Keith Shaw

‘On the Side of the Angels’: Community Involvement in the Governance of Neighbourhood Renewal

Community involvement in regeneration is far from easy, and is difficult to define. The New Deal for Communities programme has directly involved residents in the governance of neighbourhood renewal with some success. However, community capacity has proved to be limited, adequate representation is difficult to achieve and there has been friction with local government. Community empowerment has to be enabled and supported by getting the structures and processes right, and supporting community representatives.

Resilient local government and climate change interventions in the UK

This article aims to critically review the concept of resilience and to assess how it might be used both to understand and to evaluate local government responses to climate change. The relevance of the resilience agenda is located in the growing sense of uncertainty in the face of external economic and environmental “shocks”. In the UK, in particular, the challenges of tackling climate change, responding to economic recession and introducing major cuts in public expenditure provide an appropriate context within which the utility of the resilience agenda can be examined. In emphasising the transformational view of resilience as “bouncing forward” – as opposed to that of recovery or “bouncing back” – the article highlights a number of features that could characterise a resilient local government approach to both mitigating and adapting to climate change. In acknowledging the emergence of a number of features of local resilience, the article concludes by considering how such an agenda can be further developed by local government. A key question that remains is the extent to which the local creativity, innovation and risk-taking needed for resilience can be developed given the economic and political constraints confronting local government in the UK.

Managing for local resilience: towards a strategic approach

The term resilience is increasingly being used to capture the challenges involved in managing in ‘hard times’. This article aims to provide one of the first empirical studies of the term’s application to local authority interventions around emergency planning and climate change: two areas in which resilience has been particularly emphasised in local policy making. Drawing upon research undertaken in the north east of England, the article considers how local managers have understood and applied the term, the extent to which it has been developed as a coherent policy agenda, and its strategic significance. In reframing the debate on resilience in terms of discourses of ‘recovery’ and ‘transformation’, the article examines how, in addition to informing policy realities on the ground, resilience is also a normative, politically laden term, within which conservative narratives of uncertainty, vulnerability and anxiety compete with a more radical focus on hope, adaptation and transformation. The study reveals concerns over the term’s longevity, tensions between the different interpretations of resilience, and the lack of a coherent strategic framework within which the different discourses on resilience could be considered and reconciled. However, the article also captures the growing importance of a resilience narrative that is seen to add value in a period of austerity, integrate key features of climate change adaptation and emergency planning, and act as a ‘strategic lynchpin’ in relation to other policy areas, such as economic resilience.

The Rise of the Resilient Local Authority

Abstract The term resilience is increasingly being utilised within the study of public policy to depict how individuals, communities and organisations can adapt, cope, and ‘bounce back’ when faced with external shocks such as climate change, economic recession and cuts in public expenditure. In focussing on the local dimensions of the resilience debate, this article argues that the term can provide useful insights into how the challenges facing local authorities in the UK can be reformulated and reinterpreted. The article also distinguishes between resilience as ‘recovery’ and resilience as ‘transformation’, with the latters focus on ‘bouncing forward’ from external shocks seen as offering a more radical framework within which the opportunities for local innovation and creativity can be assessed and explained. While also acknowledging some of the weaknesses of the resilience debate, the dangers of conceptual ‘stretching’, and the extent of local vulnerabilities, the article highlights a range of examples where local authorities – and crucially, local communities – have enhanced their adaptive capacity, within existing powers and responsibilities. From this viewpoint, some of the barriers to the development of resilient local government are not insurmountable, and can be overcome by ‘digging deep’ to draw upon existing resources and capabilities, promoting a strategic approach to risk, exhibiting greater ambition and imagination, and creating space for local communities to develop their own resilience.

From 'regionalism' to 'localism': Opportunities and challenges for North East England

The Coalition Government has abolished regional institutions, with ‘localism’ now regarded as the best approach for promoting economic development and shaping and delivering public services. This article provides an early assessment of the shift by drawing upon research in the North East of England, where the dismantling of the regional tier is likely to have a considerable impact given its long history of regional economic interventions and the traditionally strong level of support for the idea of a coherent regional voice. For some in the region, the changes have generated concerns about the end of the ‘North East’ and scepticism about the Government’s motives for promoting localism. Others articulate a more sanguine view: that there is life ‘after the region’ and that, in any case, the long-standing focus on the ‘North East’, as an administrative and economic construct, was itself problematic. Now, there are signs that a ‘commonsense’ regionalism may be emerging – a pragmatism that recognises that, while the North East needs to take advantage of new opportunities under localism, coordination and integration at the regional level will still be required.

Regional Devolution and Democratic Renewal: Developing a Radical Approach to Stakeholder Involvement in the English Regions

In this paper we aim to assess critically the relationship between devolved government and democratic renewal through a focus on the potential for stakeholder involvement within elected regional assemblies. Drawing particularly upon evidence from North East England, we will consider how the creation of elected assemblies could reinvigorate democracy, given the constraints imposed (in regions such as the North East) by the unreformed and unrepresentative political terrain upon which any new assembly is likely to be superimposed. We conclude that existing arrangements and practices are a useful development but fall far short of the radical measures needed to overcome the exclusionary nature of traditional models of governance and government.

Revisiting the ‘Missing Middle’ in English Sub-National Governance

In the light of the new Coalition Governments proposed ‘rescaling’ of sub-national governance away from the regional level, it is an opportune time to re-consider the strength and weaknesses of the city or sub-regional approach to economic development and to search, once more, for the ‘missing middle’ in English Governance. In this context, the article initially assesses the case for city or sub regions as tiers of economic governance, before examining the lessons to be learnt from the experiences of the existing city regions in the North East of England. It argues that while contemporary plans to develop Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) can be usefully considered within the context of the emerging city regional developments under the previous Labour Governments, a number of important challenges remain, particularly in relation to ensuring accountable structures of governance, a range of appropriate functions, adequate funding, and comprehensive coverage across a variety of sub-regional contexts. While the proposals of the new Government create the necessary ‘space’ to develop sub-regional bodies and offer genuine opportunities for both city and county LEPs, the scale of the sub-regional challenge should not be underestimated, particularly given the context of economic recession and major reductions in the public sector.

Managing Competition in UK Local Government

Examines the impact of compulsory competitive tendering on the management of UK local government. The changing managerial skills required under conditions of competition are considered alongside overall changes in the role of local government. Drawing directly from the authors′ recent research study, the “three Cs” of local authority management are identified: the client‐side, the contractor, and the corporate manager. Considers the characteristics of each in turn, before a general review of the implications for a “new” public management. Concludes that there has been a fundamental diversification in the needs of (and skills required of) local authority managers in a competitive environment. This may be moving UK local government either towards greater efficiency or towards a fragmentation of its central activities.

‘The End of the Beginning’? Taking Forward Local Democratic Renewal in the Post-Referendum North East

In a referendum in November 2004, the people of the North East decisively rejected the proposal to create a directly elected Regional Assembly. This result effectively put an end to proposals for Regional Assemblies elsewhere as plans for referenda in other regions were consequently abandoned. Drawing upon detailed interviews with a wide range of stakeholders in the North East, this article assesses why the North East voted ‘No’ and argues that, despite the subsequent emergence of the city-region as an alternative framework for governance, what is still needed is a serious commitment to democratic renewal. Democratic connections between citizens and the state, between the taxpayer and public services, need to be rebuilt. Only a reinvigorated democracy can begin to dispel the cynicism and alienation that characterises the contemporary political process — and which was a main factor behind the ‘No’ vote in the referendum. Given the failure of political devolution at the regional level, genuine democratic renewal must now be taken forward at the local level.

Compulsory competition for local Government services in the UK: A case of market rhetoric and camouflaged centralism:

Recent years have witnessed a considerable extension in the defined activities covered by the CCT regime in UK local government. While the 1980s saw CCT applied to mainly manual services (such as refuse collection), the 1990s have witnessed the spread of compulsory competition into white-collar professions and services such as Housing Management. Recent accounts of CCT have tended to assess its overall impact within a framework that is mainly informed by the emphasis on how the management of local public services will benefit from the contemporary introduction of Competition and Quasi-Markets. While CCT has clearly had some important managerial implications, this article argues that its more important political impact has been to intensify central control and regulation in order to restructure the local welfare state. In this sense, the vocabulary of the market has served to camouflage a process of centralisation which is characteristic both of New Right ideology and more traditional concerns within the UK political system.