Are we working for or against communities in Bristol? 

On December 4, Bristol City Council’s cabinet agreed radical plans to transform neighbourhood working, or more accurately to reduce the council’s involvement in it.

These will now go forward to full council, but the writing is on the wall as Bristol’s mayoral system means the mayor has the power to pass them regardless.

We can all sympathise with the dilemma. There are indeed hard choices being made in the city just now. Most of us want to see an end to austerity, of course, and its savage attack on local government and those most dependent on public services.

But while the government in Westminster crumbles, Bristol council keeps gutting services, one after another.

Instead of a valiant effort to save what we have until the ideology of austerity is consigned to history, we hear talk of the council ‘getting out of then way of communities’ and of stepping aside to ‘let people take control.’

This is Tory language of self-help – a far cry from the principles of mutual aid and support I’d expect from a Labour council. But it’s the same across the country: with the exception of Glasgow, all 10 of the UK’s ‘Core Cities’ (Bristol’s peer group) are Labour-run and slashing services.

Mayor Marvin Rees led an anti-austerity march through the streets of Bristol in September

Our mayor held a protest march, but actually asked for volunteers to come forward when he spoke to the crowd assembled on College Green. He went to London, but asked for more big infrastructure projects in cities, not a halt to austerity.

Meanwhile, under the budget’s headline theme of ‘empowerment’, the mayor is busy removing the main pillars that enable communities to take action, gain confidence, and implement local initiatives.

Running completely contrary to this theme, the proposed council budget wipes out small ‘well being’ grants, cuts support for community development and public health, and asks communities to take on running more local buildings and facilities.

In my neighbourhood, we initially funded the Streetscene group who have the best track record in the city for their work around Gloucester Road, and they have now been able to secure funds from the Business Improvement District to continue the work on the main road for a while.

Martin Fodor says public areas will deteriorate if community groups do not get the support they need from the council

But without future funds, the accumulation of fly tipping, graffiti, tagging, and posters will rapidly degrade the wider area.

Small grants, allocated by community panels and local councillors, can be utterly essential for local groups getting their first bit of council support. They often lead to match funded grants, local donations and bigger projects as groups gain confidence and a track record.

They prove the project is supported by the council and the initial funds get multiplied. Look at what’s been achieved by groups on Horfield Common, starting with small projects, they now have £100,000s coming in to the city to refurbish the building and create a year round community hub at the Ardagh.

Of course the council still awards some large sums through its grants. But the approach from major funds is usually large projects, in fact, the report said community funds would in future go from larger committees across six wards at a time to ‘fewer, larger projects’ not local groups.

There’s also been a raid on the statutory funds from local development, known as the Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL). This is a levy on large developments in an area and is supposed to help communities mitigate the disturbance such developments can cause.

If this gets used for fewer but larger projects, there’s a real risk that the local issues it’s there to tackle will go unaddressed. And as there are no plans to award any CIL until mid-2018, I’d like to know where the missing funds from early 2017 onward are?

The old Neighbourhood Partnerships had local funds in their accounts to be allocated quarterly – but this was taken away from them early in 2017. Where is it? This was 18 months’ worth of local funds, allocated for communities to spend – who exactly is being ‘empowered’ when this money is raided for council coffers?

Community development and public health are led by principles of ‘asset-based community development’, i.e. seeing people and their strengths as assets, not deficits to be treated. So less community development means weaker communities.

With less access to funds and support to empower local people to improve their communities, local assets go to waste.

Eastville Library is one of the buildings in Bristol that has been transferred into the hands of the community and is now run by volunteers

Asking people to run local buildings is another hit. Sure, some groups are keen to take on a social enterprise, create a development trust with income potential, or become asset managers. But the assumption that all local groups want to run the place where they deliver their service seems destined to fail in many cases, and at least absorb vast amounts of community energies.

Readers may be familiar with Voscur, an important body which supports Bristol’s voluntary, community and social enterprise sector. At the recent Voscur AGM, a key issue raised was not just the need for help and support from both council and Voscur, but the very idea that community organisations should spend vast efforts in becoming the managers of community buildings, rather than the users.

They are there, after all, to deliver all the services they actually want to deliver and know that their clients need: for children, older people, those with mental health support needs, single parents, new literates, and learners.

Those with experience of community asset transfers say how much time and effort it absorbs from their few active, professional and skilled members, taking them away from doing what they really got involved for. Is this ‘empowerment?’ Shouldn’t running buildings be left to those skilled at running buildings, not community activists and volunteers?

I’m often faced with scepticism about the council, how it gets in the way and blocks local initiatives. My reply is that, as a Green, I stand for empowerment, enabling, and a supportive council – one that helps people achieve what they want and can do, not one that takes away resources and dis-empowers them.

At the last full council meeting, we heard community groups saying that the ever-increasing demands and responsibilities they face, combined with the removal of vital support, like grants and volunteer insurance is causing them to shrink away from their groups and future projects.

Even the contract to install an electricity point on Redland Green, so the ice cream van by the play area doesn’t run on diesel all day, is held up despite being already paid for.

How sad that Bristol Labour are implementing their cuts in ways that leaves self-help for those who can, rather than support where it’s needed and recognition of mutual aid.

Martin Fodor is a Green Party councillor for the Redland ward. 

Read more: ‘Are cuts crushing Bristol’s community events and thriving city culture’