Page Aim
This Forum brings together a selection of articles, letters, queries and other materials produced for and by people working on S&P concerns.
Page Contents
Editorial
Letters
Still Sustaining Confusion
Queries
What’s the aim of LINKS?
How can LINKS help Councils
establish genuinely representative consultation?
Articles
Locality Working and the
Sustainability Imperative
Unsustainable World, Untenable Politics
Will Double Devolution Empower Communities?
Why Does Our Third Sector Have its Head in the Sand?
The Credit Crunch, Sustainability and Participation
Matching Up Funding Availabilities and S&P Work
Democracy and the English Regions
Page Updates
The frequency of page updates will depend on the input you and other site visitors make.
Please send LINKS any material you’d like including on the website . This could be about your organisation, a current project, or your views on a specific S&P related topic. Don’t forget to include full contact details for possible follow ups.
Until further development of the feature, LINKS needs text print-outs (ie no disks, photos, artwork or diagrams) covering no more than three sides of A4; please send to SustainabilityLINKS, 3 Park Road, Bedworth, Warwickshire CV12
Editorial
This site’s been established to inform, aid and urge participation in local decision making processes by:
bringing key sustainability concerns to the fore in local decision
making processes,
bringing together news about topical sustainability and participation
developments,
providing a reference resource,
offering a networking opportunity.
Until now the site has been something of a pilot version of what it is to become.
You may’ve seen that the home page flags a few pages it’s useful to visit first. The Home page will give you a good idea of the website’s layout while the International Initiatives page explains where we’re coming from, why we think what we’re doing is something long overdue and - most importantly - how the site can help you where you live.
“You have to work through local and sometimes national governments, but probably more important is to empower local communities. The people affected are the immense majority of the population.”
Ricardo Navarro. Chair, FOE International, 2002.
Letters
Drop LINKS a line, remembering to include your name and address. Here are a few topics that could be discussed on this page:
Ten years ago Friends of the Earth published a report commissioned
from independent consultants. Entitled ‘Perceptions of National
Barriers to Local Sustainability’ the research categorised these
barriers to change as political, structural, and institutional.
To what extent are even those of us working on sustainability
bound by our own organisational and cultural conventions?
Do you believe that democracy isn’t working? What aspects
of our political decision-making processes are undemocratic or,
even worse, anti-democratic? Unsustainability, globalisation,
corporate power, information technology – how have such things outdated
our democratic practices? And why do we store so much faith
in a system whose piecemeal growth causes us to stumble from one short-term
fix or remedy to the next? What
better ways of doing things are there?
What do you think about the massive national housing development
programme that’s affecting your area?
Why isn't the third sector doing more about sustainability?
What issues would you like to see your area LSP addressing,
Citizens Forum or Third Sector Assembly
addressing?
Would you like to congratulate your Council on anything it’s
doing to promote more sustainable living?
How can those of us working on sustainability best help Councils
in their efforts to implement sustainability-related measures, such
as recycling and traffic calming?
What practical ideas does anyone have for living more simply?
Would you like to raise the profile of issues affecting your
locality?
Why aren’t local Partnerships taking on board the global and
long term links – even in such basic matters as refreshment sourcing
policy?
Wouldn’t it be untypically far-sighted if all existing disused
rail tracks were acquired for future rail network development?
Colin Mason’s ‘A Short History of the Future’ outlines seven
imminent sustainability related disasters – climate change, depleted
energy supplies, population growth, drinking water shortage, famine,
poverty and global lawlessness. What should we be doing to
address these now? Are there any other problems you feel will
have a more significant impact on our lives?
Are communities really better able to address the challenges
ahead than conventional politics? Won’t the Government and
party system produce stronger leadership?
Being green is all about doom and gloom and going without. Has
it got anything positive to say?
Wars are about conflict with other people we believe are doing
wrong. Why’s it always so much harder for us to see ourselves
as the villains?
Should our efforts to tackle global unsustainability focus on
challenging capitalism or on changing ourselves?
Economists routinely dismiss record levels of household debt
claiming they’re balanced by increasing household assets – but don’t
these debts and assets belong to different people?
Will the efforts so many of us are making to address unsustainability
be adequate to ease the effects of whatever environmental, economic
and social degeneration may come?
Does nobody appreciate the irony of areas’ sustainability work
focusing on economic regeneration - led by resource-intensive
construction and land development programmes?
Why do communities wishing
to undertake work for the benefit of their areas have to
pay unfeasibly high room hire fees simply to be able to
meet? These charges invariably have to come from funds
that could be used in much better ways. Shouldn't
councils, and other owners of community facilities, make
accommodation available on a complementary or nominal charge
basis, especially when groups are meeting to realise shared
goals?
Still Sustaining Confusion
The Sustainable Funding Project is encouraging third sector organisations to embrace market principles by generating income from trade in services. This trading is being encouraged to help organisations not only secure, quote “self esteem” (what have they been up until now then, work shy drains on the national purse?) but, more importantly, establish their ‘sustainability’ in market terms.
Used here, the words ‘sustainable’ / sustainability and their derivatives clearly have the same sort of doublethink meaning as they do when used in phrases such as ‘sustainable’ communities (new building developments) ‘sustainable’ housing (not council owned) and 'sustainable' third world aid and trade (continued economic exploitation).
This perverse usage makes everyone think that the Government’s dealing with the national impacts of our global unsustainability – but such a cruel deception has more to do with political parties desperately trying to ‘sustain’ their own role in government.
'Gordon Orwell'
Please can real contributors include contact details.
The word 'sustainability' doesn't really convey the desperate urgency of our global plight. Perhaps we should all be using the word 'survival' instead. By the way, much more frequent S&P Report updates would be good.
Carl G
Wolverhampton
Hidden Agenda
Locality working? It's almost as if national policies are preparing communities for the eco hell-hole that's to come but, rather than spell it out, leave us all to join up the dots.
'Jack Lovelock'
Please can real contributors include contact details.
Queries
Can
you tell me which 100 or so councils have opted in to the
Sustainable Communities Act. I'm particularly interested
in finding out about Flintshire.
Keith Porter
Flintshire
Go to www.localworks.org. The site's home page shows regional maps - simply click on them to get larger versions showing how the Act is faring across each area.
Sustainability Links
What
are LSPs?
Helen
Totnes
There're descriptions of what Local Strategic Partnerships are and do on this website - see the Glossary, National Initiatives pages. Also look at the information included on the Best Practice and Policy Making page, which includes a useful section headed 'How Community Strategies and LSPs Can Address Sustainability'.
But here's a shorter explanation. LSPs have been established in all local authority areas. They bring together representatives of the three sectors - public, market and VCO (voluntary and community organisation).
These Partnerships are responsible for producing Sustainable Community Strategies (SCSs), 20-year visions for their areas, as well as shorter term implementation plans. LSPs can also undertake a lot of work throughout the year, eg promoting Switch It Off or recycling events.
Many LSPs have theme groups responsible for progressing SCS themes, such as energy, biodiversity, the local economy; which enable more local groups to become involved in LSP processes.
Hopefully Sustainability Links offers a solution to the big problem with this - ie that many of those working on sustainability who do become involved can feel isolated, and their input can so easily be processed out.
Sustainability Links
What’s the aim of LINKS?
Julie Taylor
Atherstone
The aim of LINKS’ involvement is to help those involved in local decision making through SCSs, LSPs, Citizens Panels, etc with the very necessary sustainability perspective when addressing the issues that come before them.
LINKS was inspired by Agenda 21 and embraces many of its aspects – such as the importance of a publicly non-confrontational basis for participation. The programme does however seek to engage in a constructively critical manner that’ll help cut across the conceptual deadlocks and practical impasses that established policy-making frameworks customarily serve to reinforce.
The underachieving course Local Agenda 21 has taken since 1992 serves to underline the need for such an approach. LINKS works to illustrate the different ways in which our communities can act, recognising the imperatives of the UN’s Agenda 21 and the increasingly urgent need to develop a less unsustainable future.
Sustainability Links
I
would be particularly interested to know the make up of
your organisation, whether it has any members in North Warwickshire
and how you could help the Council with genuinely representative
consultation.
Steve Maxey
Atherstone
Make up of the organisation / members in North Warwickshire:
SustainabilityLINKS is an online information service rather than a membership based VCO - although in due course we do plan to offer supporter packages including e-bulletins, interest targeted e-mails, and disks of supplementary material. Regular, occasional and one-off contributions to the website pages are actively encouraged.
In the longer term we plan to offer supporters and / or site visitors a chance to determine which issues we should lobby Coventry and Warwickshire LSPs and councils about.
The website is a national resource, promoted across the national third sector: it uses our subregional locality working / participation process input and feedback as case study material.
How LINKS can help Councils with genuinely representative consultation:
How can localities begin to respond to the ever-worsening impacts of, say, climate change, peak oil, drinking water shortages, economic slump, environmental migration? Various scenarios have been outlined, with freefall collapse and totalitarian government at the extremes. The most desirable response is that advanced through the UN's Rio Declaration / Agenda 21 initiatives - a worldwide grassroots programme of information giving, discussion and decision making.
SustainabilityLINKS' role is to help gather, collate and disseminate information - to paraphrase a common democratic maxim "there can be no consultation without information".
Sustainability Links
Also see the article below, Locality Working and the Sustainability Imperative.
Articles
Locality Working and the Sustainability Imperative
SustainabilityLINKS
“…real sustainable change will not be achieved unless local people are in the driving seat”
Our Towns and Cities, page 32. DTER.
As locality working inevitably embraces wider inputs it must become increasingly evident that processes need to establish input mechanisms and policy guidelines to assist members in their decision making, not least of which are those drawing out exactly what is meant by ‘sustainability’. For example, should a rural LSP working to ensure the sustainability of its area’s intensive agriculture not first consider the dangerous unsustainability of agri-business in the wider scheme of things?
“Non-governmental organisations… are an essential network for mobilising the sense of common purpose needed for the move to sustainable development, as well as major sources of the expertise and knowledge necessary. Governments and international organisations need to develop mechanisms to bring NGOs, and networks they have set up themselves, into the decision-making process. This includes ensuring they have sufficient funding and access to all relevant information.”
Chapter 27. United Nations Agenda 21, 1992.
“In order to most effectively use the tools, freedoms and flexibilities available to local authorities for delivering sustainable development, sufficient guidance and support mechanisms need to be in place. These would ensure local professionals and communities themselves have the capacity to move from a ‘business as usual’ approach to new creative ways of involving the community and meeting local needs in a way that delivers sustainable development. The Egan Review emphasised the importance of having the right skills and knowledge at the local level to deliver sustainable communities. The capacity of individuals and organisations to understand and implement sustainable development is therefore critical to success. The provision of guidance, dissemination of best practice, use of well developed appraisal techniques and the development of skills and knowledge is crucial here.”
Taking It On; Developing Sustainable Development Strategy Together. Defra 2004.
Another guideline should be put in place to enable partners to assess the participatory legitimacy of those seeking to influence processes. One current determinant is that provision making should be an eligibility condition of decision making. This is in itself a commendable criterion, but how does it get around the Catch 22 inequity affecting VCOs meeting grassroots sustainability information and education agendas, but excluded from third sector funding streams generated to serve central Government’s more immediate policy ends?
“The days of the all purpose local authority that planned and delivered everything are gone.”
Paragraph 1 Paper 1, Modernising Local Government, DETR, 1998.
Another dynamic area locality working, and particularly LSPs, must address is that existing between the three sectors. Globally, it is the international market sector that increasingly prevails over Government, which here in the UK has stepped up its attempts to harness VCOs in the realisation of market-led policy objectives. A more democratically legitimate balance of power would see the market and third sectors having at least equal leverage on Government policy making and the public purse and – unlike market forces – this countervailing influence must come from the bottom up.
This website’s local menu (pp 17 - 24) focuses on work done in the Coventry and Warwickshire subregion of the West Midlands. It’s included on the national site to show how the sort of grassroots participation envisaged by Agenda 21 can be developed. It also shows that the site can be used not just as an information source but also as a democratic tool.
Will Double Devolution Empower Communities?
SustainabilityLINKS
Introduction
Up until the publication of Strong and Prosperous Communities in October 2006 the Government spoke of its plans for ‘Double Devolution’. Although the White Paper did not actually use the term it did indicate that Government was poised to yield decision making powers to local communities.
The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, Ruth Kelly, announced in July 2006 that community groups would be able to take over the ownership or management of local services – outlining the Government’s proposed double devolution of power “from Whitehall to the town hall, and from the town hall to citizens and local communities.” In her speech she promised that a ‘one size fits all’ approach would not be taken to neighbourhood empowerment.
The Government has also said it plans to expand opportunities for communities to own and manage buildings, land and other physical assets. Its Working Group looked at asset transfer considerations including the creation of an Incentive Fund to support transfer, Community Right to Buy regulations and community management in housing.
Speaking on a related theme, the Minister for the Third Sector, David Miliband, has said that, “The relationship between Government and the third sector is evolving… the role of Government will be to enable voluntary organisations to deliver services in partnership with the public and private sectors.”
In view of the Government’s devolution policies it was widely predicted that the 2006 Local Government White Paper would change the way the third sector works – speculation suggested that it would embrace double devolution, the role of LSPs and LAAs, the end of grant funding, third sector infrastructure, local services delivery, lobbying and campaigning, city region proposals, commissioning and procurement.
Caution
Suggestions that such measures are being taken to help empower communities are not without criticism.
A number of grassroots organisations are wary that while the planning system has traditionally balanced market pressures against community and environment considerations, the new local planning processes have been established to favour development.
Similarly, third sector representatives are conscious that while the Government judges the success of participation exercises on simple indicators such as the number of input opportunities or people involved, communities prefer more meaningful criteria, like ongoing grassroots involvement in decision making.
Government talk of community empowerment should also be set against its increasingly unpopular policy of council housing stock transfers and ambitious regeneration policies – where decisions are influenced more by remote international capital movements than parish pump concerns.
The WTO proposed to transfer 106 public services to the private sector, now we are seeing local third sector organisations being reshaped as ‘sustainable’, ie self supporting, businesses who trade services for Government funding. In the process these organisations’ role is shifted from one of personal, community and environmental welfare providers to lowly funded third sector ancillary workers helping communities into market sector employment, meeting work training requirements, researching employer needs and providing childcare services.
The market sector ethic is sweeping through both public and third sector organisations. Yet we’re assured Government is not taking a ‘one size fits all’ approach.
Why Does Our Third Sector Have Its Head in the Sand?
SustainabilityLINKS
A growing number of professions based in both the public and market sectors - such as planners, architects, insurance providers, health workers - are now taking on board the implications of, for example, climate change. Some scientific fields and campaign groups have been speaking up since the 1960s, and international agencies, led by the United Nations, began championing sustainability issues during the following decade.
A couple of years ago the British Government published two relevant papers – the Sustainable Development Shared Framework and UK Sustainable Development Strategy: Securing the Future.
Meanwhile, recognising the need to act, but aware of the difficulty of doing so independently, a mounting number of major corporations have begun calling for Government commitment and resolve – BT, John Lewis / Waitrose, British Gas, Scottish Power, and the National Grid are amongst those urging Parliament to take a lead. Even the chair of Shell, Lord Oxburgh, has said that “governments in developed countries need to introduce taxes, regulations or plans to increase the cost of emitting carbon dioxide… none of this is going to happen by itself”.
The two Government papers mentioned above are a constrained attempt to bring sustainable development practice to the public sector. Unfortunately our own sector infrastructure and voluntary councils are tied to dangerously anachronistic agendas.
This was perhaps well illustrated by a NACVS response to the Government’s consultation on LSPs and the sector a couple of years ago. While providing a very comprehensive and commendable assessment of the third sector’s role in the identification and delivery of local services it ignored the Sustainable Communities Strategy elephant trumpeting very loudly and urgently in its ear. If these LSP documents are responsible for looking ahead 20 years how is our community going to start coping with the increasingly severe impacts of climate change, of peak oil, of escalating resource competition, of an unsustainable international economy, of globalisation?
And of course, the same is true of our Local Strategic Partnerships. It is indeed ironic that LSPs were both inspired by, and originally charged with the task of progressing, the sustainability imperative of Agenda 21. It is not merely ironic but tragic, that it will be at local community level that we - and those who follow - will have to suffer the worst consequences of ongoing grassroots inaction and denial.
More delegates and feedback needed
Last year’s European Social Forum event was held during September at Malmo in Sweden. It included discussions and actions on a range of concerns, such as community, sustainability, women’s rights, social movement, food security, footprinting, biofuels and corporate globalisation.
There is insufficient feedback to our VCOs. In future the website will feature a report back from ESF meetings – and the responses from Britain’s national infrastructure support organisations.
Would anyone who’s going to the next please contact LINKS: info@sustainabilitylinks.org.uk
Page development
Please send LINKS any material you’d like including on the website for a while. This could be about your organisation, a current project, or your views on a specific S&P related topic. Don’t forget to include full contact details for possible follow ups.
Until further development of the feature, LINKS needs text print-outs (ie no disks, photos, artwork or diagrams) covering no more than three sides of A4; please send to: SustainabilityLINKS, 3 Park Road, Bedworth, Warwickshire CV12 8LH.
Unsustainable World…Untenable Politics
SustainabilityLINKS
It was the United Nations’ Agenda 21 that first mainstreamed the idea that sustainability and participation (S&P) had to be brought together if we’re to tackle the mounting problems confronting us during the 21st century. Unfortunately since 1992 the two have tended to go their own separate ways.
The Big Idea behind SustainabilityLINKS is to bring them both back together again.
The sustainability concerns that have been raised by different communities of interest over the years may have been recognised by the UN, but – like those elsewhere – the British Government has failed to deal with the huge elephant in the room that is our increasingly unsustainable world.
All those of us working with third sector based projects (a look at the Helpful Addresses, Helpful Magazines and Helpful Websites pages will give some idea of the number and diversity of initiatives) have to reach out both to our sector colleagues, urging them to embrace a new perspective, and to the local Sustainable Community Strategy processes that’re now in place all across the country.
It’s regrettable that to date local VCOs working on S&P have not been very involved in the production of their areas’ Sustainable Community Strategies or the Local Strategic Partnerships and various themed activities contributing to them.
Is this a result of strategic marginalisation or self exclusion? You only have to look at the policy implementation guidelines published by Government since 1992 to find the answer. For example, 2006’s recent National Community Forum consultation and review of third sector participation in regeneration would serve to illustrate the way many voluntary sector organisations are being routinely sidelined by terms of reference and engagement.
Add to this Government policy that shifts service delivery from the public sector to voluntary organisations and a worrying scenario emerges. It’s one thing for a Government to pursue its manifesto through its own statutory bodies. It’s quite a different situation where this or that political party determines what third sector organisations should be doing when that organisation’s membership may well exceed the political party’s, or its service delivery depends upon the goodwill, low pay or even voluntary input of staff.
Please let LINKS know what you think about this and the many other sustainability-related issues that’re becoming increasingly important in the way we live. Also please could you let us have your news so that we can share it with everyone else working on similar things in similar circumstances.
You can either email site manager Carl with short contributions, or send material for summarising to me at 3 Park Road, Bedworth, Warwickshire CV12 8LH. We’re looking forward to hearing from you.
The Credit Crunch, Sustainability and Participation
Clive Rosher
At present the world suffers from a dysfunctional money system based on fraud and usury.
It is more noticeable at this time of ‘Credit Crunch’ - which might alternatively be designated a ‘Debt Disaster’ - that the system is dysfunctional, but not everyone is aware that it is based on debt, and privatised.
The system is as it is because it has evolved that way; but anyone devising a money system from scratch would have to be either a blithering idiot or extremely wicked to come up with a scheme such as the one we have now. Is there anything more absurd than governments (instead of themselves creating more money when it is needed) borrowing mainly from banks - which enjoy the privilege of being able to create money and charge interest on it? Is there anything more wicked than generating debt on such an immense scale that there is now more debt than money in the economy, when debt is always a bringer of misery and a prime cause of suicide?
The system is privatised because new money is introduced as loans; and being only lent and not given it continues to belong to the lenders, ie the banks. Since all new money, apart from the 3% that is cash in the form of notes and coins, is lent at interest, the banks are obviously the biggest userers; and as nearly all money is lent, further loans have to be taken out to pay the interest demanded. This fact causes the money supply to expand exponentially, ensuring that inflation is an in-built feature of the economy. If you compare wage rates today with those of 100 years ago you will see that £1 today is worth less than 1d then.
Climate change is now recognised as the greatest danger facing the world, and it is essential that enough is done soon enough to avert uncontrollable runaway global warming or climate catastrophe. As most people probably know by now, the problem of global warming is caused by increasing concentrations of ‘greenhouse gasses’ in the atmosphere, the main contributor being carbon dioxide formed from the combustion of fossil fuels.
This has been happening since the start of the industrial revolution, but is continuing at a greatly increased rate in recent years. It has been shown that there is a remarkably close correlation between the rate of increase in the world’s use of fossil energy and the rate of global economic growth; so to arrest (if still possible) climate change, the emission of greenhouse gases must be drastically reduced by finding substitutes for fossil fuels to supply energy, and by taking other measures to reduce energy demands - such as localising economies to reduce transport needs and conversion to organic food production.
However this will take time and will be of no avail if it is counteracted by continuing economic growth. Growth is good for a child, but not for an adult, and so with the economy; when it has developed beyond a point of adequacy it only promotes wasteful extravagance and not wellbeing. Thus to enable climate change mitigation it is necessary that the foot be removed from the accelerator pedal of economic growth; and that entails preventing the ever increasing growth of the money supply which increases demand and impels further growth.
The simple remedy is to take back from the banking industry the right to create money and restore it to the elected governments, which can then take control of the economy in the interests of the people and the environment. The world has always been round, but it took a very long time for that to be generally understood. Slavery was always wrong, but it persisted for many centuries. The ‘fractional reserve’ lending system which enables banks to create money was an enormous swindle from the start, but it has grown to swallow almost the entire money system, and in the process has led to ever increasing environmental damage as a by-product of the relentless search for profit in a competitive economy.
Understanding the sphericalness of the world could perhaps have waited. Appreciating the injustice of slavery would not have done. Now it is imperative that the injustice and the dangers inherent in the banking system, as it is now organised, are generally understood, so that the people demand that money creation is taken out of private hands and restored to the government on behalf of the community. That will not happen without a lot of pressure, which will be resisted by vested interests and the mental inertia of people who accept the system as it is just because it is there.
The debt-based money system and the industrial revolution both started in Britain. we led the world into the present mess. Don’t we have a moral obligation to try to lead the way out of it? I hope you will get active. Although we shall not live to see the worst aspects of climate chaos, for the sake of the younger and future generations and for the rest of nature we must act now.
Further Reading
‘Where’s the Money to Come From’? by Brian Leslie, contains a full guide to useful books and websites and some interesting quotes on the money system - including a couple from former US presidents. The pamphlet, published in October 2008, can be downloaded from www.sustecweb.com.uk as a pdf. Hard copies are available for 50p from 12 Queens Road, Tunbridge Wells TN4 9LU. The author also edits the bi-monthly ‘Sustainable Economics’.
There are a number of credit crunch slogan badges available. See Say It With Badges on LINKSdisk and phone 024 7661 4111 for further information. Two commendable books on climate change are ‘Contraction and Convergence - the Global Solution to Climate Change’ by Aubrey Meyer and ‘How We Can Save the Planet’ by Mayer Hllman.
Matching Up Funding Availabilities and S&P Work
SustainabilityLINKS
What’s the single issue that sustainability needs to prioritise above all others? Climate change? Overpopulation? Endangered species? Genetic engineering? Or perhaps we should be bringing a more lateral approach to the question?
Around the world employment may be identified as the single most significant human activity in terms of its far-reaching effects on the natural and social environments. Because most employment continues to either hasten our planetary demise or benignly but foolishly ignore what’s happening, everywhere people continue to fiddle for a living while the earth burns.
People can begin to work for sustainability – as individuals through the jobs market, and as communities of interest through the establishment of social enterprise projects.
There’s undoubtedly a lack of government leadership in encouraging people to establish sustainability-related work programmes but there’s also an element of our own self-exclusion. Although there are a fair amount of resources available for sustainability-related work, there may well have to be a considerable degree of creative bidding to match up funders’ application forms and our project objectives. Many would-be project organisers may not apply for grants simply because funders’ criteria convey an erroneous impression that we bring an ineligible agenda to our applications.
Sustainability Related Funding Bids
Please join LINKS in brainstorming sustainability-linked employment
ideas – and then we can try matching all the suggestions up to the
various funding availabilities:
Making crafts using recycled / refurbished waste.
Retailing crafts made from recycled / refurbished waste.
Producing sustainability-related displays.
Themed drama productions .
Gardening for climate change.
Sustainability facilitation and presentations agency.
Repair workshops for electrical appliances, furniture, clothing
and other domestic items.
Relevant street theatre and performance art.
Skill-sharing family / community workshops.
Sustainability resource management.
Transport modal change consultancy.
Transport and town centre left luggage and locker facilities.
Allotment growing teacher-learner groups.
Downshifting / debt guidance.
Sorting waste workshops.
Provision of global / future studies workshops highlighting aspects
of our anachronistic lifestyle.
Sustainability-related personal development courses.
Public transport facilitation – timetable advice, location-centred
information points, refreshment areas.
Culture shock / transition counselling.
Funding networks and applications advice.
Kerbside collection of non-recyclables – cooked foods, broken
glass, toxic substances, medications.
Eco footprinting.
Themed schools – how children learn in third world countries,
how they lived in the past, how they will live later this century.
Flood advice and defence.
Sustainability audit work.
Action to promote the use of local rights of way and re-establish
common lands.
Learning and taking action about the major threats to local heritage
from climate change and our global unsustainability.
Promoting the use of local open space.
Reminiscences work centred on living more simply.
Courses linking past and future and the aberration of modernism.
Establishing a time bank.
Running a community shop.
Organising an area LETS.
Sub-regional promotion of farmers markets.
Work bringing together S&P, lifestyle and family life
Creating and promoting car-free local cycle and pedestrian routes
Developing a public urban nature reserve, green open space, community
forest or wildlife garden.
Mapping local sustainability features – green track, public transport
facilities, Fairtrade outlets, recycling facilities, streams and
pools, good views, woodlands, farmers market sites, charity shops,
community centres, SSSIs, landmarks, etc.
Organising screenings and discussions of films and television
programmes made in the 40s and 50s, showing how we must come to
again live more simply.
Democracy and the English Regions
SustainabilityLINKS
The Government has proposed changes to the English regions’ decision making structures and administrative arrangements. A main effect of the new proposals will be the removal of the Regional Chambers, with their functions being taken over by Government, the Regional Development Agencies and local councils.
Origins of the Regional Chambers
Regional Chambers were introduced ten years ago, at the same time as the Scottish Parliament, and Welsh and London Assemblies. They were to be responsible for a range of concerns more effectively addressed at regional level than independently by all those councils working within the region. It was intended that a main focus of the Regional Chambers would be economic regeneration, although a separate body – the Regional Development Agency – would concentrate specifically on this, bringing together key players from the regions’ market sector. Government thinking was that these Chambers would at some point become elected Assemblies. Although the result of a subsequent referendum in the north east checked any further moves towards regional devolution the Regional Chambers were renamed Regional Assemblies.
The Regional Assemblies’ members were drawn from across the nine regions’ three generic sectors; for example, on its launch the West Midlands Regional Chamber comprised 42 representatives from the region’s councils, 9 representatives from local businesses and a single representative from further education, higher education, the TUC, parish councils, housing associations, health authorities and the cultural forum; there was also a representative from the regions’ voluntary sector and one from its Sustainability Forum. In addition there were five co-optees, representing interests including farming, volunteering and black business.
SNR and IRS
Last year the Government proposed the abolition of the Regional Assemblies by 2010. Its Review of Sub-National Economic Development and Regeneration considered the arrangements necessary for taking on their different functions (such as the production of regional strategies and economic development) and how the different arrangements would impact on regional responsibility and accountability dynamics and service delivery. The main SNR measures were;
Most Regional Assemblies responsibilities are to be transferred
to the Regional Development Agencies.
The Government has appointed Regional Ministers and will establish
Regional Select Committees.
The production of an IRS will be the responsibility of the nine
RDAs. The RDAs are required to work closely with local authorities,
who must agree them. Regional Assemblies have already produced
separate Economic, Housing and Spatial Strategies.
The RDAs should become more strategic in their approach,
with some of the existing functions being devolved to sub regional
groups or local authorities.
The Regional Assemblies’ scrutiny role would be taken over by
Parliament (through the Regional Ministers and Select Committees)
and local authorities.
A Cause for Third Sector Unease?
Local councils are taking forward plans to work with the new proposals, which will ensure a continuing role for councillors in regional decision making through the involvement of senior members in IRS discussions. The Local Government Association is playing a key part in negotiations at national level.
First and foremost IRSs have to be responsive to their regions’ LAAs and SCSs, which are intended to embrace local concerns and grassroots input.
However, it is feared that the new regional arrangements invite prescriptive policy making without harnessing the same breadth of regional level input as before. Another concern is that no scrutiny arrangements have yet been developed for IRS processes.
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