Communities First was the Labour Welsh Government’s flagship programme to improve the living conditions and prospects for people in the most disadvantaged communities across Wales.
However, the Wales Audit Office Review of Communities First stated that the programme “emerged from chaos” “was not planned”, and “there was an absence of basic financial and human resource planning before the programme was launched”.
The 2011 WCVA and CREW - Centre for Regeneration Excellence Wales - Report “Communities First a Way Forward”, found that community involvement in co-designing and co-delivering local services should be central to any successor tackling poverty programme – which:
“needs to create the conditions to migrate from a top down government programme into a community led strategy for tackling deprivation and promoting social justice”.
A decade ago, the Welsh Government rejected this report.
Five years later- and after spending half a billion pounds on it – the Welsh Government announced that it was phasing out “Communities First”, having failed to reduce the headline rates of poverty or increase relative prosperity in Wales.
As the Bevan Foundation stated in 2017, “Communities First did not reduce the headline rates of poverty in the vast majority of communities, still less in Wales as a whole’’.
Welsh Conservatives recognise the need to revitalise local decision-making, encouraging decisions to be made as close to the people it effects as possible.
After 23 years of top-down, poverty trapping, command and control Labour Welsh Government, a Welsh Conservative approach to enable, empower and set free our local communities is urgently needed.
This will require a revolution in policy and service delivery in Wales:
- Enabling people and communities to identify their strengths and to tackle the root problems preventing them from reaching their potential.
- working with people to build resilient communities
- seeing everyone as equal partners in local services—breaking down the barriers between people who provide services and those who use them.
As the Carnegie Trust states, the Enabling State approach is about recognising that 'government, alongside driving the performance of public services, should enable communities to do what they do best', where communities 'are best-placed to bring a wealth of local knowledge and collective energy to the decisions that affect them’.
However, as Building Communities Trust research found, “people in Wales feel increasingly less able to influence decisions affecting their local area”.
The 2011 UK Conservative Localism Act gave new rights and powers to communities and individuals in order to decentralise power, and encourage greater local innovation and flexibility.
However, Labour Welsh Government has failed to introduce many of its key provisions in Wales.
By finally adopting the Community Rights Agenda in Wales we would shift power away from Central Government towards communities, creating a society that is more engaged and responsive.
It is time to break the shackles of top-down Welsh Government, time to enable our local communities and time to set Wales free to travel the road to a vibrant, people-powered recovery.
Since the Devolution era began almost a quarter of a century ago, the Welsh Labour Government has been ever keener to destroy its critics through derision, spite and buck passing, while barely bothering to offer a serious political argument.
Throughout my time here, since 2003, I have listened to them boast about outputs rather than outcomes, how much spent, rather than how well – while failing to effectively monitor and evaluate of their programmes and expenditure.
Whenever Welsh Conservatives have proposed human and community rights based –motions, legislation and amendments to legislation, they have voted these down.
Believing they cannot be removed from power delusional Labour Welsh Government has been failing the local communities of Wales for too long.