Joe Montgomery

Helen Edwards

Jheni Williams

Black & Minority Ethnic ...

Community Empowerment through Black and Minority Ethnic Self Build

Report of the Conference organized by the Community Self Build Agency and the Federation of Black Housing Organizations

When Joe Montgomery arrived to give the keynote speech for the first London Black and Minority Ethnic Self Build Conference, he entered a packed room with lively discussion in full flow. People visibly and audibly empowered as a result of their self build experience, were busy sharing it all with prospective self builders.

Self Build has all the obvious multiple wins

Joe Montgomery, Director General of the Neighbourhood Renewal Unit, began by summarizing the three main roles of his unit.

The provision of £4.5 billion for Neighbourhood Renewal. This included £2 billion for 39 New Deal for Communities Projects and £1 billion for the Neighborhood Renewal Fund allocations to local authorities and Local Strategic Partnerships. There was also £86 million for the Community Empowerment Fund and the Community Chest, which would provide grants to the community and voluntary sectors.

Reshaping the £400 billion per annum already spent by the Government on public services, so that it was targeted at the most deprived authorities and wards. Nine ‘deprivation-related floor targets’ had been set, which established levels of minimum acceptability, including quality of housing. Government spending must be directed to bring up each aspect to the level of the floor targets. This involved discussions about priorities with many spending bodies including the Housing Corporation.

Acting as an exchange for knowledge and know-how, the aim being to broker relationships between those that have ‘done it’ and those who would like to. Often, people learned more from talking and listening to people who had first hand experience. The unit was sponsoring massive research itself, partly because so much information was not available at the neighborhood level where it was most needed.

Key points from Joe Montgomery's Speech:

‘It troubled me deeply that an evaluation of Single Regeneration Budget (SRB) spending showed that only one per cent went through minority led organizations. - 70 per cent of Britain’s minority ethnic population lives in deprived neighborhoods where SRB was targeted’.

The need to know the relevance to community self build of the Neighborhood Renewal Funds, the Community Empowerment Fund and the Community Chest - and the degree of difficulty people have had in accessing them.

The need to mainstream Neighborhood Renewal and Self Build resorting so that the £400 billion spent annually by the Government, better meets the needs of communities, and this includes self build initiatives.

There is now a specific responsibility on the nine regional Government offices to brief local minority ethnic organizations and make connections with those that feel excluded.

Application processes should take into account the size of bid, particularly from community projects and paperwork should be simplified accordingly.

‘I do think self build has all the obvious multiple wins for people that are interested in regeneration.

Speech by Helen Edwards

The concluding speaker was Helen Edwards, the newly appointed head of the Active Communities Unit at the Home Office. She saw her work as part of a ‘shared Endeavour’ to change the circumstances of people’s lives.’ The present Government had a genuine interest in changing relationships across the board. There were currently no less than three big reviews underway on the voluntary and community sector. Tim Oshodi asked Helen Edwards about the Active Communities Unit policy on ‘Black led’. She said the whole range of minority ethnic issues was being looked at afresh with the Commission for Racial Equality, and the issue of black led organizations would be an important part of that.

Conclusion:

Jheni Williams, acting Chief Executive of the Federation of Black Housing Organizations saw the conference in the context of promoting more dynamic and diverse social housing. Stella Clarke, Chair of the Community Self Build Agency, thanked all those who had contributed to the conference, and particularly the Conference Planning Group chaired by Tim Oshodi. She commented that there was much work to be done in carrying the spirit of the conference out into the housing strategies and community plans.

If you would like to receive more details of the BME conference, please email n.englefield@communityselfbuildagency.org.uk and ask to be sent the BME leaflet. Don’t forget to include your full postal address.