PIW 07
Cynulliad Cenedlaethol Cymru Y Pwyllgor Cymunedau,
Cydraddoldeb a Llywodraeth Leol
Ymchwiliad i: Dlodi yng Nghymru Elfen 4
Ymateb gan: Sefydliad Bevan a’r Sefydliad Joseph
Rowntree
1.
This paper is jointly submitted by the Bevan Foundation and
Joseph Rowntree Foundation. They welcome the opportunity to submit
evidence to the Committee’s inquiry on this important
subject. The Bevan Foundation develops evidence-based
solutions to poverty, inequality and injustice in Wales. It
is a company limited by guarantee and registered charity,
independent of any political party or views. The Joseph
Rowntree Foundation (JRF), an independent charitable body, has a
long tradition of research and policy development to tackle the
root causes of poverty and has a well-established commitment to
working in and across the nations of the UK.
Area-based approaches to reducing poverty and
disadvantage
2. JRF and the Bevan Foundation share the view that there are many things that can be done locally and at community level to reduce poverty. JRF research and practice shows that housing and communities shape people’s health, life chances and prosperity.
3.
Poverty and disadvantage are not evenly geographically spread
in Wales. Some places have very much larger proportions of people
with low incomes and other disadvantages than others, as a result
of, in particular, differences in access to employment and the
housing market. The geographic concentration of poverty and
disadvantage appears to have an additional impact on socio-economic
outcomes, although it is not clear why this is.
4.
Area-based programmes have both advantages and disadvantages
compared with non-geographically targeted approaches. The
advantages are that resources and interventions are targeted on
people who most need them and who might not otherwise access
them. In addition, multiple and inter-linked problems can be
addressed at the same time, and there is generally limited
‘leakage’ of resources outside the area. The
disadvantages are that not all people experiencing poverty and
disadvantage live in deprived areas (and vice versa, not all people
living in deprived areas are disadvantaged), there can sometimes be
confusion about whether the problems are inherently those of the
place or those of the people who live there, and some problems,
such as those which are the result of structural inequalities in
the economy and society, simply cannot be solved by actions in one
area.
5.
In general, evaluations have found that area-based approaches
are most successful for improving housing and local environmental
issues and in achieving ‘soft’ outcomes and less
effective at addressing problems in health, education and
employment. At the very least the latter need strong and
effective linkages between area-based and local authority and
national action – in Wales it was expected that the linkages
would be made through ‘programme bending’.
6.
The implementation of area-based programmes in Wales has been
affected by the absence of evaluation evidence, so it has been
difficult for programmes to learn from early experience. We welcome
the Welsh Government’s action to address this issue.
Geographical consistency of anti-poverty
initiatives
7.
Communities First is based on a rational, consistent and
long-term approach to the selection of eligible areas. The use of
the Welsh Index of Multiple Deprivation is appropriate in our view,
and a sensible approach has been taken to boundaries where the
statistical unit used to designate the area does not ‘make
sense’ on the ground. While there have been some
changes over the life of Communities First, these have affected
planning and operational issues (e.g. their grouping into
clusters) and not the places that are eligible. This
stability is vital and welcome - long-term consistency of
commitment is essential in tackling the root causes of poverty in
these localities.
8.
As the flagship anti-poverty programme it might be expected
that Communities First areas would be the basis of designating
other relevant area based programmes, but in fact there has not
been a neat overlay of geographies. Recent moves by the Welsh
Government to bring together separate area-based programmes e.g.
through consistent local objectives, sharing data and intelligence
and a common outcomes framework are very welcome.
Family Policies
9.
Flying Start operates in areas selected using the Welsh Index
of Multiple Deprivation, as in Communities First, with additional
criteria including free school meals and receipt of income-related
benefits. It is also based on postcode rather Lower Super Output
Areas. While there is significant overlap between Communities First
and Flying Start areas, they are not the same. The evaluation
of Flying Start commented that:
'The integration and operation of Flying Start
appeared to be most advanced in those areas where work had been
done to align both the locus and delivery of the various policies
that had been instituted (nationally and locally) for work with
families' [1]
10. Families
First is said to be complementary to and work alongside Communities
First but, unless a local authority decides to target activity, it
does not necessarily have an area basis.
Education and skills
11. The approach
to reducing the gap in attainment according to income has been
different to that in Communities First. Both the RAISE programme
and its successor Pupil Deprivation Grant are based on the
proportion of a school’s pupils entitled to free school
meals, not the characteristics of the wider area. Other education
and skills programmes which have a strong anti-poverty theme are
not geographically targeted at all, such as apprenticeships and
Jobs Growth Wales.
Regeneration and Economic Development
12. Regeneration
and economic development have long been strongly area-based but the
connection between the designated areas and those designated in
other anti-poverty interventions is not obvious. The seven
‘strategic regeneration areas’[2] (the Heads of the
Valleys, Môn a Menai, North Wales Coast, Western Valleys,
Swansea, Aberystwyth, and Barry) in some instances coincided with
Communities First areas, but by no means always.
13. The current
‘Vibrant and Viable Places’ programme is based on bids
from local authorities. More than £100 million has been
allocated to town centre regeneration schemes in 11 local
authorities[3], some but by no means
all of which serve areas of considerable deprivation. A
further £7 million has been allocated to town centre schemes
which were not successful in securing funding from the main scheme
and are which in the most deprived 10% of areas according to the
Welsh Index of Multiple Deprivation,[4] providing a welcome
connection with Communities First.
14. Wales’s seven Enterprise Zones[5] have a different
pattern. There is some coincidence with Communities First
areas (in that the areas either overlap or provide employment for
nearby areas) but this is not necessarily or always the
case.
15. The limited
coherence in geographical coverage has, in our view, made the
reduction of poverty and disadvantage more difficult. Communities
First has few resources of its own and relies on ‘programme
bending’ to achieve much of its impact. Yet key,
complementary programmes have not obviously been substantially
‘bent’ in favour of deprived areas, with the evidence
being clear in the geographical coverage adopted.
16. At best the
result is niggling inconsistencies in the availability of support
within a locality. At worst the crucial linkages that are
required, particularly in respect of strengthening the economy and
increasing employment, are weak or absent.
Effectiveness of Communities First and other
area-based anti-poverty programmes
17. Communities
First and Families First were and remain ambitious
programmes. They are tasked with reducing levels of poverty
and disadvantage that are amongst the highest not just in Wales but
in the UK, with many of the designated areas being located in areas
of widespread, but less acute, social and economic problems.
Communities First does so with limited resources (£31.7
million for 2015/16[6]) and, at least in its
early years, some significant challenges in the delivery
process.[7]
18. A number of
evaluations and other studies of Communities First undertaken
pre-2010 highlighted a lack of impact. The 2006 interim
evaluation[8] found that the programme
was struggling to influence mainstream programmes, while a 2009
Wales Audit Office report[9] found that although
there was statistical evidence of some improved outcomes in
Communities First areas when compared to the rest of Wales, the
improvements could not necessarily be attributed to the programme
itself, and pointed to a number of other weaknesses. Similarly,
early evaluations of Flying Start did not find evidence of
significant improvements in outcomes for children.[10]
19. Recent
evidence on Communities First is more favourable. Hinks and
Robson[11] found that Communities
First areas had improved in respect of worklessness, although the
gains were “relatively marginal”. The final
evaluation of the initial Communities First programme[12] (covering 2009-2012)
also found evidence of improved outcomes in Communities First areas
overall, in respect of worklessness, skills (especially higher
level), educational attainment, and some aspects of crime and
community safety. It is worth noting that the evaluators
found considerable variation in performance between areas –
it is likely that the “best” Communities First areas
achieved a great deal more than the average.
20. Similarly,
the most recent evaluation of Flying Start found that while parents
in Flying Start areas engaged more with health and childcare
services than those elsewhere, there was no statistically
significant difference in outcomes for children, and also commented
on very substantial differences in outcomes between areas.
21. While
it is disappointing that both Communities First and Flying Start do
not appear to have achieved more against ‘hard’
indicators, such as employment or literacy, there are two important
reasons why this may be so. The first is that these programmes have
operated during the deepest and longest recession in a generation,
during which people in semi- and unskilled jobs have experienced
much greater loss of employment and reduction in wages than others.
In these circumstances, preventing the gap between the most and
least disadvantaged areas from widening is itself an achievement.
Second, there is in our view a limit to the ability of communities
to change their fortunes on their own and from within. Many of the
challenges they face are the result of deep structural causes in
the economy and society that cannot be addressed by area-based
programmes alone. Any changes that these programmes do achieve will
be in the long-term.
22. Area based
anti-poverty or regeneration programmes are widely recognised to be
more effective in tackling ‘non-material poverty’ i.e.
housing, environment and crime issues, than economic, educational
and health inequalities.[13] Even when
area-based interventions improve the chances of individuals
finding employment, they tend not to reduce overall levels of
worklessness in the area (for reasons that are not
clear).
23. Adamson[14] has argued that the
value of area-based regeneration is in improving the ‘lived
experience’ of people in poverty, which he terms
‘atmosphere’, ‘landscape’ and
‘horizon’. He finds evidence of Communities First
clearly improving these aspects of ‘social experience’
in its most successful areas. Similarly, the more positive
views of parents in Flying Start areas towards health and education
may well improve the day-to-day experience of living in a deprived
area.
24. Arguably the
greatest potential of area-based programmes is in respect of
‘soft’ outcomes. While they are vitally important to
individuals’ everyday lives and routes out of poverty, they
are notoriously difficult to measure. Moreover, measuring
change at area level may simply miss out some of the impact of
programmes on individuals.
25. If
Communities First has not achieved the hoped-for reductions in
poverty and improvements in employment, education and health, it is
not necessarily because of failures in the programme itself.
While there are undoubtedly many ways in which the programme could
have been better, as an area-based programme it is unlikely ever to
achieve significant change on its own.
26. Instead,
there needs to be an dual approach, in which effective
community-based action is clearly and robustly aligned with
top-down anti-poverty measures, including action to create
employment and improve its quality, increase educational attainment
and skills levels, and improve health and well-being.
Progress on the recommendations of the
Assembly’s former Rural Development Committee’s 2008
report into ‘Poverty and deprivation in rural
Wales’
27. The
Assembly’s former Rural Development Committee’s report
provided a useful insight and package of recommendations into
poverty in rural areas, however we have not tracked the extent to
which the recommendations have been actioned and are therefore not
able to comment on progress specifically.
28. What we
would comment is that there is sometimes confusion in public policy
between poverty, which is an attribute of individuals and
households, and deprived places, which are those in which a
large proportion of the population experiences poverty (and
characteristics associated with poverty).
29. We recognise that poverty is a growing problem in rural Wales, as a result of relatively low household incomes (particularly for in-work households) and relatively high living costs (such as heating, food and the costs of travel). The work that the Joseph Rowntree Foundation is undertaking on an anti-poverty strategy for the UK will include proposals to address both low incomes and high living costs in rural areas, including Wales.
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[1]Welsh Government (2014) Flying Start synthesis report. Source: http://wales.gov.uk/docs/caecd/research/2014/140131-flying-start-synthesis-report-en.pdfpara 55
[3] Bridgend Town Centre, Colwyn Bay, Deeside, Holyhead, Merthyr Tydfil Town Centre, Port Talbot, Newport City Centre,
Pontypridd, Swansea City Centre, Pontypool, Wrexham Town Centre/Caia Park/Hightown. Source: http://wales.gov.uk/topics/housing-and-regeneration/regeneration/vibrant-and-viable-places/regeneration-areas/?lang=en
[4] Tredegar, Rhymney, Grangetown, Llanelli, Rhyl, Caernafon, Barry. Source: http://wales.gov.uk/topics/housing-and-regeneration/regeneration/vibrant-and-viable-places/tackling-poverty-fund/?lang=en
[5] There are 7 locations: Anglesey, Central Cardiff, Deeside, Ebbw Vale, Haven Waterway, Snowdonia, St Athan – Cardiff Airport
[6] Minister for Communities and Tackling Poverty (2014) Written Statement, 23rd December. http://wales.gov.uk/about/cabinet/cabinetstatements/2014/cffunding/?lang=en
[7] Welsh Government (2006) Interim Evaluation of Communities First. http://wales.gov.uk/docs/caecd/research/060920-communities-first-interim-evaluation-conclusion-recommendations-en.pdf
[8] Welsh Government (2006) Interim Evaluation of Communities First. http://wales.gov.uk/docs/caecd/research/060920-communities-first-interim-evaluation-conclusion-recommendations-en.pdf
[9] Wales Audit Office (2009) Communities First. At: http://www.wao.gov.uk/system/files/publications/Communities_First_English_2009.pdf
[10] National Assembly for Wales Research Service (2014) Flying Start – research note. At: http://www.assembly.wales/research%20documents/flying%20start%20-%20research%20note-03032014-254185/rn14-005-english.pdf
[11] Hinks, S and Robson, B (2010) Regenerating Communities First areas in Wales. At: http://www.jrf.org.uk/sites/files/jrf/communities-regeneration-Wales-full.pdf
[12] Amion Consulting and Old Bell 3 (2011) The Evaluation of Communities First (full report). At: http://wales.gov.uk/docs/caecd/research/110913-evaluation-communities-first-en.pdf
[13] Crisp, R et al (2014) Regeneration and poverty: evidence and policy review. At: http://www.shu.ac.uk/research/cresr/sites/shu.ac.uk/files/jrf-regeneration-poverty-final-report.pdf
[14] Adamson, D (2010) The impact of devolution - Area-based regeneration policies in the UK. At: http://www.jrf.org.uk/sites/files/jrf/impact-of-devolution-area-regeneration.pdf