Some of our poorest areas have the strongest sense of community and the greatest social capital – and councils need to tap into that potential, suggests Simon Parker

The Government’s Big Society – a cover for cuts or a radically-transformative vision for public services?

Such is the politicisation of this concept, a sensible debate on the pros and cons of the ideas behind the agenda has become increasingly difficult.

In a new report on the future of the Big Society, the New Local Government Network tries to take a step back from the politics.

We start from the simple assumption, shared by almost everyone in local government, that the UK would be a better place if it had stronger communities which could do more for themselves.

Moreover, at a time of severe cuts in public service provision, the Big Society agenda provides one of the few positive ways for councils to cushion their communities. The question we want to answer is, how do we make that happen in practice?

The answer, unfashionable though it might be, is that a Big Society requires active local government.

Some commentators live in a fantasy world in which simply removing the shackles of the state will lead to a flowering of civic activism, but in reality it is councils that will have to rebuild community capacity.

Making a reality of the Big Society means councils must shift their attitudes. Over the past decade they have focused primarily on managing their finances and performance. Now, they need to devote the same care and rigour to stewarding their social resources. This means building measures to integrate social capital into everything the council does, from procurement to planning.

The good news from our research is that the Big Society is not just an agenda for wealthy parts of the country. Using data analysis, we show there is no strong link between deprivation and social capital – some poor areas have lots while some rich ones have very little.

When we examined which councils were best placed to make the transition, we were surprised to discover that, of the top five, not one was in the South East.

Wandsworth LBC is actually one of the 10 worst-positioned councils.

The South West and parts of the north of England appear to be potential bastions of a new Big Society service model, with high levels of volunteering and, generally, strong social cohesion.

Despite this, there remain a number of areas that are ‘doubly deprived’, lacking both financially and socially. And it’s these areas which cause most concern for critics of this agenda – and rightly so.

If ministers are truly committed to the Big Society agenda, or at least committed to reducing the obligations of the central state, then they need to carefully consider ways in which these areas can avoid being left behind, with legitimate need for resources informing allocation.

Of course, the Big Society is not an entirely new agenda. Councils have been trying to boost social capital for a decade or more, and many have had success.

The challenge now is to transform those small successes into a new and mainstream way of delivering public services.

The ‘Southwark circle’ helps residents make use of willing volunteers within the community. Knowsley is helping more people become voluntary ‘family mentors’. Darnall boasts the first post office in the country to be run by a charity, rather than an individual. In Wiltshire, the council is meeting funding cuts to libraries with a drive for more volunteering. And both Waltham Forest and Surrey have undertaken research to map where all the potential Big Society capacity can actually be found in their communities.

These examples are impressive but, like most local government initiatives on social capital, they represent relatively-small experiments that are not saving big money. So, where can we find the hidden reserves of civic activism necessary to create a Big Society?

Part of the answer lies in conventional volunteering. Some 1.5 million of us claim to be ready to get more involved, which may represent the equivalent of at least £2bn worth of untapped spending power.

Councils should tap this through the way they procure, using measures such as social return on investment or social gearing to capture the amount of community initiative they are buying with each public pound.

Our data shows that every public pound spent on education already receives a hidden subsidy of voluntary labour worth at least 10p. Of course, local government should also try to increase that 1.5 million-strong pool of volunteers and get even more people engaged. One group which appears particularly ripe for participation is the ‘baby boomers’, those aged between 45 and 64 who are least likely to say they want to volunteer, according to the latest NLGN polling.

The ‘boomers’ are the healthiest, wealthiest and best educated generation ever to head towards retirement – they should be the shock troops of the Big Society.

Councils should look carefully at the Senior Corps scheme in the US, which encourages people aged 55 and over to become foster grandparents, and promotes a range of other forms of voluntary action that can help create a strong sense of community among older people.

But conventional volunteering can only be part of the solution – there is not enough of it, and it usually is not directed towards expensive and difficult services.

Councils should learn from new online services such as the community loan service, Zopa, or the alternative car-sharing scheme, Zipcar, which both work on the principle of collaborative consumption. In other words, they network consumers to achieve desirable social goals by using lots of short interactions, rather than the long-term commitment involved in volunteering.

These schemes are the cutting edge of the Big Society and we need many more of them.

Yet, they won’t take hold as a result of prime ministerial announcements or rebranding, but only because of councils which take action appropriate to their unique local context – the Big Society is fundamentally a localist issue. Councils must grasp it!

Simon Parker is director of the New Local Government Network