Earlier this year, a group of national business leaders made their way through the streets of Oldham meeting local communities and examining ways to regenerate the city.
Nothing new you might think, particularly if you are familiar with Business in the Community’s Seeing is Believing programme, which has since 1990 taken business people into some of the most deprived neighbourhoods to inspire business action to tackle disadvantage.
What was different this time, is that this group formed part of the Deputy Prime Minister’s Private Sector Panel, a selection of business people convened by government to take a hard look at the ingrained problems of poverty and disadvantage in some local neighbourhoods. The Panel’s aim was to examine systematically what’s gone wrong in these areas and to be very clear about the specific actions businesses – individually or together – can take to make a difference to complicated social problems. The Panel’s report is due in the summer.
Business motivation?
Why did corporates participate? Well, let’s not fool ourselves. Employee volunteering is great, but a staff team waving paintbrushes fulfilling teambuilding objectives will not alone build the type of inclusive society that provides the skills or markets that businesses need to thrive. That’s not to deride this type of activity. Business in the Community runs the largest employee volunteering programme in the country, Cares, which delivers both team challenges and individual skill share opportunities. It is valued by both sides, tackles key social issues and is fun. It also crucially allows companies to work collaboratively to increase their impact on key social issues – the Leeds Cares operation is a great example. But – and this is a big but – volunteering by itself isn’t enough to make a huge dent on deprivation.
If in the CSR world we’re serious about using collective corporate clout to the common good, we need to be clearer about what the impact is, both positive and negative, that business has on local communities. Businesses need to understand the impact of their footprint on the neighbourhoods they inhabit and serve. For our part, we must be similarly clear about the interventions businesses can make to have a positive impact both though mainstream activities and those categorised under corporate community investment.
Sadly, the message doesn’t always get through that regeneration will not happen unless we harness a corporate’s economic impact as well as its community activities. This means firms locating within more disadvantaged areas, employing local people, investing in skills, procuring locally, protecting the environment and contributing to local decision making. Yes, there are challenges for companies in doing this; higher crime, lower skills and poorer trading environments. But this can be offset by lower costs, land availability and new markets – and the chance to help build the communities that in time will provide a market for goods and a source of employee skills.
Partnership opportunities
Inevitably, such regeneration has complicated drivers, involves many players and tends not to happen without effort. It is in recognition of this that the government has developed its Neighbourhood Renewal strategy. This requires local partners – public services, voluntary and community groups and business – to work together in Local Strategic Partnerships (LSPs) to achieve minimum standards (or floor targets) in areas like health, employment, education and the environment.
Led by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, but working cross-government, it’s been a demanding experience, with businesses often struggling to get past the bureaucracy to how they can contribute. One of the ways forward has been the business broker pilot, which has given 10 LSPs an individual dedicated to connecting businesses to regeneration. Success rates are good and an increasing number of LSPs are employing brokers around the country.
The other main regeneration focus since 1997 has been the large scale efforts, characterised by the New Deal for Communities (NDC) programmes, which typically each have around £50 million to help turn round their neighbourhoods. Business support has helped here, but not in any widespread or systematic way. Although evidence is piecemeal, it suggests that there is a real need to engage business further with these regeneration programmes. A good example is EDF Energy’s long association with the Aylesbury Estate in Southwark, which has involved board membership, mentoring partnerships and project funding.
Looking forward
So what is the future likely to hold for business and regeneration? Almost certainly a stronger emphasis on economic regeneration and a greater role for Regional Development Agencies. It will be interesting to see the results of the under-served markets pilot, a two-year experiment to apply the learning from the US on retailer site selection strategies, with an emphasis on encouraging business investment in deprived areas from a market perspective. Similarly, we need to keep an eye on the emergence of Business Improvement Districts, which will involve groups of companies voting to pay a supplement on their business rate to contribute to improvements locally.
Business support for skills, both within and outside the workplace, will continue to rise up the agenda as the government bemoans the ongoing UK productivity gap, while there could be an increased emphasis on social enterprise, particularly where it supports voluntary and community sectors. We might also find both public and private sector procurement practices spotlighted, with a view to promoting responsible business practice and supporting SMEs.
And are companies up to the challenge? Inevitably it is a mixed picture, with many firms not aware of how they impact on their local areas or how they can contribute to economic regeneration. But undoubtedly there are many opportunities ahead, social need hasn’t gone away and we could find increasing pressure on companies to make that difference.
REGENERATION’S TOP TEN ‘MUST KNOWS’
WHO’S WHO
1. Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, Neighbourhood Renewal Unit: Responsible for implementing neighbourhood renewal strategy across government
2. Home Office, Active Community Unit: Responsible for increasing voluntary and Community sector activity; target to increase civic participation by 5% by 2006.
3: Regional Development Agencies: Non-departmental public bodies set up to co-ordinate regional economic development
4: Local Strategic Partnerships: Multi-agency body designed to bring together cross-sector activity to promote regeneration
5. English Partnerships: The UK national regeneration agency
WHAT’S WHAT
6. Neighbourhood Renewal areas: Local authority districts covered by the neighbourhood renewal strategy; 88 in total
7. New Deal for Communities: Community based regeneration programme; £2bn invested in 39 projects over ten years
8. Business Improvement Districts:Partnerships between local authorities and local businesses; pioneered in US
9. Enterprise Zones: areas designated for special tax relief
10. Business Broker areas: Ten pilots set up to engage the private sector in helping meet LSP objectives
Kirsty McHugh
Director of regeneration and partnerships, Business in the Community
Kirsty leads BITC’s work on regeneration, including the national employee volunteering programme, Cares. She also supports BITC’s regeneration leadership team, which promotes best practice on business engagement with regeneration.
Kirsty previously worked as a senior policy analyst at the British Chambers of Commerce, where she led on business engagement with regeneration and local and regional affairs. Before that, her career has included spells in consultancy, a trade association and work in Parliament.
Kirsty is an elected local representative in the London Borough of Lambeth. She currently serves as a board member of the UK’s Council for Planning Aid.
Kirsty.McHugh@bitc.org.uk
Tel: 020 7566 8722
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