Jason Leman from the Neighbourhood Democracy Movement responds to the interim report released today.
News | 05.03.25
“We know that many of the barriers in resolving the big policy challenges of our time are to be found at the neighbourhood level, from feelings of insecurity and lack of confidence to the lack of access to the infrastructure and support needed to make a change.” (p.38)
The Independent Commission On Neighbourhoods (ICON), supported by the Local Trust, was launched in September 2024. The Commission, chaired by Baroness Hilary Armstrong and with nine commissioners, aims to address the significant challenges faced in England’s most disadvantaged neighbourhoods. The initiative aims to build on existing research, generating new insights and proposing concrete actions that could improve the lives and prospects of people living in these areas.
On Wednesday 5th March, ICON published their interim report, “Think Neighbourhoods”, and it included much good, some bad, and some ugly (more on that below).
The “Think Neighbourhoods” report:
To an extent, the wind has been taken out of the sails of the interim ICON report with the Deputy Prime Minister announcing the “Plan for Neighbourhoods” on Tuesday 4th March. This is an expansion of the Long Term Plan for Towns that was part of the previous administration’s local devolution. Rather than actual neighbourhoods, the Government is continuing a focus at larger scales, with a familiar break-neck speed of consultation and delivery. The ICON report remains relevant because it highlights approaches that would give projects like the “Plan for Neighbourhoods” a much greater chance of success over the long-term.
There is much good research and framing set out in ‘Think Neighbourhoods’. The focus of the report is a programme of intervention prioritising the 5% of neighbourhoods “that are highly deprived but also experience a severe lack of social infrastructure and social capital” (p.36). The framing of focus on social capital and social infrastructure is positive, we know that social connections in our neighbourhoods are vital:
“The government must put rebuilding social infrastructure at the neighbourhood level at the centre of its approach to mission delivery … This is because social capital is essential to both ensure these programmes, services and investments reach those people that need them most but also to create the shift in norms and behaviours that make improved outcomes self-sustaining.” (p.35)
Also welcome was a call to a broader shift of those in power to think about neighbourhood first in existing funding, and enable neighbourhoods and local public services to see clearly where resources are, something the Neighbourhood Democracy Movement and Citizen Network have long argued for:
“We must not just see policy purely through the lens of specific funded neighbourhood-based programmes, although they have a critical role to play. We must also consider how we can encourage all parts of government to think neighbourhoods through the way that we fund and deliver existing public services which can have a significant impact on the outcomes.” (p.33)
“The government should … commission a Neighbourhood Expenditure Audit (NEA) to track how public services such as the NHS, schools and other public investment programmes are distributed at the hyper-local level.” (p.33)
However, there is a big step between identifying this funding and then actually placing it under the control of neighbourhoods. On this note, the report advocated the involvement of neighbourhoods, which is very welcome:
“Wherever possible neighbourhoods should be defined by the populations within them.” (p.18)
“A neighbourhood approach to policy delivery relies on being able to leverage the energy and ideas of people living in the most disadvantaged places. It is only possible to do this if policies are designed in a way that truly empowers the community.” (p.36)
There is a clear contrast between the “Think Neighbourhoods” report advocating the involvement and empowerment of residents at neighbourhood-scales with a clear direction towards increasing social capital and place-based allocation of funding; and the Government’s broad-brush “Plan for Neighbourhoods”, where engagement is limited to opinion polling and involving community groups in shaping service delivery, with a far less focussed framing of what is needed and no discussion of broader changes to practice.
“Longer term, we need to find ways to create the conditions for every neighbourhood to flourish. However, given the fiscal challenges facing the new government, some form of prioritisation is inevitable” (p.6).
The ICON interim report aims to engage the Labour Government and the directing of additional resources into neighbourhoods at the sharp end is absolutely needed. Hopefully funding will come to cover ‘mission critical’ neighbourhoods not covered by the current “Plan for Neighbourhoods”. However, it is disappointing that the recommendations are so limited when facing ‘fiscal challenges’ seems to be the new normal. Placing some deckchairs further back from the guardrail does not stop the sinking ship. There needs to be a greater redistribution of wealth and income to support a step change in investment in infrastructure, neighbourhoods, and individuals. Fiscal challenges are also fiscal choices.
While arguing that action around four Government missions of economy, opportunity, crime, and health are suited to the local level, the report states “we believe that the government should not use neighbourhoods as a lens to achieve its energy mission” (p.24). This conclusion is drawn because the energy measure doesn’t gel with the other measures, but this appears to be an artifact of how the energy measure is constructed. Of the three aspects of the energy measure mentioned in the report, ‘fuel poverty’ goes up with deprivation, ‘carbon footprint’ goes down with deprivation, and ‘energy-efficiency’ doesn’t have an association with deprivation.*
It would make sense to focus on fuel poverty as the part of the energy measure that does correlate with other measures of deprivation. Effective Neighbourhood-scale actions to alleviate fuel poverty do exist, for example: peer-to-peer energy advice, local schemes to collectively install solar on houses, thermal imaging cameras available at a local library to see where heat is escaping, community renewable schemes, and so on. Excluding considerations of energy simply due to how the measures are bundled together risks excluding neighbourhoods facing particular fuel poverty challenges.
This is an interim report from ICON and there will be much more detail and discussion to follow, with the Independent Commission on Neighbourhoods promising detailed policy options that will hopefully shape and support the implementation of the “Plan for Neighbourhoods”, along with broader support for action at a neighbourhood level. “Think Neighbourhoods” seeks to reframe the current discussion in useful ways, bringing in a lot of positive practice. Ultimately, the hope is that those in Government will see the evident value of (real) neighbourhood-level action and act!
This news post has been written by Jason Leman, campaign coordinator in the Neighbourhood Democracy Movement.
*nerdy footnote. The methodology for the calculation of the “Hyper-Local Needs Measure” isn’t in the report; though it is clear the Hyper-Local Needs Measure uses Lower Super Output Area analysis and the Index of Multiple Deprivation amongst others. Using government statistics of fuel poverty, energy efficiency, and the marvellous carbon.place calculations on carbon emissions, we can see a simple correlation with deprivation (inverse IMD rank) at LSOA level gets a correlation of 0.57 to fuel poverty, -0.64 to carbon emissions, and -0.06 to energy efficiency. It doesn’t make sense to include carbon emissions, in particular, in an analysis that is focusing on deprivation. But neither should energy be excluded from consideration. Rather, the Hyper-Local Needs Measure for energy should be changed to focus on fuel poverty.
