Strong communities hold the key to long-term defeat of poverty, says Welsh think-tank

This mixed picture of innovative, community-based action and persisting pockets of poverty – especially in the Valleys of South Wales – will be drawn today by the Institute of Welsh Affairs (IWA) at the Cardiff launch of Overcoming disadvantage – a Joseph Rowntree Foundation report that features long-term solutions proposed by five leading think-tanks. The report has been specially commissioned to mark the start of the Foundation’s centenary year.

The IWA notes that since the advent of the National Assembly in 1999, Wales has ‘leapfrogged’ Northern Ireland, Scotland, London, the West Midlands, the North West and Yorkshire to become the UK region with the fourth lowest official unemployment rate. However, Wales still has relatively high levels of ‘economically inactive’ adults, not counted as actively seeking work, as well as rates of family poverty that are above the UK average.

The IWA authors suggest that the ‘typically Welsh’ starting point for initiatives to improve the life chances of disadvantaged families and individuals has been to consider how best to strengthen the communities where they live. For example, Communities First - the Assembly Government’s main programme for reducing social exclusion - is spending £83 million in its first three years, targeting 142 of the Principality’s most deprived neighbourhoods.

But they argue that Communities First and other long-term initiatives for tackling disadvantage could be improved by applying the lessons from three examples of good practice – at local, rural and national level – in encouraging local enterprise and empowering local people to take the lead in renewing their communities.

The Gellideg Foundation in Merthyr, where residents have created their own organisation on a formerly run-down estate to provide job training, restore buildings and establish new community facilities, including a caf, a crèche and outdoor sports area. The Gellideg Foundation has raised more than £700,000, including European Union money, and now employs 13 members of staff.

• A fresh approach to planning rural development proposed by the Centre for Enterprise and Rural Development at the University of Wales, Bangor. Existing ‘islands of poverty’ in the Welsh hinterland would be helped to attract new investment and jobs by linking them with nearby towns to create specially-funded ‘development domains’.
• The Community Enterprise Wales initiative, established through the Welsh Development Agency to help disadvantaged communities to generate their own enterprise and employment opportunities. Although this initiative has helped to establish more than 400 social enterprise groups across Wales, the IWA authors argue that it needs to become a mainstream part of the Communities First programme to achieve its potential. 

John Osmond, the IWA’s Director and co-author of the report, said: “On the surface in Wales, unemployment appears to have reached tolerably low levels, but when combined with sickness and disability claimants, the proportions not working are higher than almost anywhere else in the UK. There are pockets of extreme poverty throughout. The Valleys pose particular problems, with their legacy of ill-health, low skill levels and low employment activity rates. But there are also concentrations of poverty along the North Wales coastline, in south Pembrokeshire and in parts of Cardiff, Newport and Swansea.

“The location and scale of these problems mean they are unlikely to be tackled effectively by the conventional means of attracting inward investment or persuading private firms to move in and provide jobs. The challenge is to empower local people to develop the social economy, because only then will there be a realistic chance of putting in place the more normal mix of private, public and voluntary sector activity that characterises less disadvantaged parts of the country.”

He added: “Wales has more poverty and deprivation to overcome than most other parts of the United Kingdom. But it also has a political leadership that is sensitive to the challenge and determined to try to address it. More important than that, Wales enjoys a powerful sense of community that others could learn from, and that holds the key to finding sustainable, long-term solutions.”