Although the current research will mainly focus on the New Labour period, some connections can be drawn with the recent Coalition and Conservative
governments’ approach on public services. While local partnerships and community engagement was accorded a central role in New Labour’s approach, the post-2010 governments have extended criticism on centralised state powers and intensified the aspect of community empowerment. The policies were implemented at UK level through the Localism Act in 2011, which aimed to give a greater role to communities in creating public services, while large cuts on local government funding were introduced under austerity (Lowndes & Pratchett, 2012; Hastings et al., 2015).
Similarly to New Labour’s approach, localism continued devolving powers to communities and establishing a greater role in public services for voluntary and community organisations. ‘Localism’ has been used to describe decentralisation of political responsibility or decentralisation to many ‘local’ agencies such as community organisations, private-sector firms, and civil society organisations. According to the classical-liberal definition, localism assumes local neighbourhood government to be more efficient and responsive but less bureaucratic than national government (Clarke & Cochrane, 2013). Hence, it devolves decision-making or delivery functions to the locality but is criticised for not devolving actual powers or resources (Evans et al., 2013). In contrast to New Labour’s partnership approach, the ‘new’ localism was framed through the ‘Big Society’ discourse by the Conservative government, which placed emphasis on the responsibility of individuals and families with the retreat of state involvement (Lowndes & Pratchett, 2012).
In Scotland, the Community Empowerment Act (2015) established localism in public service delivery, and some consider it to represent a divergence from UK policy (Elliott et al., 2019) Elliott et al. (2019) state that community empowerment has been a significant emphasis in the Scottish approach to public service provision, one principle of which has been the co-production of services. The Act argued for the improvement of community participation in the design and delivery of services, and the importance of considering local residents’ opinions on service provision, and strengthened the involvement of community agencies in public services and right to buy assets from the public sector (ibid.). In addition, research has found that as a result of the empowerment act and local authority cuts, some community organisations and
citizen groups have been transferred responsibility for public services such as cleanliness, caring, and coproducing health outcomes (Hastings et al., 2015).
Researchers have argued that localism has resulted in a contradictory form of local governance, which derives from a neoliberal ideology (e.g. Lowndes & Pratchett, 2012; Hancock et al., 2012). The ideology has been used to justify austerity policies while framing the public sector budget cuts in community empowerment (Rolfe, 2016; Hastings et al., 2015). This civil society’ agenda from the 1990’s urban policy, but has been accelerated by the latest austerity period. Despite providing more freedoms for local authorities to respond to the needs of their community, the localism agenda has been heavily based on negative liberties with a clear lack of positive ones in the form of resources (Lowndes & Pratchett, 2012). The agenda is found to represent a shift in responsibility, as the approach expects local governments to contract their role as service providers and transfer responsibility to individuals and communities. These retrenchment strategies involve for example transferring assets and facilities to community trusts and organisations with the aim to avoid future costs (Hastings et al., 2015).
Efforts in community empowerment however face difficulties in involving particular communities and groups. Evidence has arisen in regard to a ‘participation gap’ in community empowerment, as studies find citizen participation to be lower among deprived or low-income communities, and among marginalised groups such as ethnic minorities, and disabled or young people (Burton et al., 2004; Lightbody, 2015). Some of the key barriers preventing these groups from participating tend to arise from costs, access, education, disability, caring responsibilities, or lack of confidence or belief in local decision-making. Access to participation can also be hindered by lack of inclusion and recognition of barriers communities face from the part of local authorities and partnership organisations (ibid.). It is suggested that better involvement of particular citizen groups requires building relationships in local communities and improving accessibility and transparency of decision-making structures. The latter may imply for example providing training and plain language reporting, and possibly creating initiatives targeting specific population groups (Burton et al., 2004).
While the localism act aims to enable communities to take over assets such as parks, libraries, this is ‘likely to arise only where communities already possess the economic and political resources to do so’ (Hancock et al., 2012, p. 354). Therefore, the government’s approach is more likely to benefit advantaged communities already in possession of resources, while socially excluded communities are left to cope on their own. This argument is supported by recent evidence that found affluent areas to have more community organisations and participation, which are also less dependent on state funding, whereas organisations supporting the disadvantaged are most likely to be state-funded (Clifford et al., 2013).
As opposed to the UK governments, the Scottish government has acknowledged, according to Rolfe (2016), that all communities face challenges with some being more vulnerable than others. The Scottish government can be said to have adopted a more ‘grounded’ approach, compared to the Coalition’s approach, which contains many ambivalences and more responsibilisation. For example, its funding streams in the Community Empowerment Action Plan do not demand matching by funds from donations unlike the Coalition’s foundation, which aims to incentivise communities by requiring matching but ignoring lower levels of charitable giving in poorer communities (Rolfe, 2016). Authors have argued that the Scottish policy highlights the importance of the voice of communities in delivering services where it could be more effective while working with the government. In contrast, the approach taken by the Conservative-led administration has been critical of public services and state intervention, relying on the assumption that communities can gain power with a retreat of the state, placing more responsibility onto communities to take over services (Rolfe, 2016; Lowndes & Pratchett, 2012).