Community power
Mapping the benefits of community power Grace Pollard, Senior Policy Researcher at New Local, analyses the six core benefits of community power and how, when taken together, they collectively chart a different way for people, communities and public services to collaborate Community power is an idea whose time has come. From the recent paper from backbench Conservative MPs calling on the government to ‘trust the people’, to this year’s Cooperative Party conference which took community power as its main theme, to a new national campaign, led by local leaders demanding power to make change happen. So what is it? At its heart community power is based on the principle that communities have a wealth of knowledge and assets within themselves. If these are understood and nurtured by practitioners and policymakers, they have the potential to create more resilient places and stronger, preventative, public services. What does community power look like? Community power is not just a theory. It already exists in neighbourhoods, in local networks, and in voluntary and community organisations where people come together to overcome challenges and support each other. It is also rapidly influencing practice in the public sector and local government. In our research, New Local has identified three clusters of approaches which hand more power and resources to communities:
Community decision-making: Using deliberative and participatory tools to involve citizens more meaningfully in local decision-making.
44
Collaboration with communities: Public services shifting from hierarchical and siloed ways of working, to more collaborative approaches which deeply involve communities as equal partners with essential insights. Building community capacity and assets: Equipping communities with the resources and skills they need to mobilise and genuinely participate in local action. The six core benefits of community power Numerous small-scale, innovative local practices shine brightly alone. But taken together, they collectively chart a different way for people, communities and public services to collaborate. Our recent research took a comprehensive view of what community power initiatives look like in practice and what impact they have had – drawing on examples from across the UK. From this, we pulled out six ways in which community power has real, tangible impact for people, communities and public services: 1. Community power can improve individual health and well-being. From well-established peer-support groups, to innovative communityled approaches, practitioners are recognising that people need to be active participants in all efforts to improve their health and wellbeing. They are also seeing the benefits this participation can bring for people.
BUSINESS INFORMATION FOR LOCAL AND CENTRAL GOVERNMENT | www.governmentbusiness.co.uk
2. Community power can strengthen community well-being and resilience. Involving people in decision-making, alongside supporting them with resources and wider social infrastructure, can enable community action to improve wellbeing and resilience locally. 3. Community power can enhance democratic participation and boost trust. Deliberative and participatory methods can be used to navigate complex socio-economic challenges and to strengthen legitimacy of decisionmaking. It is at the local level that this dialogue and engagement can be most meaningfully realised. 4. Community power can build community cohesion. The common understanding and social ties that are necessary for cohesion cannot be imposed in the abstract from the national level. Community-anchored approaches demonstrate that cohesion is most sustainably built from the ground up. 5. Community power can embed prevention and early intervention in public services. Where some parts of the public sector are pioneering new approaches that draw on the capabilities and capacities of communities, they demonstrate a route to more sustainable and prevention-focused public services.