Place-based approaches are the only hope for our future

Place shaping and leadership of place are very much back on the localism agenda.

This must involve the public sector, of course, but also local businesses and the voluntary and community sector. It has to be about local people choosing what kind of place – what kind of local economy, society and environment – they want. Of course, no place can fully protect itself from the national and global storms. Working through and with communities, local authorities have a duty to offer protection from these storms and hope of better lives and opportunities.

Place shaping can usefully start with how local public expenditure is deployed. Local government and its local public sector partners spend a significant amount of public money in their local economy – usually several billions of pounds every year.

It is important that the impact of this expenditure is maximised. And that this is done on a ‘whole place’ and not just a whole agency basis. This means that majority of this expenditure should be aligned or co-ordinated in an effective manner between the agencies. This was the premise of ‘total place’ and more recently ‘whole place’ community budgets.

Local authorities that take place shaping and community leadership seriously understand that a critical element of exercising this leadership role is to influence the expenditure of their public sector partners; and wherever appropriate and possible to introduce pooling and alignment of various agencies’ budgets. This should mean all public bodies, including ‘free schools’, academies, universities and colleges.

It requires these agencies to align objectives – objectives set by and with local people and local communities – and to adopt shared goals for their place and the communities within them. This is never as easy as it sounds. There are many barriers and challenges, not least central government demands and constraints on particular agencies, professional and institutional protectionism and in some cases uncontrolled egos.

For example, a local authority that has economic development and job creation as one of its core strategic objectives should be seeking to ensure that its spend – especially its external spend – on social care, children’s services, environmental services and its supplies of goods and commodities – are contributing to local economic growth.

Some local authorities such as Lambeth are already supporting the growth of micro-businesses and social enterprises through their local social care commissioning and procurement. Others are adopting similar approaches to the purchase of supplies and some services. Many are increasingly using the social value act to redirect their external spend so as to meet wider social, economic and environmental outcomes.

However, in my experience, too few local authorities are adopting these kinds of strategically holistic behaviours. Too many are stuck in their internal service-based silos. There is sadly little prospect that such authorities will be able or even willing to work collaboratively with the wider local public sector.

As a result there is too much duplication of expenditure and effort; too much confusion for service users; and there are sub-optimal outcomes. At any time this would be indefensible. During this period of austerity and deep cuts it is simply wrong!

A ‘whole place’ approach to growth, community development, achieving public service and wider community outcomes and addressing strategic issues such as tackling long term worklessness, poverty, better health outcomes, the skills deficit and many more is not for the public sector alone.

Voluntary and community organisations, faith groups, local businesses and communities themselves have major roles to play. Any ‘whole place’ approach should recognise this and take the wider human, physical and financial assets of the place but in ways that respect and protect the independence and capacity of civil society. Places are the aggregate of many neighbourhoods and communities. They must shape place shaping. It has to be bottom up more than top down.

Voluntary and community organisations, faith groups, local businesses and communities as well as staff and individual citizens will have ideas of what is needed and how best outcomes can be achieved in their place. Their experience, aspirations and choices have to be taken into account.

They will also be able to ensure that outcomes and services are tailored to specific communities and neighbourhoods. Uniform approaches across a ‘whole place’ can too often fail to respond to the nuances and particular needs of neighbourhoods or communities and groups of citizens.

Therefore, the progressive and successful local authority and its public sector partners will consider how best to involve citizens and other stakeholders in strategic policy making, strategic commissioning, scrutiny and service delivery. In this they will work with voluntary and community groups, and communities themselves. They will seek common and ideally shared joint agency programmes of engagement, and consultation, co-design and co-production. From a citizen’s perspective outcomes matter more than institutional or political boundaries.

Public bodies behaving in this way will need to ensure that are able to measure the impact of their actions and all their expenditure – and indeed of planned or executed expenditure cuts. Impact measures need to relate to performance and outcomes against strategic objectives and goals. They also need to be published in a manner that makes them easily comparable with other places and other agencies, and easily accessible to citizens and other local stakeholders. This should form the basis of the ‘accountability contract’ between local government – and in particular its political leaders – and communities and citizens.

The next few years are going to be very challenging for communities as well as local government and the wider public sector. There are going to be further cuts to expenditure and services. The national economy is unlikely to grow significantly. New innovative solutions are going to be required. There will be pain but there can also be opportunities to offer protection to some services and communities, and to do some new things and other things in a very different way. Communities can offer, lead and find sustainable solutions.

I would contend that the best hope in the bleak landscape of public services and local economies lies in the adoption of place-based approaches – with or without – formal central government support. It will require bold, ambitious and collaborative local political leadership; and collaboration with local business and the voluntary and community sector.

Why would any local government politician not wish to focus on leadership and stewardship of place rather than overseeing a local authority as it diminishes in size, authority and, consequently, relevance? Failure to focus on place will lead to even more significantly damaged local communities and economies.