“We are a country of a thousand neighbourhoods, where our feelings of belonging depend on what we can see from our doorstep”. That is one of the animating ideas of the goverment’s new Pride in Place programme, backed up by £5 billion in local funding, with aims priorities including to support “stronger communities … helping bring people together to build cohesion and resilience.”
As Minister Steve Reed hailed the programme as ‘our alternative to the forces trying to pull us apart’, how far can the Pride in Place agenda help us to meet the challenge of bridging divides?
The case for recognising that pride in place matters reflects the findings of the major ‘State of us‘ study jointly conducted by British Future and Belong this year. Britain is a much more anxious, fragmented and divided society than anybody would want, when people think about the state of the nation, even if there are competing views about the drivers and remedies. One key mitigating factor was the widespread sense of strong local connection, yet we also heard how concerns about decaying high streets and community spaces has fed a sense of division and national decline.
“I’m born and bred in Croydon. In the 60s, it was a nice place. You had big department stores […] and half the shops are empty now. And that makes people resentful, sad, and certainly, in my own view, the powers that be are very self-centred.” – Participant in Croydon focus group for ‘The State of Us’
“Whenever local authorities want to close something, it’s always the libraries or the cinema – the nice things, the social places.” – Participant in Abergavenny focus group for ‘The State of Us’
So this approach of devolving power has substantial potential, as identified by Local Trust and others, to offer agency people who too often feel ‘left behind’ by deindustrialisation and for whom politics has often been seen to ignore their local needs.
Distinctly, the new programme identifies local power as a key ingredient to tackling many communities’ feelings of disempowerment and decline. Through the fund, eligible areas will need to convene ‘neighbourhood boards’ of residents and community leaders, who in turn will decide how their money should be spent.
Putting power directly back in the hands of residents to revitalise their area marks a bold move to engage public frustration with Westminster-led decision-making.
A commitment to funding of the programme over ten years matters too. In our research, grassroots groups have highlighted how short-term funding pots can further erode political trust, building local hopes only for new projects to disappear soon after they emerge.
On cohesion, the plan sets out to ‘build bridges across communities” and support efforts to nurture local connection between people from different walks of life. Its strategy identifies useful possible starting points: backing institutions with strong reach across our diverse society and potential to build and strengthen neighbourly friendships. Ongoing funding for school linking is promised, bringing children together across segregated areas. Pride in Place extends the previous government’s Know Your Neighbourhood Fund, a post-Covid programme that has helped embed the volunteer spirit of the pandemic through bringing people together with local action opportunities. Building on British Future’s Shared Goals research, the programme also notes Britain’s love of the beautiful game, teeing up new partnerships with football clubs to help drive connection.
However, while the Pride in Place programme certainly fires the starting gun in Labour’s race to address the sense of national decline that is fuelling populism and polarisation, Ministers and MPs should be wary of presenting the programme as a silver bullet to address the deep concerns of communities and heal the country’s divides.
While it may be true, as the programme sets out, that “we are a country of a thousand neighbourhoods, where our feelings of belonging depend on what we can see from our doorstep”, the new funding situates cohesion as one priority among three areas where neighbourhood boards can focus investment, alongside local regeneration and projects to broaden opportunity. With eligible neighbourhoods chosen through indicators of deprivation and weak community infrastructure (e.g. libraries, parks or cafes), many neighbourhoods will need to prioritise plans to fix scarred highstreets or shore up crumbling community centres, leaving little spare change for efforts to bridge divisions.
Importantly, the responsibility for building cohesion cannot be left only to communities. As our State of Us report identifies, local community groups also want to see national and local government step up in increasingly polarised times. Their leadership and expertise are equally as important to the local legwork when meeting today’s challenges posed by voices who look to sow division across our society. However, while the government continues to promise future action through its Social Cohesion Taskforce, there is now pressure to pick up the pace following a summer of renewed unrest, and a tragic terror attack on British Jews.
This must rightly equip local councils with the resources to better monitor tensions and coordinate local cohesion plans. Pride in Place hails new and much-needed funding for Belong to develop guidance to local authorities on good practice. Yet many councils lack the funds and staff to play a full and active role in bridging communities. Our ‘After the Riots’ report suggests that just £75,000 funding to each council could make a substantial difference to unlocking local government potential.
Crucially, Britain’s social fabric is now irreversibly woven into an online world where, in recent years, hatred and misinformation have both dramatically increased while becoming de-facto decriminalised. In an era where fake news can fan the flames of rioting within hours, it will take technological expertise and bolder government action, as much as local bridge-builders, to meet the threat of powerful online voices who now actively incite violence on our streets.
Keir Starmer was met with applause at last week’s conference for setting out an agenda to fight against division “for the tolerant, decent, respectful Britain that I know”. The Pride in Place programme certainly signifies a change of tack to meet the rise of populism head on. Yet facing this challenge will require a balanced approach of when to devolve and when to evolve national leadership, if it is to overcome the complex and varied drivers of polarisation today.
Jake Puddle is Director of Research at British Future.
Image (c) Basher Eyre.
