Context

As the Introduction makes clear, much recent thinking and policy formation is predicated on the need for better ‘partnership working’ in the form of ‘interagency’ and ‘multiagency’ cooperation both in the development of urban regeneration programmes and in the quality of services delivered. Other words and phrases frequently employed in this context include synergy, holistic approaches and, less elegantly, joined-up thinking (see Appendix to this chapter for glossary). In this chapter, which seeks to add some precision to the language being used and to draw on experience gained in working on several recent regeneration projects, the terms holistic and holism have been adopted to sum up the idea of multiagency approaches to regeneration and cooperation in service delivery. These terms have been preferred because they have an established dictionary meaning, carry positive general connotations and are also in current use in the relevant arenas of discussion.

The need to be more precise in defining terms and analysing process arises because:

• • the central idea has

• lost some sharpness of meaning as a result of political sloganising;

• • one key effect flowing from non-holistic working, the ‘exporting of costs’ across sectoral boundaries, has so far been insufficiently considered (but see the exploratory work of Barrow and Bachan, 1997);

• • greater precision in the identification of investment flows and their effects will produce more systematic evidence concerning other forms of inefficiency in the use of resources;

• • this in turn will assist in devising more cost-effective policies and practices.

Most of the ideas and arguments presented in this chapter arise from several years of foundation work on the Cost-effectiveness in Housing Investment (CEHI) programme based at the University of Sussex over the period 1993-97 (see Ambrose, 1996) and the various empirical studies of urban regeneration projects that have drawn on this foundation. These include the Central Stepney Single Regeneration Budget (SRB) ‘Health Gain’ study (Ambrose, 1997, 2000), a project on the quality of local housing advisory services carried out for Brighton and Hove unitary authority (Ambrose, 1998), a study of interagency working in the Holly Street renewal scheme undertaken for the London borough of Hackney (Ambrose and Randles, 1999), the ‘benchmarking and baseline’ project carried out as part of the delivery programme for the East Brighton New Deal for Communities programme (Ambrose and MacDonald, 2000)