Busybodyocracy

The novelist Dr Graham Gardner, who in 2006 completed a fascinating research project on behalf of Defra, coined a phrase last year which I just love. Gardner had been tasked by Defra with assessing the success, or otherwise, of neighbourhood devolution – that is, handing the running of local services down, as far as possible, to local people. The ‘busybodyocracy’ was often the unintended consequence of such a policy, he argued. Instead of handing power to local people, neighbourhood devolution often resulted in the delegation of powers to a handful of well-meaning busybodies.

At the other end of the scale, there’s a perception among some communities, that regeneration experts don’t understand their local circumstances or needs. The phrase ‘parachuted in’ is often applied to the teams of consultants and officials tasked with ‘turning an area around’.

A recent trip to Bungreave in Sheffield as part of my ASC foundation degree in sustainable communities brought these two seemingly opposing views into sharp focus. It was our first field trip, a chance to bond with classmates and to work as a team on a presentation on the area. Our task was to make an assessment of the place; find out what worked, what didn’t, and what needed to change. The instruction was to take what we had learned about our own community and apply it to another.

It was an extremely valuable experience and highlighted the apparent conflict which can often exist between the local and the external. That is, between the skills and knowledge which could be found in a local area, and the work of the agencies, quangos, and officials brought in to deliver sustainable communities. The latter, were often criticised (perhaps unfairly), for not having the guts to come and live and work in such areas.

The phrase happy medium springs to mind. And without wanting to sound too wishy washy, I can see this from both sides of the argument. Someone who lives locally, who is a local activist (and who may or may not be a busybody) knows the local detail, the conflicts and how they can be resolved. While those ‘parachuted in’ can bring a much needed wider perspective to those same problems; they’re able to put things in context. And they do have a different skills set, having seen what works elsewhere, which is undoubtedly useful.

That’s all been reaffirmed by my own experience in my community of Bridlington in the East Riding where I am currently engaged in trying to set up a (hopefully sustainable) Business Arts Centre. A not for profit company I have set up, called Big Skies, had the original seed of the idea for the centre. And as we embark on the next phase of delivery – carrying out a consultation across the wider East Riding area to assess the project’s viability – we’ve got that much-needed local knowledge and experience. Meanwhile, an outside company selected by Big Skies (parachuted in from Huddersfield!) called CIDA (the Creative Industries Development Agency), is overseeing the feasibility study.

It’s all about an effective division of labour: we take care of all the local aspects of it; we’ve got local contacts they would never have had, and have been able to tap up a couple of possible sites for the centre which only we would have known about. On the other hand they’ve got all this other knowledge and experience which we haven’t got – that is a national and international perspective. It’s a partnership that works. But ask me where power lies: whether it’s been devolved down, or retained by those above, and I honestly couldn’t answer. Perhaps that’s why it’s a success so far.

This is the second blog from Carlo Verda in a series about ASC’s foundation degree.