Magazine Issue 10 - Spring 2000
Single Regeneration Budget...

In 1994 the largely unpopular city -based Development Corporations were replaced as the major outlet for central government urban regeneration funding by the Single Regeneration Budget (SRB). The idea was to bring together a number of programmes from various governmental departments and to introduce management of development through regional government offices. In the light of SRB’s critical reception, including a comment at a recent meeting in Manchester that there is a "thin line between conspiracy and cock up", Becky Telford examines the evidence.

In the Department of Trade
and Industry blurb, the intention of SRB funding is clearly set out. It all sounds great, emphasising that the funding was to improve the lot of local disadvantaged people by rebuilding the community infrastructure, increasing employment and social cohesion, including the regeneration of the surrounding environment. But the reality is somewhat different, with the opinions of real grassroots groups being marginalised by more powerful business voices.
     
An interesting case study is the set of SRB projects in Manchester, a city aiming for ‘Barcelona in the mist’ status. One area that has received SRB funding is the ethnically mixed ‘A6 corridor’. When the idea of applying for SRB came about, one of the major proposals was a social project to help unite the community in the form of a funded community network. However, the vast majority of the resources from the SRB grants in this case were directed at physical rather than social re-development.
     
This mere lip service to ideas suggested by local residents is certainly not unusual. It is underscored by the nature of the SRB boards which are set up to manage funds and are built on the notion of representative rather than participative decision-making. They have to have ‘key partners’ - the more ‘weighty’ members - to legitimise submissions for funding, which usually translates into the board being dominated by business and local authority partners.
     
This is a key issue which is illustrated in a number of separate Manchester SRB bids - both the voluntary and community sectors involved in the projects merely give the nod that stamps business developments with the status of ‘community regeneration’.      

But if these sectors have such little involvement with the regeneration of their own community, who is really slicing the pie? Considerable local authority effort goes toward pulling in business. This is partly to please the Regional Development Agencies (see p4 ‘New Labour, New Planning’) and to ensure that the criteria set out for job creation and revenue are well met.
     
However, this effort often backfires, and acts adversely for the community. In Hulme, Manchester, for example, much of the SRB grant went, once again, to physical redesign, including the building of ‘Hulme High Street’ which amounts to little more than car parking facilities around a giant Asda complex. Whilst this bumps up the figures of the project and makes it look good on paper, in reality the long term significance for a local area can be devastating. In Hulme, a number of local businesses have seen a sharp drop in their profits, with the possibility that they will have to close down in the face of competition from the supermarket giants - the job creation and local business development is a mirage.
     
The voluntary and community sectors are often forced through a course of hoop-jumping to which big business is never subjected, and are then expected to be accountable for the cash. The corporations often stand to make huge profits, something which can cause a conflict of interests, especially when the same companies are used every time, as with the construction company AMEC in the early days of Manchester SRB schemes.
     
Local authorities in general seem to struggle with the idea of working with community and voluntary sectors, even on projects like these. However, Blair’s ‘Public Private Partnership’ vision means that the guidelines of the latest bidding round sound a mantra of the importance of all-sector involvement and support. In some cases local authorities themselves are trying to reverse the trend – in the case of Manchester’s A6 Corridor community networking and social programmes are now supposed to be targeted. However, most of the money is spent in the first three years of the seven year project, and the A6 corridor SRB is now in its fourth year. It also seems that the Government is having a rethink about the best way to organise regeneration funding, and the New Deal for Communities seems likely to replace SRBs as the major single source of grants. It remains to be seen whether the partnerships dealing with the New Deal and the next bidding round of SRBs will make a commitment to successfully helping a community regenerate itself, by allowing local sector groups to plan, manage and target the resources themselves.