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Should Parliament move to east London?

Friday, February 12th, 2010

MPs have put forward a suggestion that Parliament should move its premises to east London’s ExCel centre. This is just a few minutes away from our base in Canning Town so we asked our staff what they thought, 80% of our staff live locally or are ex-service users.

Here’s what they said:

‘Not sure why ExCel would be considered a location more in touch with real life. It is in many ways more isolated than Westminster.’

‘I think that’s a great idea, especially as Newham, even though the host borough for the Olympics is still one of the poorest boroughs, and the politicians would get a better insight to the area and its problems.’

‘I would strongly disagree due to the strain on local roads, facilities etc. Also, with the constant threat of terrorism I do not like the idea of such high profile figures at the end of my road.’

‘I think it’s a great idea for Parliament to be located in the heart of East London, especially with a backdrop of the recent tarnished media image of Westminster politics & expenses scandals over the last year. The areas of regeneration immediately surrounding the ExCel Centre, such as Canning Town and Newham in general would provide a daily reminder, and accurate snapshot of the array of challenges facing people today. Westminster Palace can be seen to be a location that can often be seen to be its own detached and removed world. In addition there could be marked cost reduction benefits to the tax payer also, and potential to make such a site a sustainable one, perhaps helping to restore some faith in the public that politics and voting is a system one should try to engage with in order to help address society’s problems.’

‘My experience of the Excel centre is that it is a place full of ’suits’ on dubious expenses!!!!!!’

‘I really don’t want them in east London.  We already have enough agro when the biannual DSEI exhibition is held at the Excel.  Then we will have the massive inconvenience of “heightened security” from about April 2011 until the end of the games.  We have permanent armed cops in Royal Docks because of the airport!’

I personally think instead of the Excel centre perhaps some of them should move in with us to see how the real day to day to life is like, see what we have to put up with, I bet half of them would be scared to go out after 6pm. Most of them don’t know what real life is like, with all their pampering up at Whitehall.

There we go again, they want the accommodation in the Olympic village and to be in for 2012……..

“Once the Olympic athletes have left the Village how about turning it into dormitory accommodation for MPs right next to a new Parliament – that way nobody would need to apply for a second home allowance and the security and official transport could all be pooled making a financial saving.”

Apart from the obvious benefit, the creation of a local food outlet other that one long standing bakery to swarm to for lunch, we would have MPs at our doorstep. Would local east London people get more involved in governmental affairs as a result? Would the cynicism and lack of trust that has increased since the MP expenses scandal in the summer gradually disappear (that is why MPs are suggesting this surely?!), probably not.

The Canary Wharf development is a stones throw from Canning Town and has had very little impact on local residents in all the years that is has been there. When asked what impact Canary Wharf has had, our community development team replied that ‘most locals say it is for rich people, there is a stigma to it as it cost millions and it has no place for them, the shops are lovely but far too expensive so its just somewhere some feel them can go for a nice wander around’

If government is trying to find ways to reconnect with the public and be in touch with real life issues to win back that trust they have completely lost then it will take more than packing up and moving location. That is a mis-diagnosis of the problem. We have had political apathy for a long time; in the 2005 election there was an overall voting turnout of 61.4% in the UK, a slight rise in an overall declining trend from previous decades. Last summer’s revelations fed ammunition to turn that apathy to resentment. Parliament needs to changes its practices; get out, listen and take action, not relocate to what is considered less attractive dwellings and adopt exactly the same customs as before. The geography isn’t the problem; it’s the lack of listening to real people. Not just listening for the sake of an election but to take action and do something about it. That will win the hearts and minds of local people and make it worthwhile to plan a trip over to Westminster.

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Posted in Communication, Community Engagement, Regeneration | No Comments »

The Tower Block of Commons and the “Internal Orient”

Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010

Last week we debated the portrayal of poverty in the media and touched on the poverty game show format – last night Channel 4 screened the first in the series the Tower Block of Commons following Members of Parliament as they spend a week living with families in Tower Block Estates across the UK.

The aim of the exercise was unclear. Was it to present to policymakers the everyday reality of their voters struggling through recession? To demonstrate how difficult it is to get by without a second-home allowance and a charge account at John Lewis? Or was the aim to portray the people living in social housing as workshy layabouts?

Just as the focus was unclear at the outset so was the documentary makers’ approach. At times hard-hitting exchanges, for example about drug misuse, provided a genuine insight to life on the estates. Yet the game show format meant challenging moments were  interspersed with exchanges which ridiculed stereotypes – the MP’s were each provided clothing by their hosts to make them fit-in resulting in a comedy costume competition.

Building one-to-one, personal contact enabled a couple of MPs to express real concern about improving the circumstances of their hosts.  However what did the MP’s think would happen to the damp, mouldy bathroom after “their” resident had been re-housed? It would simply be occupied by the next on the waiting list – without changing the underlying conditions.

Whilst warm relationships were established with individuals each of the MPs, to different extents, demonstrated their distance from the lives of some of the UKs neglected communities. The audience watching on TV were invited to participate in the “Us”  side of an “Us and Them” equation, gazing at the residents of the Tower Block as if they were aliens.

We have written before about the process of  “othering” and referred to Ruth Lister’s definition

‘Othering’: people in poverty are thought about, talked about and treated as ‘Other’ and inferior to the rest of society. A dividing line is drawn between ‘us’ and ‘them’ and the dividing line is imbued with negative judgements that construct ‘the poor’ variously as a source of moral contamination, a threat, an undeserving economic burden, failures in the meritocratic race, an object of pity or even as an exotic species to be studied.

There is a long history of people living in poverty being viewed as “other” dating back to melodramatic Victorians exploring the “Internal Orient” of London’s East End this TV programme reverts to simplistic stereotyping of people in poverty and, in reality, adds nothing to our understanding.

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Posted in Attitudes | 3 Comments »

A Year of Social Change

Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009

As we reach the end of 2009 the national team at Community Links have been reflecting on the last year … and begining to plan for 2010.

In 2009 Community Links has seen more and more people come through our doors, as people struggle and demand for our services increased. In Newham Community Links  carried on running much needed local services -  youth clubs, the New Deal, our own school, provided advice and support to families struggling with debt and welfare, and much more. And we’ve continued to share our learning nationally, achieving considerable success.

Projects that our national team have worked on this year include
The Parliamentary launch of our Need NOT Greed Campaign in February, to the National Talent Bank in June, Chain Reaction in November,  including the launch of three more Council on Social Action reports and much else besides.

We have produced a short report on our activities: you can read it here.

To all those with whom we’ve worked, a warm thank you. To those with whom we haven’t, how about next year? The election, unprecedented regeneration, the European Year Against Poverty all provide us with enormous opportunities for social change. We look forward to seizing that moment with you.

Wishing you a peaceful Christmas and a joyful New Year
The Community Links national team.

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Posted in Benefits, Child Poverty, Communication, Council on Social Action, Informal Economy, Innovation | No Comments »

Ensuring families receive everything they’re entitled to

Tuesday, December 8th, 2009

Last week I ran a seminar at 4Children’s conference ‘Child Poverty 10 years on’. The theme of the event was joining things up – providing advice and support in an integrated way. I was asked to focus on how we can ensure that people get the financial support they need to flourish.

As Community Links’ Family Support worker, I’m very familiar with the problems faced by many people in Newham. As I pointed out (you can download my slides here), in one Newham ward, 78% of children live in low income households.

I know just how important financial support can be for a family struggling to get by. For example, someone moving off benefits into low paid work needs the extra support provided by tax credits to ensure work pays. It is estimated that 400,000 children live in poverty because their families are not claiming all the benefits and tax credits they’re entitled to.

It’s in the interests of the Council, other local residents, and the individuals themselves if they know about and access the support they’re entitled to. Communities will be less deprived, with more local investment and more prosperous citizens. Councils will not have to deal with bigger problems further down the line, and families will be able to move on and flourish on the back of a secure financial situation.

That’s why benefit checks and employment advice should be incorporated into other processes. For example, when a family living in poverty is struggling to make the rent, that should trigger an automatic benefits assessment to ensure they’re getting everything they’re entitled to. The alternative, eviction, ends up costing the council and their community more, as well as having a huge impact on the family involved.

There are some excellent examples where this approach to benefits already happens: in Newham the Mayor’s Employment Project combines back-to-work support with benefit advice, ensuring jobseekers are claiming everything they’re entitled to as they’re looking and after they’ve moved into work. There are also examples in other London boroughs and in other local authorities – people from Islington, Haringey & Newcastle all gave examples of work in their areas.

The discussion after the presentation concentrated on the challenge we practitioners face giving the best possible services to families in our communities, working within the current system but thinking creatively about how we reach people.

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Posted in Child Poverty, News | No Comments »

Understanding your local area, hidden warts and all

Monday, December 7th, 2009

A couple of weeks ago the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill was given royal assent, so becoming law. It does two things: firstly it aims to create more opportunities for local people to get involved in decision making; and secondly it gives local authorities a greater role in economic development, including requiring them to assess economic conditions in their area, produce a regional strategy in conjunction with the Regional Development Agency, and cooperate with other councils.

The requirement to assess local economic conditions has been of particular interest to Community Links, because we have carried out research into the informal economy in several London boroughs over the last few years and have increasingly realised its importance to local economies. We estimate up to 20% of people have worked informally, and the sector as a whole could be worth as much as 12% of GDP, or £120bn a year. We decided it was such a crucial yet under recognised issue that we set up our Need not Greed campaign to raise awareness.

So does this new act make it obligatory for Local Authorities to understand and include their local informal economy in their assessments and strategies? Well sort of. The legislation allows for local Councils to determine what they want to assess. It’s only the guidelines that suggest they think about all aspects of their local economy, including the informal economy. This is a shame, so just to highlight how important we think it is here’s an example.

In 2006 Haringey Council’s economic regeneration unit knew there was a gap in their knowledge. They knew people in Haringey must work cash-in-hand, because they’d come across individual cases from time to time. But they had no idea who was doing it, why, or how many, or how it impacted on the department’s work, and therefore it was barely considered in their plans. They asked Community Links to do some research, knowing that we’d done very similar research before, in other boroughs.

We quickly built up links with the Selby Trust, a well-respected local community organisation in Tottenham, who coordinated all the interviews. In talking to 2,600 people in Haringey we found that informal paid work was a significant part of the local economy, mostly in areas like catering, cleaning or childcare. The council used our detailed report to build the informal economy into economic regeneration strategies and activities so they better reflected the reality of life for people in the borough.

To find out what’s really going on in your area see the Community Links website or contact Aaron Barbour on 020 7473 9666 (dd) and aaron.barbour@community-links.org

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Posted in Informal Economy, Research | No Comments »

Londoners unite to tackle poverty

Monday, November 23rd, 2009

Next Tuesday 1st December a coalition of anti poverty charities and organisations from around London, including Community Links, will meet to share successes and look ahead to next year. Stephen Timms MP for East Ham will open the event, but after that we’ll be hearing almost exclusively from activists and charities working locally around London, including from Community Links co-founder and local councillor Kevin Jenkins.

The event, being held in Stratford, is being organised by the European Anti Poverty Network London branch. The EU have declared 2010 the European Year for Combating Poverty and Social Exclusion (nothing like a snappy title), and this meeting is to allow London charities to start deciding what they can do throughout next year.

As well as Community Links, organisations participating will include the Migrants Resource Centre, End Child Poverty London, ATD Fourth World,  Leonard Cheshire Disability, City Parochial Foundation, and more. There will also be an exhibition of the charities’ work open to the public all day.

For more information, or to reserve a place, download the programme and booking form here

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Posted in Informal Economy, News, Voices from the Ground Up | 2 Comments »

Community Allowance Pilot Partners Wanted

Tuesday, September 8th, 2009


We (the CREATE Consortium) are looking for three community organisations to pilot the Community Allowance with us. Could you be involved?

Background – the Community Allowance proposal
A Community Allowance would allow benefit claimants to supplement their income without incurring a penalty – this month’s New Start magazine has a useful overview of the idea, which is starting to be picked up by government. We hope to be involved in piloting the idea, and would welcome your involvement.

Under the government’s Right to Bid scheme, any organisation can propose to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) a new way of delivering any of its services. We thought this was a good opportunity to work with the DWP to pilot the Community Allowance. We developed a Right to Bid proposal for a £2.2 million pilot programme in 15 areas across the UK, and submitted it in January 2009. In April, they asked us a number of questions about our proposal, and you can read our answers here.

In July 2009 they called us to a meeting where they informed us that the Right to Bid process was looking for much smaller scale pilots. They also said that the outgoing Secretary of State, James Purnell MP, had made it clear that the Community Allowance could not be piloted for people on Income Support or Job Seekers Allowance.

They rejected our bid but asked us to submit another proposal for a smaller scale pilot operating in three areas anywhere in the UK. They also said our bid would stand a greater chance of success if we restricted the people who could participate to those who are on Incapacity Benefit and Employment and Support Allowance.

We asked all the organisations that had already expressed an interest in piloting the Community Allowance if they would be prepared to go ahead on that basis, and over 30 organisations said they would.

Aims of pilots:

  • To test the feasibility and impact of the Community Allowance on participants and their communities in a range of settings across the UK.
  • To capture learning and evidence that could inform further development of the Community Allowance to people on other benefits (e.g. Income Support and Job Seekers Allowance).

Want to be involved in the pilot programme?

We are looking for community organisations from across the UK that are interested in becoming a partner with CREATE in order to run the Community Allowance. We would like to work with organisations that are:

  • Local community based charities, social enterprises or community interest companies
  • Trusted locally, with a track record of working with ‘hard to reach’ people
  • Equipped with the capacity and skills to support the Community Allowance participants
  • Able to generate local paid work (e.g. community research or youth work) or identify and place people in paid work that strengthens their neighbourhood (e.g. School Crossing Patrol)

We’d like these pilots to be in a range of rural and urban areas. In each area we anticipate identifying and working with one or more partners, each of whom would recruit, employ, and support people. We have estimated that in each area the Community Allowance could create around 80 part time jobs.

If you wish to develop a proposal for how your organisation would deliver a Community Allowance pilot programme in your area, please download a proposal form and guidance notes. Completed forms need to be back to the CREATE Consortium by 5pm on 1st October 2009, either to CREATE Consortium, 33 Corsham Street, London N1 6DR or to n.alexander@dta.org.uk

Type of Jobs: Eligible jobs on the Community Allowance would be restricted to those that contribute to strengthening the neighbourhood. This would be defined and refined by the CREATE Consortium over the duration of the pilots through dialogue with the CREATE partners.

Real Time Evaluation: The CREATE Consortium will contract with an independent evaluator to carry out a real time evaluation of the pilot programme.

 Do get in touch on aaron.barbour@community-links.org with any suggestions or questions.

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Posted in Benefits, Community Engagement, Innovation, Regeneration, Welfare, employment | No Comments »

Theresa May MP: What is Conservative thinking on Welfare Reform…?

Tuesday, September 1st, 2009

Last week I went to listen to Theresa May MP (Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions) speaking about welfare reform at an event organised by Policy Exchange. In our previous blog we referred to the latest research by Policy Exchange revealing that unemployment was closer to six million than the current official figure of 2.44 million. May argued that the majority of these people have been ‘lurking in the shadows for the past twelve years’ and that many of whom can work and do want to work but they have been ‘let down by Labour’.

Similar to our blog post she highlighted that recent mass unemployment brought on by the recession has ‘brought a new focus on our welfare system and in many ways has exposed its inadequacies’ May later went on to assure the room that a Conservative government would do more than just promise a radical reform in the run up to the general election, but they would deliver on reform because they are ‘not afraid to be honest about the state of worklessness in Britain today’.

All well and good, but how are they planning on doing this and what do they mean by worklessness in Britain today? Well firstly May told us about how they would no longer hide people away on Incapacity Benefit, instead if they are capable of returning to work then ‘they will be provided with the support they need to get them there’. Secondly we were told how the Tories ‘would not be bullied by those, often from the left who opposed change’ Thirdly, as they understand that Government cannot solve this problem alone, they are ‘committed to working with individuals, communities, the public, private and the voluntary sector to break the culture of dependency’

All still a little ambiguous to me, so I eagerly awaited the Q&A for a little prompting on a more detailed explanation of Tory policy proposals. The questions came: ‘how exactly are you going to simplify the benefits system?’, ‘what are the differences between the two party’s policies on welfare?’ ‘Will the Tories recognise the six million figure if they get into power next year?’ (Watch the video  for the responses)

 Unfortunately I left the speech, still not much clearer on what the Conservative thinking on welfare reform is. To achieve a cultural shift around worklessness, which is what May said was paramount to their reforms, understanding the root causes of inter-generational benefit dependency within families and communities is essential. Yet there is not much evidence of this happening. Whichever political party is our next government, if reforms are to work they need to address the complexity of ‘interlocking problems that no government has successfully addressed, and no pontificating can possibly help to solve’.

 They need to reach out into these communities and work with the long-term unemployed, understanding their current situations, how they have coped over decades on benefits and what economic activity is really going on in these communities. We know from Need NOT Greed that people do have a strong desire to work but are really struggling to make the transition to independence. People have taken their own small steps back into work through bits and pieces of informal work. If the system enabled them to do this formally they would. To really break this cycle of worklessness and benefit dependency we need innovative political thinking to inspire individuals and communities to help themselves: use the skills from informal work to bring people close to the labour market, understand the local economy and support its development and make the benefits system an enabling transitional process, not a preventative one. These are proposals that should be on party manifestos, vocialised at welfare reform speeches and not ‘lurking in the shadows’ for another twelve years.

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Posted in Benefits, Child Poverty, Informal Economy, News, Welfare, employment | 2 Comments »

Introducing the National Talent Bank

Tuesday, July 21st, 2009

Yesterday the Daily Telegraph ran a front page story suggesting that almost one million people across the UK are now working part-time because they cannot get a full-time job. The story suggested several major employers have offered staff reduced hours or extended holidays in an attempt to cut costs. The story goes on to suggest that unlike previous recessions this time there are “more dramatic changes in the labour market, with hundreds of thousands cutting their hours and pay in an attempt to hold on to their jobs. “

 Today at a breakfast meeting with actual and potential partners we are introducing the National Talent Bank.

The NTB is an idea proposed by the Council on Social Action – a time limited partnership promoting and supporting volunteering amongst those with more time to share as a consequence of recession.

Today we are publishing a discussion paper to stimulate dialogue and engagement and issuing a call for partners to build the Talent Bank together.

A video accompanying this post outlines the plan.

The Council on Social Action (CoSA) has been considering the role of social action in recession and what might be done now to ensure that we emerge from this period with not only a stronger economy but also happier, healthier, stronger communities.  

Strong communities benefit from the engagement of the many, not the few.  They nurture a commitment to one another sharing the opportunities, the experience and the knowledge we need to shape the decisions that affect our lives, to fulfil potential individually and to live and work effectively together. These are timeless values but particularly significant today: Recession could drive division and exclusion or it could unite us, extracting greater value from all that we have, embracing new ideas and working together on common goals.

Working with The Talent and Enterprise Task Force at the DCSF, TimeBank, Business in the Community (BiTC) and CAPP we’ve developed a short list of opportunities, a framework for expansion and a call for partners to build the National Talent Bank together.

The Plan: The Bank will not be a big new bureaucracy. It will be the sum of its programmes, each run by an independent set of partners. It will offer light touch brokerage to employers, not individual employees and to NTB programmes.

NTB will have a fixed life, probably two years, and will unleash the potential from temporary circumstances. It will target those employers who are releasing employees for a fixed period or are reducing the working week.

The Need: We know that 17% of UK employers have implemented short time working programmes, with a further 13% intending to or considering the option. (CBI Employment Trends Survey: June 2009)  The “under employed”  includes employees working shorter hours,  required to take  sabbaticals, retained in the workforce  but under occupied or “deferred” – new recruits with a deferred start date.

We also know that large numbers of children would benfit from extra one-to-one literacy and numeracy support, that debt enquiries at Citizens Advice Bureaux were 21% higher in the first quarter of this year compared to last and that Child Line have experienced a comparable increase in demand.

On the one hand there is need. On the other there is the capacity to help.

The Action: We intend to build three themes. Action for Young People, Action on Climate Change and Action on Money Management. Beneath each theme we are developing a set of volunteering programmes

As recession continues more people become available and more problems become more entrenched. Employees are making choices about how they use their unexpected time when it becomes available. As the economy picks up they will once again have less time available. The need and the opportunity exist now. So should our response.  


Do please download the report and have a look at the video. We are developing a short list of opportunities and  a framework for expansion if you have any comments or you would like to be involved please leave a comment below or contact me  info@nationaltalentbank.org.uk . Website:  www.nationaltalentbank.org.uk

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Posted in Community Engagement, Council on Social Action, Innovation, Inspiration, News, Regeneration, Volunteering, employment | 1 Comment »

Professor Etzioni and Chief Secretary to the Treasury Liam Byrne MP visit Community Links

Wednesday, July 15th, 2009

DSCF6563
Today Community Links hosted a visit from Chief Secretary to the Treasury Liam Byrne MP along with Professor Amitai Etzioni. The renowned sociologist famed for his work on Communitarianism

Last night professor Etzioni addresses a meeting at the RSA and had dinner at No.10. Today he travelled to Canning Town for meetings with Community Links frontline staff and a small group of our friends from community organisations, business and local government. We discussed community participation; the role of community in relation to public services and the impact of globalisation.

For such a diverse group there was wide agreement amongst those present from across the different sectors that the things needed for most effective engagement are trust and confidence. 

You can view photographs of the meeting here and watch a short video of the concluding remarks here.

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Posted in Communication, Innovation, Inspiration, Leadership, News, Regeneration, Voices from the Ground Up | 1 Comment »

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