Community-based regeneration and working in neighbourhoods

Overview

This theme builds on work that JRF has carried out over the last two decades. Between 1992 and 2006 JRF ran three major programmes examining community- based regeneration and the different roles played in it by communities, local authorities and their partners, regions and national governments. The focus has consistently been on deprived communities and on the techniques and resources that work best in ensuring that residents and community bodies, alongside other partners, can play a robust and enduring role in regeneration work.

Key issues

• The impact of the recession and austerity measures on the UK’s poorest communities
• How regeneration, building and managing new communities, neighbourhood based services, co-production and community empowerment are faring in the current political and economic contexts
• How new policies such as localism and Big Society are playing out on the ground in localities and communities

What we are doing

• As part of JRF's Bradford Programme, JRF is running the Working in Neighbourhoods project in Bradford. Working with practitioners from the public sector, the voluntary sector, and from communities, we are looking at work in communities across the whole of Bradford Metropolitan District Council. Themes include: active citizens; how residents get involved in neighbourhood work; the role of councillors; what the voluntary sector can do; and the part played by a range of service agencies
• The Sustainable Urban Neighbourhoods Network (SUNN) is a national project being run in partnership with Urbed which is collecting evidence from practitioners on the planning, building and management of new urban communities in England. Based on a network of professionals who are all developing new communities, it focuses on design, environmental and social sustainability, community empowerment, stewardship, financial realities, and regeneration.
• Annette Hastings and colleagues at the University of Glasgow are engaged in the feasibility phase of a project called Serving Deprived Communities in a recession. Their earlier JRF project Clean Sweep examined studied cleansing services in 3 local authorities, looking at why poor communities received worse services and how the problem could be rectified. The idea in this project is to carry out similar analysis of other services, this time in the context of a recession
• This theme also links well with JRF's work on Community Assets, Poverty and Place, and Communities in Recession