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Innovation in Public Services
Trust and Partnership
What lessons could be learned from a unique EU initiative in Wales?
Trust and Partnership was written in 2018 when the urgent need for radical change in Welsh local government was once again headline news. We look back at the origin of the huge Townhill housing estate overlooking Swansea and then consider the aims and aspirations of the EU URBAN I Community Initiative. URBAN laid a foundation. The decision was made to create a company limited by guarantee with charitable aims to carry the baton of regeneration and build for a sustainable future. The multi-use Phoenix Centre, billed as the first economic development centre of its kind in Wales, was opened in 2001 as a community hub to deliver a range of activities and services to local people. Communities First came and went. Here, lessons from many years of hard-won success are shared. Against the odds, this ambitious approach worked, and even continued to thrive when the government grants dried up. Can the principles which underpin this innovative approach be applied to other communities, whether they are classified as 'deprived' or not?
A sister paper, Time to Be Radical, will be written in 2024 to propose how communities can be transformed from within to ensure happier, healthier, wealthier, safer and sustainable futures.
Time to be Radical
Community resilience and the transformation of public services
Calls for radical transformation in Welsh public services are not new. For over a decade we have been told that now is the time for step-change in the services so many of us depend on. In the 2018 Welsh Government Green Paper, 'Strengthening Local Government in Wales' the Leader of the Welsh Local Government Association (WLGA) is quoted as saying,
"services are wearing down to the point of collapse and the public are rightly growing frustrated in terms of paying council tax and yet seeing key community functions cut or closed … The whole position is unsustainable. Local authorities cannot go on to be expected to make the harshest of cuts whilst continuing to provide the same breadth and level of service; in short, something has got to give.“
'Time to be Radical' aims to take such comments seriously, and considers what can be done to realign ourselves to meet future demands. This paper, which might cause a few traditionalists to fall of their chairs, looks at local government reform, the role of the Welsh ministers in the process of change, community leadership and the fundamental importance of grassroots action.
This will be available by the summer of 2024.