Poverty, Place and Change Regeneration Seminar, 9 February 2011 Jim McCormick, Scotland Adviser – Joseph Rowntree Foundation

Sources Impact of Devolution on low-income people and places (JRF 2010) Housing and Neighbourhoods Monitor: Affordable Housing (JRF 2011) Tackling Poverty Board (2011): – Pockets – Prospects – Places

Impact of devolution: findings Reserved policies had a bigger impact on tackling poverty, but devolved policies still matter Some need to be applied on a much bigger scale, more consistently and for longer (e.g. Working for Families; New Futures Fund) Need to achieve better results from training/skills; regeneration; address ‘flat-lining’ in public services (the lowest-attaining 20% in secondary school); and drive down costs for low-income households Improve administrative devolution (the case of Pension Credit, Universal Credit)

Pockets: Poverty and work trends Poverty down by one-fifth among children Down by almost half among pensioners Little change for working-age adults as a whole Unemployment: lower rate than England entering recession but now higher. Net 50,000 jobs lost in 2009 mainly full-time among men with four in ten affecting under 25s. Working age people claiming out-of-work benefits fell to 16%, but rose to 18% by Biggest increases during recession in Ayrshire, Lanarkshire and West Dunbartonshire.

Area concentration of worklessness: is the glass half-full?

Prospects: Skills For the least qualified, odds of being in work only 50:50 before recession. Access to job-related training for those lacking qualifications did not improve over the decade. Young people at high risk – fully 40% of jobs lost in recession affected under-25s. One of the long-term policy drivers against poverty which is devolved.

Places: Devolution & Regeneration Continuity: England (New Deal for Communities) and Wales (Communities First) Change: Scotland Stalled: Northern Ireland Concern about loss of focus on ‘place-making’ Housing and environment improved but horizons still restricted Balance between improving neighbourhoods and linking them to wider work, training and learning

Places: Tackling Poverty Board In poor places, address the failure in markets (labour and essential services) as well as public services (satisfaction, quality). Dynamics: SIMD shows limited churn, mostly short- distance, with some thinning of deprivation in real terms. Four in five datazones in the most deprived in 2004 stayed there by And three-quarters of people in poverty don’t live in the most deprived areas

Risk of low income by area ( ) Most deprived 15% datazones Rest of Scotland People living in poverty34%14% People on L3 incomes54%26% Children in families (L3)70%31% Working age adults (L3)52%22% Older people (L3)40%35%

Regeneration as a system Models and mindsets: co-production or expert-knows-best? Skills, learning and work/inactivity Housing, environment, demography and flux/stability (Go-Well residential outcomes) Unpaid work: family care, volunteering Cohesion or disorder: neighbourliness, crime Market and public services Physical assets and connectivity

Challenges for practice Priorities/tradeoffs in context of huge cuts: who decides? Is high-quality evidence treated as a precious jewel or just background noise? What kind of guidance/lead is needed to take effective action via localism? Can we focus more on culture than strategy, and function more than form? Is ‘Total Place’ likely to stick – and will integrated budgets follow?

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