2010 – the year in Brixton

Kaye Wiggins reports on 2010 in Brixton – a year of elections, closed leisure centres, happy lido days, rising market rents and a jerk chicken festival.

 

2010 has been a year of change for Brixton. It has said hello to Windrush Square, Starbucks, Chuka Umunna and the co-op council. Here’s a quick round-up of the bigger stories of the year.

The renamed and re-landscaped Windrush Square opened in February. Lambeth Council said it would “create a safe, high-quality public space reflecting our unique and diverse community.” But critics questioned whether an “expanse of concrete” could really reflect Brixton’s character.

Also in February, the council announced its plans to “go co-op”. It has spent much of the year trying to explain to residents what this means, and gather our thoughts about it, sometimes in unorthodox ways. Asking us to put coloured balls in different bucket and stickers on bits of paper was a memorable example.

But what the council claims is a worse-than-expected budget settlement from central government, announced in October, has brought a sense of urgency to the plans. They are due to come into force from spring 2011.

Sticking with politics, the general election in May saw Labour hold its Streatham, Vauxhall and Dulwich and West Norwood seats. Chuka Umunna replaced Keith Hill in Streatham, Kate Hoey kept her Vauxhall seat and Tessa Jowell held onto Dulwich and West Norwood.

In the local elections, there was a strong showing for Labour, which gained seven seats. The Lib Dems and the Tories each lost three seats.

A plan to temporarily move Streatham’s ice skating rink to the site of the Pope’s Road car park in Brixton caused unrest this year. In October, more than 100 demonstrators marched to Lambeth town hall to protest about it.

The plan also angered traders on Brixton market, who said using the closed car park as an ice rink, rather than reopening it for parking, could cause them to lose more trade. They had been arguing since February that the closure of the car park in December 2009 had affected their trade, and a Freedom of Information request in October added weight to their argument.

Market traders have had a difficult year, warning in September that rent rises could force more of their shops to close. But there was good news in April, when Brixton’s indoor markets were given listed status.

Shopping in Brixton changed a lot in 2010. Whilst several market stalls have closed down, and independent shops like Lori’s Frothy Coffee have struggled, big brands including Starbucks, H&M, T-Mobile and, most recently, Holland and Barrett, have arrived in the town centre.

But Brixton’s local businesses have had some causes for celebration. The Brixton Pound marked its first birthday in September. And who could forget Charles and Camilla’s surprise visit to the market in July?

Haircuts and lager, courtesy of Lambeth

Guest blogger, Kaye Wiggins, finds a more concrete policy in Lambeth’s cooperative council plans

You can picture the tabloid headlines already, can’t you? As part of its plan to become a co-operative council, Lambeth is going to give direct payments to more and more of the people that use its services, to spend as they choose.

This could include haircuts, horse riding lessons, presents for their children and even going to the pub, according to a recent report about the plan.

Giving money directly to people, rather than spending it on services they can use, is part of the ‘personalisation’ agenda, a key part of the council’s plan to go co-op.

The report, called Survive and Thrive and published last month by the council and the charity representatives’ group Acevo, says this agenda will be extended in future, and will cover services including health, social care, criminal justice, welfare to work, education, children’s services and substance abuse.

Under the plan, the council will fund charities and community groups that will let the people using their services decide on how their problems could best be addressed.

If a person’s situation could best be helped by rebuilding their self-confidence, and that person decides that a haircut or horse riding is the best way to do it, then they can choose for the money to be spent in this way.

“Anything should be possible as long as it is legal and it contributes towards achieving a mutually agreed outcome,” the report says.

It gives the example of a supported housing association in Tower Hamlets, called Look Ahead Housing and Care, which used funding from the council to give service users £40 a week to spend however they liked.

It says one used the money to buy presents for her children, another had her hair styled and another “used it at a pub as a way of making contact with a local darts team”.

The report says: “Although this was initially challenging for staff, these activities reconnected those living at Coventry Road with the local community, developed skills in communication and social awareness and, ultimately, began making the believe there was a route to recovery.”

It looks as though more and more of the council’s services will be provided in this way as it progresses with its co-operative plans. There’s a stark warning in the report for organisations that don’t deliver personalised services: “It is essential that they do not rely on on-going support from Lambeth, the PCT or other statutory agencies which are committed to a new commissioning model based on personalisation.”

This might become the biggest way in which Lambeth residents are affected by the co-op council agenda. The plan to go co-operative has been criticised for being a big idea that local residents struggle to see the relevance of – but here, at least, is a concrete policy.

The Brixton Clubcard?

In the week of the first birthday of the Brixton Pound, we investigate a new idea for the local economy

Music, cake and even photo-calls with the mayor were in place last night for the celebration of Brixton Pound’s first birthday at the Granville Arcade.  But as plans for the co-operative council get underway, Lambeth is going to be experimenting with yet more alternative models for community living. The New Economics Foundation (nef), responsible for much of the impetus behind the Brixton Pound, has come up with a proposal to incentivise people to take on new responsibilities in their locality.

Nef, in cooperation with the Transition Towns network, has suggested the introduction of a loyalty scheme – much like the Tesco Clubcard or BA Air Miles – in which residents collect ‘points’ by carrying out actions beneficial to the community, such as recycling waste, or shopping at local businesses. Points can then be redeemed in exchange for public transport tickets, sustainable goods and services or cultural activities such as free cinema or gallery tickets.

Nef are also working with Social Trade Organisation (STRO), a Dutch NGO which has designed an online software payment scheme that could be adapted for a public loyalty scheme. According to nef, Cyclos “is a not-for-profit open source system that is dynamic and allows for continuous innovation as new currency models are adapted. Cyclos allows users to administer their accounts, view their transactions, and make (secure) payments via web access or mobile phone.” The STRO representative on the nef team has already designed another, very similar scheme in Rotterdam called the Nu Spaar Pass, a card which allows residents to collect points and trade them in for services.

Lambeth Council is in talks with nef, but is still considering different proposals and has not endorsed the idea yet. There is another public meeting on 23 September where residents are invited to “contribute and help shape the commissions’ final report”.

The Lambeth Mayor at last night's birthday celebrations

Quite a crowd gathered for the music on 'Fifth Avenue' in the arcade

Brixton – the ‘clone’ town

'Re-imagining the high street' - the report released today

On the eve of Brixton Pound’s first birthday, Brixton has become a ‘clone town’, according to a survey released today by the new economics foundation. It studied the number of chain stores in towns and boroughs across Britain to highlight the importance of a diverse high street.

Despite its endorsement of the alternative currency, Brixton moved from ‘border’ status in 2005 to ‘clone’ status this year. The survey was conducted in 2009, before the additions of H&M, Starbucks and T-Mobile. It found that over half of Brixton’s high street shops are now chains. Nef created a scoring system which gave Brixton 50.5 points out of 100, with twons scoring over 65 classified as ‘home’ towns.

The report cites Philippe Castaing, owner of Opus and founder of Brixton Green, who has said that “Brixton is one of the most expensive high streets in London in terms of commercial rent, a major barrier for independent businesses.”

Nef first conducted the Clone Town survey in 2005, when Exeter came in as Britain’s blandest high street. This time, Cambridge took the bottom spot. But it wasn’t all bad news for South London – Streatham scored highly, with 76 on nef’s scale of 100, and was classed a ‘home’ town.

The survey is slightly skewed, however, because it only looks at the high street, not taking into account the number of independent shops elsewhere in the area. In Brixton, of course, many independent businesses have opened in the past year in the market, so it’s unclear whether it would remain a ‘clone’ town were the survey to be extended.

What do you think? Is Brixton ‘clone’ or ‘home’?

Reporting from the town hall…

Guest blogger Kaye Wiggins, journalist for Third Sector magazine, reports from last night’s co-operative council meeting

About 70 residents gathered in a warm, crowded room in Lambeth town hall last night to discuss the co-operative council plans.

During the two-and-a-half hour question and answer session with council leader Steve Reed, almost all of those that asked questions said they welcomed the idea, at least in theory. But they raised concerns about how it would work in practice.

One of the biggest concerns was how the council would make sure the whole local community had its say about the plans. “I know most of the faces here,” said a lady on the front row. “We’re always here; we’re always debating with the council. There are a lot of other people in the borough. We need to get to the grass roots.”

Reed said the public consultation on becoming a cooperative was the biggest the council had ever held. He said there would be surveys, roadshows, public meetings and – surprisingly – random vox pops outside tube stations during rush hours to ask local people what they thought.

He also said the co-operative idea was not just a way of coping with the 25 per cent cut the council will make to its overall spending in the next four years.

He said involving local people in providing public services would make the services more responsive to the community’s needs. He stopped short of saying which services would be provided in this way, but said housing would be “an extremely interesting area to look at”.

One resident voiced a concern that seems likely to be repeated as the consultation goes on. “I already co-operate with the council by paying my taxes,” she said.

But maybe we should take heart from a suggestion made by councillor Jackie Meldrum, who said there could be “some kind currency to be a reward system” for residents that helped the council to deliver its services.

More co-op council

Lambeth council staff have been ‘on the road‘ in the past few weeks, spreading the gospel of the co-operative council. In each part of the borough, they set up stalls to provide information on the proposal and get residents’ views. But the effort to hear our views has so far seemed rather patronising – we had to put colourful plastic balls into differently labelled buckets and even stick pretty stickers underneath our favoured proposals, for goodness sake…

Colourful balls, plastic bins and labels that read, 'I'd like to be actively involved' and 'I am already actively involved'

Here’s hoping the public meeting on Wednesday will be a little more detailed and a little more demanding. See the event invitation on facebook or just read it here below:

“The co-operative council commission will be holding a public meeting as part of its evidence-gathering exercise. It will give residents the opportunity to give their views about our proposal to create a co-operative council and ask questions directly to commissioners.

Please email cooperativecouncil@lambeth.gov.uk if you are interested in attending.”

I wonder who will attend this meeting. Will it be the usual suspects who take part in lots of community events already, or will people who wouldn’t normally take part be encouraged to go? Are you going? This phase is a real test of the co-operative council idea, as locals and the community groups have to feel part of it from the very beginning. It’s potentially a very exciting project, and it would be sad to see it go to waste.

“Citizens'” Commission…

…is in fact made up of Cllr Steve Reed (Lambeth Council Leader), Cllr Paul McGlone and Cllr Jackie Meldrum (Deputy Leader of the Council). All Labour. All already advocates of the Lambeth co-operative council model. They met as the ‘Citizens’ Commission’ to consider the proposals last week. Not exactly your average ‘citizen’. This is what Lambeth Council posted on the Co-op Council Facebook page on Friday in response to a question about who sits on the Commission:

“Thanks for your query. To confirm, the commission members who met on Wednesday were Councillor Steve Reed, Councillor Paul McGlone and Councillor Jackie Meldrum. Future commission sessions will be attended by these three councillors and a range of other local and national stakeholders. We’ll update this facebook page, we will be tweeting and Councillor Reed will be updating his blog with more details of who will be attending as future commission sessions take place.”

Lord knows who ‘local and national stakeholders’ are – residents? businesses? more council members?  Will local residents be able to apply to take part in the next meeting? Can we see the minutes of the last meeting? … This is not a very promising start to the new ‘open’, co-operative council, is it?

The Co-op Council

The front page of the White Paper, published yesterday

Lambeth Council finally published its draft White Paper on the co-operative council yesterday. You can download it here, read @Jason_Cobb‘s fine analysis here and contribute to the Lambeth wiki page here. There are still some questions to be cleared up, namely who on earth is on the Citizens’ Commission? Will it, as I first thought, include citizens or is it just a commission of council advisors who talk to citizens through so-called ‘community engagement’ events? Has it been chosen already? The announcement is somewhat confusing: “A Citizens’ Commission is being set up” – so a work in progress then? Oh no, it’s “meeting for the first time today”. What was the selection process? And what will its role actually be, since the White Paper seems to somewhat pre-empt the findings of any commission? The paper even comes up with the questions it thinks the Commission should consider.

Lambeth have embraced social media this time around, but although a wiki, twitter hashtag (#lambethcoop) and a Facebook group are all very well, only a small proportion of Lambeth residents are likely to log onto to Twitter, wiki or even Facebook in order to add their views to the mix. The ‘community engagement’ (what a terrible phrase) events will remain vital.

Whatever it may be, the Commission Report is due for October, in time for the launch of the Co-Operative Council in April 2011.

Lambeth Co-operative Council

Now the election’s over and the dust is settling, we can get into the swing of things. So look out next week for the publication of Lambeth’s proposals for a co-operative council on Wednesday 26 May. Apparently it will challenge Cameron’s ‘Big Society’…Steve Reed’s description of how they differ isn’t very enlightening though:

“Our model differs from the Tories’ Big Society because while they want to roll back state, we want to change the role of the state, creating a new settlement between the citizen and public services with more power and control handed to local people.  Our model empowers people to get on and make the changes they want to see in their local area, building better services and a stronger civic society at the same time.”

Am I being stupid in not being able to recognise the clear differences yet? This is how ‘The Guardian’ explains the Con-Lib ‘Big Society:

“The new Tory-Liberal Democrat coalition today unveiled a “big society” programme intended to “take power away from politicians and give it to the people”

[…] The plans include introducing a national citizen service programme for 16-year-olds, reforms to the planning system to give communities more control over developments, letting public sector workers form cooperatives and giving the public access to government data.”

And who will be in the new ‘Citizens’ Commission’? It will be set up this Wednesday to consult local people on the proposals already chosen by the council.  Steve Reed’s homepage announced earlier this year  that the Commission was to be set up way back in March “and give a final report no later than June”, but that deadline is unlikely to be met now.

Here’s hoping for some more detail on Wednesday, but I think this is going to be a matter of ‘wait and see’ over the much longer term.