to engage with citizens in the commissioning of services is recognised so that services are citizen-focused and shaped by community needs, the advice ignores that some Third Sector organisations will be excluded as a result of such changes. Some Third Sector organisations do not want to be commissioned to deliver services but they still contribute a valuable role to local communities. Thus, grants are still needed to support such organisations even if they do not deliver services. Furthermore, the non-financial benefits of Third Sector organisations need to be acknowledged by service commissioners so that decisions are not based solely on cost.
• Of particular importance is Action Point 2 (p30-31) pertaining to the Sustainable Communities Bill, which would ensure that a panel of local representatives is consulted about proposals which seek to promote local sustainability. This provides a framework for successful dialogue, accountability and partnership between local government and local people through which local community priorities will be apparent. Local knowledge is essential for tackling local problems and can only be yielded through such forums. Discussions over proposals would ensure local people have the opportunity to shape the future of their community during the early stages. One point of concern could be noted here however, relating to panel selection. For authentic empowerment to be achieved the panel must be representative, as far as possible, to ensure that dominant community voices do not quash the voices of the marginalised. This should ensure that representatives from a range of community groups, and not just larger organisations, are present on the panels.
• Likewise, Action Point 5 (p32) relating to the new Public Service Agreement which seeks to build ‘more cohesive, empowered and active communities' is significant. As stated, the contribution of faith communities to encouraging cohesion needs to be recognised. Faith communities and their values of respect, compassion, altruism, service, commitment, and their supply of willing volunteers help engage with local people and overcome internal barriers to cohesion. Faith communities can help tackle problems of territoriality through the activities and services they provide indiscriminately to community members and this can help change an environment of hostility into one of solidarity through empowering people to engage with both fellow citizens and statutory bodies. Faith community buildings are particularly significant in enabling this to happen, as our report ‘Building on Faith' illustrates. It is also essential that all faith communities are considered in order to facilitate authentic cohesion.
• Action Point 6 (p33-34) which emphasises the importance of participatory budgeting and recognises the importance of giving local people a voice over how public budgets are spent is also important. Local people and their experience of living in local communities is invaluable when trying to identify the priorities in budgeting. Through participatory budgeting, not only is the budget used to address specific problems and encourage initiatives which are tailored to community needs, but the links between local authorities and local people are strengthened. This is a practical means of ensuring local people have their voice heard in the public arena which is seeking to shape the communities in which they live. Furthermore, the focus upon young people and enabling them to have a say over budgetary decisions is also significant because it fosters a sustainable approach for the community's future and ensures young people contribute to the community in which they have spent a significant proportion of their life. Youth inclusion helps to tackle disillusionment with systemic inadequacies and can have knock-on effects on crime and the existence of gangs if their opinion is respected and listened to. Caution should be taken however, to consider how budgetary decisions should be implemented if deliberations reveal ‘undesirable' budgetary priorities.

What other actions do you think would help local people to participate more and have more influence in your community?

• One cause for concern with some of these Action Points is the emphasis upon new technologies, particularly the internet. Whilst the internet is very important in communicating with diverse groups and ensuring wide dissemination of information, the problem of exclusion by some sectors of the population seems to have been omitted. It is presumed in these Actions that all people have access to the internet to be able to register their concerns about planning issues (p32), and to use online tools to further empowerment (p36). Those who have the least access to the internet are the communities which this Action Plan is seeking to engage with which highlights the need to ensure an alternative means of communication for those without online access.
• Furthermore, the inherent value of faith communities needs to be acknowledged for reasons other than tackling extremism. Faith representatives are crucial in supporting and encouraging the local community to engage with the wider arena which highlights a need to ensure that these representatives are themselves supported and equipped to maximise community empowerment, as CUF's ‘Faithful Representation' report highlights (Faithful Representation).

Supporting and enabling people to take up empowerment opportunities: Action Points 11-20

What other support would you like national and local government and the Third Sector to provide to help you take up local empowerment opportunities?

• Action Point 11 (p38) emphasises the need for sharing best practice between local communities and between peers. Whilst this is important for encouraging change across communities at various levels, a framework for capturing this best practice needs to be implemented so that there is a uniform process for its capture and dissemination.
• Action Point 13 (p39) pertains to the need for a national campaign to provide the opportunity for people to have their voice heard when they might otherwise fail to recognise such opportunities for participation. It is important to show people that their contribution is significant and valuable. It is also important to acknowledge that faith leaders have great potential to encourage increased civic participation, and express local concerns relating to how this can be improved. The inclusion of faith voices is also necessary to ensure enhanced faith literacy to the benefit of local communities.
• Action Point 15 (p40) sets out the means through which community activists will be invited to participate in roundtable discussions to ensure that face-to-face engagement is central to policy-making. Whilst necessary to transfer power to local communities, the multi-faceted and multi-layered nature of power needs to be recognised. Community activists do not necessarily guarantee a bottom-up approach is achieved but rather could reinforce a rigid power structure. Thus, community activists, who will potentially become empowerment champions, need to be carefully selected to ensure that empowerment is not withheld from the wider grassroots population.
• Action Point 18 (p43) looks at the importance of Community Anchors and emphasises their unique role in supporting other organisations, acting as intermediaries between Government and communities and generating income through an asset base. Faith communities are often centred around a building and so are potentially significant community anchors which should be considered, as CUF's ‘Building on Faith' report indicates. However, if analysing a ‘community anchor' using criteria solely based on buildings, to the exclusion of other considerations, the underlying assumptions can become questionable in some contexts. A rural community with a building is unlikely to be defined as a community anchor because it will likely lack financial sustainability, and yet in a rural context its presence is significant in enabling participation and empowerment. Thus, the criteria for defining a community anchor may exclude some communities, such as smaller communities or communities without an asset.
• Action Points 11-20 outline a comprehensive way of engaging local communities in empowerment initiatives, particularly with proposals ensuring information dissemination to local people informing them of opportunities to engage, both at a national and local level. However, for these proposals to be successfully implemented they need to be assisted with the required level of funding and resources to ensure that communities are empowered for the long-term and have the capacity to measure such empowerment. Without these resources, individuals will not be equipped.

Strengthening local representative democracy: Action Points 21-23

What other ways would you suggest would help to encourage more people to get involved in local democracy?

• Action Point 21 (p45) refers to the establishing of a concordat to guide relations between central and local government. This is welcomed to ensure that the empowerment of local communities is prioritised on both the national and local agenda, and local government responsibilities would also be set out. However, a means of ensuring accountability for this concordat is needed to translate policy into practice.
• The disillusionment of young people with political processes clearly needs addressing when examining the ways of increasing involvement in local democracy. Young people need to be actively encouraged to participate because their potential for shaping the future of their community and the positive influence and insights they can provide currently remain untapped. Young people need to be shown how significant their contribution to democracy can be and opportunities for their involvement need to be clearly communicated.

• The Action Points set out in this document are largely welcomed and promise to make a positive impact upon the engagement and empowerment of local communities. However, there is a need to remember throughout the whole policy-making process that empowerment is not intended as an end in itself but rather as a means to ensuring community needs are identified and met through the tailoring of services.  
• The issue of power is central to this debate but the complexity and multifaceted nature of power structures needs to be recognised in any policy changes that will affect local communities.  
• Relations between Government and the Third Sector should be enabled with a fully functioning Compact through which the independence of the Third Sector could be ensured. This in turn would increase public engagement by building up trust with local communities.