Searching For The Impact Of Involvement

Community involvement has become a key issue for central and local government and services. Of course, the notion of engaging communities in public life is not new — but it has become more of a focus since 1997, and particularly in the last couple of years. At the beginning of 2006 David Milliband outlined the Government's vision of creating a system where decision-making power is handed down from Whitehall to local authorities who then pass onto local communities — so called "double devolution". During his speech Milliband revisited Gordon Brown's words delivered at the Urban Summit in 2002 when he quoted:

The true devolution of power goes beyond regional and local devolution to public authorities. It means devolving more power from government altogether, and into the hands of local communities — giving local people the tools to make improvements in their own neighbourhoods.

Most recently, during the Labour Party Conference 2006, Gordon Brown reiterated the Government's commitments to championing the active involvement and engagement of local people:

And I tell you: just as in the last century governments had to take power from vested interests in the interests of communities, in the new century people and communities should now take power from the state and that means for the new challenges ahead — a reinvention of the way we govern: the active citizen, the empowered community, open enabling government.

He indicated that this will be via local councils having more power over community issues, such as economic regeneration and public transport, as well as communities being able to own local assets and vote on how budgets for community facilities should be spent.

But while there are plenty of theories about how this should result in better services and government for people, the evidence to date has been acknowledged as rather weak and anecdotal. Our new study aims to improve on this through detailed analysis of major surveys, such as the Home Office Citizenship Survey, the Audit of Political Engagement and the household surveys conducted as part of the National Evaluation of New Deal for Communities.

The full report will be published in early 2007 — you can register to be sent a copy using the form below. Initial conclusions are that feelings of influence, rather than actual levels of involvement, are related to some positive outcomes and changes in attitudes. However, there appear to much more important factors driving overall views, focused around delivering on services and key liveability issues.