Big Society on the ground
A clutch of recent reports highlights a yawning gap between the government led Big Society initiative and what is happening on the ground at local level.
Civic limits
In Civic Limits – How much more involved can people get?1 think-tank ResPublica calls for the difficulties in getting people engaged on the scale needed. It highlights a small ‘civic’ core of the population that accounts for most of the activity taking place, “whether volunteering, charitable giving or civic participation” and that around“ 30 per cent of our adult population currently do 90 per cent of all volunteer hours and 70 per cent of civic participation”.
Unless the size of this ‘civic core’ is increased, the vision of building a bigger society will, according to the report’s authors, Richard Wilson and Matt Leach, remain “wishful thinking”. They explain that: “People belonging to this ‘core’ are more likely to be well-educated and middle class than the population as a whole.”
Recommendations on how to tackle this include participation initiatives that work for the whole community, businesses, rethinking their approach to CSR with a focus on enabling civic participation and, most importantly, getting on with the job rather than protracted engagement in ‘pointless consultation.’
Social productivity
Another report, From Big Society to Social Productivity,2 by Henry Kippin and Ben Lucas of the Royal Society of Arts (RSA) calls the government’s Big Society narrative ‘hazy’ and cites the withdrawal of Liverpool City Council’s withdrawal as a Big Society champion as an example of the ‘seeming asymmetry between the twin narratives of deficit reduction and Big Society.’
It calls for three profound shifts in public services to enable a new focus on social productivity to succeed. These are:
- A shift in culture. Public services need to engage and enroll citizens, families, communities, enterprises and wider society in creating better outcomes as partners and rather than closing public amenities because of budget cuts, they should be run as mutuals by local people.
- A shift in power. It recommends that a ‘new deal’ is brokered for cities and counties, in which they take over primary responsibility for commissioning most public services.
- A shift in finance. It calls for a more transparent and understandable approach to communicating contributions and benefits to citizens – to allow them to use public services more responsibly. And ‘co-payment and partnership funding models are recommended where services generate personal as well as public benefits, such as higher education and long-term care.
The civic pulse
The RSA team has come up with a new model designed to improve understanding and measurement of active citizenship. Indicators include volunteering and involvement in local decision-making, and measures for local authorities and public services to have a firmer grasp of the topography of active citizenship in their areas, so that they can identify what needs to be done. The Civic Pulse: Measuring Active Citizenship in a Cold Climate3 by Sam McLean and Benedict Dellot is the first ‘statement’ of what will be an ongoing research programme.
3. www.thersa.org/projects/citizen-power/ changemakers
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