Research summary outlining key findings from a review of the current context for geographically focussed community regeneration in Scotland, the impact of previous interventions, and future challenges for area based regeneration.
Main Findings:
- The approach since 1996 has been to use relatively modest programmes as ‘catalysts’ to test new ways of working and to develop appropriate local solutions to problems. But there is little evidence that this has brought about significant change in the way that mainstream funds are used.
- Throughout, the programmes have been carefully evaluated. But a recurring theme has been the lack of local data to set a baseline and to measure progress – and that there has not been an agreed standard set of measurable indicators.
- Community engagement has been an important part of the approach. But the increased link to wider approaches and to community planning appears to have made effective community engagement more difficult to sustain in some areas.
- Partnership working has been an important theme. More recent approaches have tied regeneration activity into community planning. There has been a growing focus on outcomes – with clearer and more comprehensive links between national and local outcomes.
- Across Britain there is a lack of solid evidence of the overall impact of geographically targeted programmes on multiple deprivation. Such evidence as there is suggests that the gap between the most deprived areas in Scotland and the rest has not closed in any substantial way.
- There has often been an imbalance between physical, social and economic programmes. They have been run by different organisations with different priorities.
- The moves in Scotland to more flexible approaches; a reduction in the number of funding streams (and a removal of much ring fencing) and an outcomes focused approach are mirrored in England and Wales.
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