Yesterday, I attended a Transforming Neighbourhoods seminar here at the Young Foundation, hosted by the Lead Policy Advisor, Paul Hilder. It was a stimulating presentation and discussion around their three strands of work in this area, namely:

– influencing
– research
– local learning/policy

It was interesting to get some flesh round the bones of the phrase "double devolution" which is being banded around with increasing abandon, it seems. Specifically, what a reformed first tier (of neighbourhood forums, community councils etc) would look like and how this would change the landscape for grassroots social entrepreneurs and community activists. Some key points (for me) were:

– 73% of people support changes that would give local neighbourhoods greater control over some services and budgets (the "some" is probably the most important word there)

– the comparison with other countries: how exceptionally large Uk (and especially English) local government is compared to France, India, Brazil, China etc.

– that such representative neighbourhood bodies will have to be demand-led (i.e. gaining powers to act, to influence, to hold to account and to take control ONLY where citizens want them)

– that an element of the local authority budget should be given to the neighbourhood, but not too much (!) [various worries about extremism and the like]

– that the biggest barrier to all of their suggested moves (many of which may appear in the government white paper, and more on which you can find on their page from the link above) may be culture change within local government

I don’t think I’ve fully digested all of what it might mean (for our students/Fellows/ourselves), but certainly prompted a few thoughts.

And following on from that was Michael Lyons’ piece in the Guardian today which looks at the relationship between local government and the third sector. He has some criticism for social entrepreneurs/social enterprises ("overhyped, raising unrealistic expectations abuot what they can deliver") and the local authority officials ("stuffy, rule-bound"), even if he acknowledges that some of this is crude stereotyping. There’s not a small amount of truth in this as well, though.

Lyons’ primary challenge to the voluntary sector is to "show clearly the value they create" and develop "new measures of value…to give a strong basis for making investment decisions". The associated challenge to the local authorities are to make service commissioning less output and target driven to allow this value to be demonstrated. He then calls for the two sides to "meld" and "cast aside [their] preconceptions" of the other to form a dynamic alliance.

Stirring stuff, and more food for thought. Strongly agree with the need for the 3rd sector to show the value of its values, as it were, and for local government to attract energy and diversity into it. Ultimately, this vision will live or die by the necessary culture change referred to above, and to whether power and, yes, money is truly devolved to these lower echelons. Will the changes come slowly as double evolution or swiftly as double revolution? As Paul Hilder ended his seminar yesterday: "We’ll see".