This is the fourth blog in the series ‘We Are Guests’, by LPIP Hub Place Fellow Helen O’Gara. Helen looks at the interaction of policy with the community development workforce based on interviews with four community development professionals.
View the other blogs in the series.
What is policy?
“It’s a messy space, but I sometimes see it as an attempt to try and implement evidence-based ways of working that bring about transformations or improvements in the life and living standards of people.”
“I think first off, it starts with a vision of what you want to do.
Then thinking about your principles and your values of what it is you want to do.
And then you’re thinking really of how that might be, how that might be done and strategies that you can think of.
and then… how to put those in place.”
“So policies in a way.
Is trying to make…
to make real.
Things that you really want to do.”
For my interviewees, the subject of ‘Policy’ is a broad one. Every practitioner had a slightly different understanding of what this means dependent on their context.
When asked about what policy meant to them, answers ranged from everyday working practices, to short-term initiatives that come with funding, to government acts that create longer-term narratives.
The Equalities Act, for example, was seen as an enabler, something to refer to, work with, educate on. Health inequalities or austerity as concepts were seen as policy narratives that brought opportunity or stigma.
National policy was seen as something that happened elsewhere that needed interpreting, predicting, minimising, mitigating or weathering.
Policy as opportunity was seen as prescriptive, laden with criteria and often derogatory labelling of their communities that led to some dissonance, flying in the face of the strengths-based approaches they manifest.
Policy as process provided some safety, consistency and trust. However, it is labour intensive, with the complexity of the beast seen as necessary, but a task that many community development organisations need support to understand.
“I make sure that they [organisations] understand the policy in terms of their development of the work, the service they’re doing”
Origin stories
I questioned my interviewees’ first memory of policy, their awakening to this process of impact on community. The memories gave way to their origins, but it also gave way to conversations about cycles, how policy opportunities repeat and the sense that if things worked, then they shouldn’t need to be there, or that they would exist but with a sense of permanence and stability, rather than fear and fatigue.
Their memories fed into how they became aware of their potential role in community development. In a previous workplace, in personal circumstances, noticing injustice, or noticing the potential for democracy, the flow of decisions and being interested in helping people navigate, noticing opportunity afforded by government initiatives. Noticing, leading to understanding, leading to serving was a key element of each of the interviews.
“I worked at the chemical firm then and nobody seemed interested. You know, nobody knew who the Councillor was, some of them…didn’t know how things worked, what influence they could have and what they could do”
“I remember as a child seeing EMAs* coming into place and living that experience and feeling a sense of optimism. And for a while, I felt incredibly optimistic that things were going to change… but things drastically changed post the economic downturn and that optimism sort of died a death.”
Political amnesia
“So, Pride in Place is fast becoming the same old, same old as the Manpower Services** or City Challenge.***”
Being in place for decades and continuing doing what you do for decades brings a memory that isn’t always available in government. My longest-standing interviewee described a political amnesia that happens with policies and initiatives designed to support areas.
Each opportunity could feel hopeful, possible, with ‘the best of intentions, ’ and that includes the more recent Pride in Place work. But the affordance of time required meant that fear of backsliding applied on a macro level to larger-scale policy directives.
“Things finished in the early 90s and now…, they’re reinventing it… and the place has gone down again.”
They see the impact of policy before we do.
A labelling of a priority area, or a levelling up area, or even a ‘Pride in Place’ neighbourhood. What does that do to the identity of the place and the people in it? Yes, it brings investment, and it brings people, but the narrative is shifted.
“That policy descended on us from on high. That kind of, oh, we’re all going to have to work here. We’re all going to have to make these people better.”
“Because they don’t perceive their area the way that people with all the data perceive it”
The dissonance between experience and data was stark, and this related to policy decisions as our community development professionals talked of seeing outcomes, or predicting impacts before the data came through. If the evidence base is purely numerical and in the past, then we receive only part of the picture and often at a stage that is far too late.
“I think that one is going to be an interesting one in changing policy.
And a very practical one: what is it actually going to look like, you know, by the end of May, June time?
Are we actually going to have a major problem?”
“We’d seen the effect it had in other places of benefit delays with the gap. And as it started to roll out, we started to realise, Hold on, we’ve got a massive issue here now because people just couldn’t cope.”
This knowledge and experience meant some had a fearful relationship with news and politics.
“Every time there’s an announcement, you feel responsible, you feel like you have to fight for them, you’re more worried when you hear about something… that will affect a certain community or individual”
“When I see some of the headlines, especially around budgets, I just think, ‘Oh no.’ Because I know what’s coming through the door.”
Where policy leads to funding opportunities, and places are able to make a case for investment, it comes with a prescribed way of working and particular outputs that would denote thriving in the way the policy desires. It removes the creativity and potential for democratic engagement in the process or the person-centred approaches needed. The investment is time-limited, but this doesn’t serve communities or enable sustainable change.
“..I now need to deliver on some targets, but this is going to be really difficult because
I’m going to have to get quite creative because they’re just not going to play ball”
Policy translation
The interviews revealed how navigation and knowledge of multiple policy areas is necessary to speak to power and advocate for their communities and speak a certain language to operate there, but it also falls to them to code-switch and translate to their residents and fellow practitioners.
“I see myself operating at an intersection between the state and the community and it’s fascinating to be able to see the push and pull of influence and being the nexus of that and try and make sense of that”
“They’re so used to having things the same way every day, and then suddenly things have changed.”
“It’s trying to explain that in a simple, you know, one word kind of way to them without all the thousand and one other words that come with it.”
“You need to make sure that those people who are affected understand what’s changing”
Creative means
One thing that was hopeful was comments on how cultural, environmental or community-based activity, funding and initiatives were the ones that really built pride in a place and showed improvement. Britain or Towns in Bloom, or Capital of Culture, community festivals, or simply shop window advent calendars were activities that brought people together for civic engagement and left a legacy for a place.
“You know, plants, plants! Which in a way seems really minimal and is not going to save the world. But it does give people a little bit of…
a little bit of hope and a little bit of pride”
“It’s done wonders and it’s really brought a lot of pride back, a lot of people again working together.”
“And it has reached further down than I thought it would. So, … people in large housing estates have been involved and hopefully will be able to continue to do something.”
So where there was frustration at policy that focused on core issues such as education being limited in their output, over-ambitious in their outcomes and under-resourced, there was hope and joy in policy areas that are also difficult to fund because they maybe don’t have the policy narrative attached to them that will improve poverty or employment or health. And yet the output of these policy opportunities brought some joy, hope, pride and, sometimes, the ability to engage in something else.
In a recent article, Andy Burnham, talking about Creative Health, makes the case for culture and creative opportunities as a vehicle for preventative programmes and sets a tone for how he views a ‘healthier and more hopeful society’
There is opportunity now with the Devolution and Community Empowerment Act 2026 to learn some of these lessons, enacting place-based policy in true partnership with communities and allowing the nuances and complexities of people and place, including the power of culture to have impact.
* “The Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA) was a weekly cash transfer paid to 16- to 19-year-olds from poorer households in full-time non-university-level education. The EMA was first introduced as a pilot scheme in 15 local authorities (LAs) in England in 1999, before being expanded to an additional 40 LAs in 2000. It was rolled out nationwide in 2004 and cost around £900 million per year across the UK by 2010 (in 2023–24 prices). Although it was scrapped in England in 2011, it remains in place in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.” (The Institute for Fiscal Studies, 2025)
** Manpower Services Commission was a commission under the Department for Education from 1974 that existed to support training and employment opportunities. It included a focus on industries and improving opportunities for women and girls. (Employment and Training Act 1973, viewed in the National Archives))
*** “City Challenge was launched in April 2008 by the former Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF). It was designed to improve educational outcomes for young people.”(Evaluation of the city challenge programme – GOV.UK)
This blog was written by Helen O’Gara, LPIP Hub Place Fellow. Helen is a Public Health Principal.
Find out more about the Local Policy Innovation Partnership Hub.
Disclaimer:
The views expressed in this analysis post are those of the author and not necessarily those of City-REDI or the University of Birmingham.