The new UK Coalition Government’s Programme for Government says that:

“When you take Conservative plans to strengthen families and encourage social responsibility, and add to them the Liberal Democrat passion for protecting our civil liberties and stopping the relentless incursion of the state into the lives of individuals, you create a Big Society matched by big citizens. This offers the potential to completely recast the relationship between people and the state: citizens empowered; individual opportunity extended; communities coming together to make lives better.”

The main commitments which relate to communities are in a section headed “SOCIAL ACTION”, which is worth reproducing in full. Although generally reported as relating to matters that are devolved in Scotland, several of the items seem to us to have significant UK wide implications:

“The Government believes that the innovation and enthusiasm of civil society is essential in tackling the social, economic and political challenges that the UK faces today.

• We will take action to support and encourage social responsibility, volunteering and philanthropy, and make it easier for people to come together to improve their communities and help one another.
• We will support the creation and expansion of mutuals, co-operatives, charities and social enterprises, and enable these groups to have much greater involvement in the running of public services.
• We will give public sector workers a new right to form employee-owned co-operatives and bid to take over the services they deliver. This will empower millions of public sector workers to become their own boss and help them to deliver better services.
• We will train a new generation of community organisers and support the creation of neighbourhood groups across the UK, especially in the most deprived areas.
• We will take a range of measures to encourage charitable giving and philanthropy.
• We will introduce National Citizen Service. The initial flagship project will provide a programme for 16 year olds to give them a chance to develop the skills needed to be active and responsible citizens, mix with people from different backgrounds, and start getting involved in their communities.
• We will use funds from dormant bank accounts to establish a ‘Big Society Bank’, which will provide new finance for neighbourhood groups, charities, social enterprises and other non-governmental bodies.
• We will take a range of measures to encourage volunteering and involvement in social action, including launching a national day to celebrate and encourage social action, and make regular community service an element of civil service staff appraisals”.

A statement on the ‘Big Society programme’ was also launched at Downing Street. Greener Leith, which somewhat mysteriously was the only Scottish organisation present, has provided an interesting and entertaining account of the event. It comments “if we’re to see a new civic revival then we’ll need an investment in old school community development, adult education and a real commitment to making more local government information accessible and understandable. Without this, it will be hard to sustain that army of ‘community organisers’” .

There have been mixed reactions to these announcements. For example Senscot’s Bulletin commented “Wow! All the indications are that the new coalition at Westminster is serious about its Big Society programme to empower and mobilise communities. It’s a major task but if they stick with it, this approach has the potential to radically change the relationship between the citizen and the state in England to invigorate democracy.”

A more measured reaction has been provided by Gabriel Chanan, formerly of the Community Development Foundation, and his colleague Colin Miller. They have produced a pamphlet ‘The Big Society: How it Could Work. A Positive Idea at Risk from Caricature’.

It argues that “Communities cannot take over public services … this massive oversimplification would rapidly lead to failure”. But “Communities can complement and coproduce public services … The underlying principle for these is not the state offloading public services but state and people working together to ensure maximum value either from a public service or from a voluntary service initiated by a community group.” It also argues that “What is needed to make the big society work is not simply more community workers or organisers but a wave of ‘super’ community development workers with the status and training to be able to mobilise and coordinate a myriad of contributions to citizen empowerment from other voluntary and statutory front-line workers… This means that the role is not simply about supporting neighbourhood groups, though this is at the heart of it. It is also about managing the interface between those groups and the public services, guiding both to greater efficiency and effectiveness”.