Local works - report of meeting

Fifty to sixty people turned up to listen and talk about how to make local communities work – how to give them power and how to reclaim regeneration from central government. Central to all this was getting local shops trading local goods, drawing money back from out of town supermarkets, and getting local people to realise that their skills, knowledge and wisdom is needed to make it all work.

Dr. Gillian Creasy chaired, and we heard good stuff from the Reverend John Vincent and Ron Bailey, who’s working on the Local Communities Sustainability Bill for the New Economics Foundation.

The question we began with was – what the hell does ‘sustainability’ mean? The only conclusion was that it DIDN’T mean training everyone to fit into the global economy. We heard about the two hundred or so funded projects in Burngreave, and that only half of the people working on New Deal stuff come from the area (and they probably don’t get half the money!)

John asked – can New Deal be twisted by its tail? Can it be made to work for the people of Burngreave? What would this take?

Ron Bailey made the unfashionable argument that lobbying central government is vital. He gave an example that’s fairly hard to dispute: he helped campaign, over four years, to get through the fuel bill. In Britain, 30,000 used to die because they were too cold in their homes, couldn’t afford to pay for heating, and had no decent insulation. (In Scandanavian countries, the figure is next to zero.)

So, for four thankless years, he campaigned to ‘lock in’ MPs, to make them accountable to their constituents, and eventually won out – despite the Government trying to wreck the bill in Parliament. Sobering stuff. Saving 30,000 lives a year is a pretty impressive achievement.

The conclusion – local works, but it needs national support. There’s no getting away from politics with a capital P.

Funnily enough, a local councillor was there (along with Paul Scriven, leader of the Lib Dems in Sheffield.) He argued that politicians had been portrayed as villains – and was aggrieved, because he’d worked to become a local councillor precisely so he could change what he saw as a council that wasn’t working. He argued, therefore, that he DID come from the Grass roots.

In attendance were a number of LETS and credit union types, who talked about the problems of working in their areas – and worried about what was going to happen when the vast amounts of funding being poured on the region dries up.

This was (for me) the biggest point of the meeting: Sheffield doesn’t have many years until the milk n honey of regeneration funding stops falling from the sky. Someone needs to be working on making Sheffield’s communities genuinely ‘sustainable’, thriving, green and empowered. Where the hell to start?

I know, let’s go to Menwith Hill!