Our Motion proposes that this Senedd “Regrets the failure of the Welsh Government’s Communities First programme to tackle poverty in the most deprived communities of Wales”.
Like many, I gave my support to this Tackling Poverty programme when it was launched because we were told it was about genuine community empowerment and ownership.
However, concerns developed as evidence grew that the programme wasn’t delivering the improved outcomes needed by people in Communities First areas.
Eight years ago the Welsh Government rejected the WCVA and CREW - Centre for Regeneration Excellence Wales - Report “Communities First a Way Forward”, which found that community involvement in co-designing and co-delivering local services should be central to any successor tackling poverty programme.
Five years later- and after spending half a billion pounds on it – the Welsh Government announced that it was phasing out “Communities First”, having failed to reduce the headline rates of poverty or increase relative prosperity in Wales.
As the WCVA and CREW said in 2011, “any successor programme to Communities First needs to create the conditions to migrate from a top down government programme into a community led strategy for tackling deprivation and promoting social justice”.
As CREW’s 2014 ‘Deep Place’ Study in Tredegar found, ‘in recent years the community empowerment agenda has been increasingly framed within the co-production approach. Governance for resilient and sustainable places should seek to engage local citizens - requiring a very different perspective from the normal approach to power at community level, and dependent on a willing and open ability to share power and work for common objectives’.
As the 2017 Equality, Local Government and Communities Committee, “Communities First: lessons learnt” report found, “Communities First had a ‘’mixed record’ as ’there was too much variability across Wales, and inadequate performance management frameworks’’.
AND as the Bevan Foundation stated in 2017 “Communities First did not reduce the headline rates of poverty in the vast majority of communities, still less in Wales as a whole’’.
Oxfam Cymru has specifically called on the Welsh Government to embed the Sustainable Livelihoods Approach in all policy and service delivery in Wales, helping people identify their own strengths in order to tackle the root problem preventing them and their communities from reaching their potential.
As the Bevan Foundation states, if people feel that policies are imposed on them, the policies don’t work – and a new programme should be produced with communities, not directed top down.
The ‘Valuing Place’ report commissioned by the Welsh Government, based on research in three communities, including Connah’s Quay, found that establishing local networks to connect people together who want to take local action should be of priority – and I have been pleased to work with Local GPs and Third Sector Co-production change-makers on Deeside seeking to do this.
However, the Welsh Government has proved averse to implementing the Localism Act 2011's Community Rights Agenda, which would help community engagement - and, although the Well-being objectives in the 2015 Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act include people contributing to their community, being informed, included and listened to, too often this hasn't happened either because people in power don't want to share it, or because of a failure to understand that delivering services this way will create more efficient and effective services.
UK Government policy on non-devolved matters - applies across the UK but only Wales has had Labour Welsh Government for 20 years.
The Joseph Rowntree report into poverty in Britain published in December 2018 stated that ‘’ of the four countries of the UK, Wales has consistently had the highest poverty rate for the past 20 years’’.
Two months previously the Bevan Foundation “State of Wales Briefing” found that :
• The relative income poverty rate in Wales was higher than that in England, Northern Ireland and Scotland.
• The proportion of working age adults in poverty in Wales was higher than in any other UK nation.
• And the pensioner poverty rate in Wales was far higher than in the other UK nations.
Last May, the End Child Poverty Network reported that Wales was the only UK nation to see a rise in child poverty the previous year - to 29%.
Child Poverty levels in Wales had already reached this level in 2007, the highest Child Poverty level in the UK – after a decade of UK Labour Government, 8 years of Labour Welsh Government and before this could be blamed on the financial crash or the post-2010 UK Government.
AND despite Billions of Structural funding intended to close the prosperity gap, figures published last month show that Wales still has the lowest prosperity per head amongst the UK Nations at just 72.8% of the UK Level.
The 5 – yearly publication of Wales Index of Multiple Deprivation last November revealed that many of the wards at the bottom had also been in or just outside the bottom ten 5,10 and 15 years previously.
Age Alliance Wales has raised repeated concern that “that the third sector has been seen as a bit-part player, with little or no strategic involvement in the Integrated Care Fund and little input into programme planning”.
AND despite the Welsh Government’s repeated championing of prevention and early intervention services, its actions have in practice been stripping out key third sector early intervention and prevention services at huge additional cost to our health social services.
A Wales Audit Office Report last September noted that “the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act (2014) places a duty on local authorities to focus on prevention and early intervention and deliver a wider range of community-based services through partnerships and multi-agency working”, but reported that “wide variation in the availability, visibility, accessibility and quality of information provided by local authorities is resulting in inconsistent take up across Wales” and stated that “Councils should involve third sector partners in co-producing preventative solutions to meet people’s needs and ensure people have equitable access to these services”.
All mainstream political parties want to tackle poverty.
Labour claims that "only the state can guarantee fairness".
Their centralised, top down approach means well but fails badly.
Welsh Conservatives understand that social justice will only be delivered by really empowering people to fulfil their potential and to take ownership in their own communities.
Labour sets limits on what the voluntary sector, social enterprises and community groups can do.
Welsh Conservatives recognise that it is these social entrepreneurs and poverty fighters who can deliver the solutions to the long-term problems of our most deprived communities.
They can succeed where the state alone fails.
Our motion proposes that this Senedd “recognises the need to deliver, in practice, a co-productive approach to community regeneration, with community involvement in co-designing and co-delivery of local services”.
This means adopting international best practice, enabling people and professionals to share power and work together in equal relationships to make public services more effective and relevant, and unlocking community strengths to build stronger communities for the future.
As the Bevan Foundation emphasises, a “theory of change’ that builds on people’s assets and enables them to improve their lives is more effective than meeting needs or addressing deficits; the Welsh Government should focus on long-term outcomes not short-term inputs; programmes should be co-produced by communities and professionals drawing on evidence of ‘what works’”.
Our motion proposes that this Senedd:
- Acknowledges the particular challenges faced by seaside and market towns with higher retail vacancy rates and higher levels of deprivation than in other parts of Wales.
- And calls upon the Welsh Government to establish Seaside Town and Market Town funds to support regeneration in communities across Wales.
Five of the ten most deprived areas in Wales are located within towns, including Rhyl, Merthyr Tydfil and Wrexham.
As FSB Cymru has argued, Towns are fundamental to the way that Wales works, with small towns in Wales accounting for almost 40% of the whole population of the country – and ’we need a new approach for our high streets... struggling under the weight of a number of issues, and we have now reached a critical time for these businesses’’.
A Welsh Conservative Government would therefore establish a Seaside Town Fund and a Market Town Fund to help regenerate Wales’ local communities, with £200 million to be invested in our local areas over a five year term.
These funds- which would enable communities to decide how the fund is to be invested within their local area- will help to support vital local services and businesses, and emphasise the Welsh Conservatives’ commitment to ‘levelling-up’ investment across Wales and restoring Welsh towns and communities.
As the Welsh Retail Consortium notes “Wales has the highest Non-Domestic rates multiplier in Britain and a higher empty shop rate than in any other part of the UK.
Whilst Labour only provides 100% rate relief for retail properties up to a rateable value of £9,100, a Welsh Conservative Government would extend this to £15,000.
The Welsh Government amendment recognises the important role of Business Improvement Districts, but their website states that only 24 of these exist or are being developed in Wales, that support is only available until March 2020 and that only funding up to £30,000 is available for each district.
As evidence repeatedly confirms, embracing the co-producing revolution in our towns and communities trumps “top-down” approaches towards community engagement any day.