Signs of progress

Without a doubt, levels of expenditure and activity had increased since 1999, as the government’s new initiatives began to hit the ground. EAZs and HAZs had already been initiated when we first visited, affecting 10 of the areas (with nine HAZs and three EAZs). By 2001, most areas had Sure Start and Excellence in Cities. Three were in NDC and five in EZs. All except one of the English authorities was beginning to receive money from the Neighbourhood Renewal Fund. Six areas had new SRB programmes. One of these was area based, another round of funding for the regeneration work in Southside, Redcar and Cleveland. The rest were thematic programmes funded under SRB Round 6, which planned to develop strategic employment sites and to link local people to them through training, employer links and local learning plans. Overall, some areas had as many as seven or eight ABIs or funding streams (Table 9.1).

All of this activity had led to an increase in the services and facilities available, but not by very much, because all of the programmes were still very new and had had little time to move beyond the planning stages. There was still some evidence that core services were being cut while new funding streams were creating new short-term activity. It was clear that implementation, even of short-life programmes, could be a lengthy business, and it was still far too early to tell whether the programmes would achieve their intended outcomes. However, it was obvious that they were part of a broader approach to neighbourhood renewal that was starting to deliver better joined-up working and greater resident involvement. The signs of progress were there even though it was taking a long time to see real change at ground level.

Services and facilities

As in 1999, we examined services and facilities at neighbourhood, rather than area-level. We used service plans and annual reports, and our own observations, to assess change, and also asked respondents to comment, overall, on what had happened.

There was no neighbourhood where the majority of people we spoke to considered that services and facilities had got worse in the two-year period.