The Government’s ambitions to expand Neighbourhood Community Budget Schemes to a further 100 areas could be undermined by a lack of Whitehall support and silo mentality, local government experts have warned.

Laura Wilkes, policy manager for the Local Government Information Unit (LGiU), has said today’s announcement of a £4.3m funding boost for bottom-up, grassroots community initiatives could fail unless councils gain greater freedoms to innovate and reinvest savings in preventative services.

Under the ‘Our Place’ programme, DCLG officials hope to build on the success of the 12 pilots, which were smaller scale than the major four ‘whole place’ schemes, and based around bottom-up, grassroots community action.
 
The cash pot sits alongside a £350,000 financial boost to the existing pilots to speed up and improve the implementation of their programmes.

Ms Wilkes - who last month gave evidence on community budgets as a witness alongside Local Government Association chairman Sir Merrick Cockell - said: ‘Although a relatively small amount of money for each area, it will really help in providing the vital resources that are needed to get these programmes going.’

She said the LGiU learned through its work with One Norbiton in Kingston LBC that this approach to designing and delivering local services provides a real opportunity to transform services and drive benefits across local government and communities.

‘But local government can’t do this alone, and to make this work we need commitment from Whitehall that all key departments, beyond DCLG, will engage,’ Ms Wilkes told The MJ.

‘As things stand, departmental silos will stand in the way of pooling and aligning budgets. Without this, there is a risk that Our Place! won’t deliver the outcomes that communities are striving for,’ Ms Wilkes added.
 
In addition the Our Place! Programme will also establish a network of champions drawn from the neighbourhood  budget pilot areas and other sectors, to give peer to peer support and advice.

The dozen existing schemes are taking place in One Haverhill (Suffolk CC ), White City (Hammersmith and Fulham LBH), One Ilfracombe (Devon CC), Poplar (Tower Hamlets LBC), Sherwood Family Partnership (Tunbridge Wells), Kenton (Newcastle city Council), Balsall Heath, Castle Vale and  Shard End (Birmingham Cit Council), Queens Park (Westminster City Council), Little Horton (Bradford MBC), Norbiton (Kingston-Upon-Thames RLBC). 
 
Communities minister, Don Foster said: ‘This further investment will help build a popular movement towards of a new way of working.
 
‘Handing control of local public services over to local communities who know their areas best can deliver more and better for less help create more resilient and involved communities and build neighbourhoods that are better places to live,’ Mr Foster added.

 Sir Merrick Cockell, chairman of the Local Government Association said: ‘A cornerstone of this process must be ensuring that new structures are still subjected to appropriate democratic oversight and accountability at a local level.

‘This process of rewiring services around the people who use them should be emulated across the whole of the public sector,’ Sir Merrick added.

‘The important announcement today shows that the Government is getting serious about localism,’ said Cllr Philippa Roe, leader of Westminster City Council which ran a pilot in Queen’s Park to maintain children’s services.

‘We’ve provided a blue print for how localism can work on the ground.  We now need to see the whole of Government, not just DCLG, to get behind localism and work to set local areas free to drive value for money and improve lives,’ Cllr Roe added.
 

Click here for Our Place! report by DCLG

Click here for full comments by Laura Wilkes, policy manager  from LGiU