Love thy neighbour

The Chi-Lites: they recognised the importance of neighbourliness early on.

Neighbourhoods: More than building blocks of the Big Society?

This week at work I found myself exploring the concept of neighbourliness, what it means, and its potential for promoting both individual and community wellbeing.

 

To paraphrase psychedelic-soul exponents The Chambers Brothers, in many ways the neighbourhood is a concept whose time has come today. After all, the Government's stated ambition with its Big Society agenda is to create neighbourhoods that are strong, attractive and thriving. It even goes as far as to describe neighbourhoods as the 'building blocks' for action to respond to challenging economic, social and cultural trends. Support for the neighbourhood is not limited to one political party, either. Lambeth Council, a Labour flagship, has been active in promoting its vision of  'the co-operative council', where citizens are encouraged to play a much greater role in their local communities.

 

And yet despite neighbourhoods and local communities being lauded by politicians from across the political spectrum speaking, their thinking on neighbourhoods seems to me under-developed. In the main, attention has tended to focus on the neighbourhood as a vehicle for achieving decentralisation of power from state to citizens and communities. Now don't get me wrong, I am all for citizens playing a more active role in their communities. I am also a great believer in the power of co-design to produce solutions to the complex social challenges our society faces. Nonetheless, as we seek to expand the role of the neighbourhood in decision-making policy, I believe it is important that we do not take for granted that most basic benefit a neighbourhood provides, a sense of neighbourliness.

What London's B&B bill tells us about the housing market

Sign of the times:  Councils' use of Bed & Breakfasts as temporary accommodation remains high. Image: TripAdvisor.com

Yesterday I found myself working for thinkpublic on a research project exploring people's experiences of homelessness. It's still early days for the project so I can't say too much about the fine-detail of the project. I can however share with you my thoughts on a an interesting (by Policy standards, anyway) fact I learned.

Fact of the day

I learned that one London local authority spent approximately £300,000 last year on nightly paid or 'Bed & Breakfast' temporary accommodation for homeless people. If this sounds like a lot of money that's because it is. And yet compared to neighbouring boroughs, this authority is actually pretty good at placing its homeless residents in more appropriate and more cost effective forms of temporary accommodation.

High times living in the city

The high figure for Bed & Breakfast payments is, in large part, an expression of the pressures the London housing market is under. It doesn't take a genius to work out that demand for housing in London vastly outstrips supply. This means private landlords can nearly always find people with jobs ready to snap up their rental properties. Local authorities are finding it increasingly difficult to persuade private landlords to lease their properties on a long-term basis for use as temporary accommodation. Consequently, local authorities are finding that the feel there is no other option available to them other than to rely on more expensive, short term Bed & Breakfast accommodation.

Working 9 to 5, not a way to make a living

Not enough hours in the day? That could be a thing of the past. Photo: Nick J Webb

Self improvement: It's about time

 January is traditionally a time of New Year resolutions. It’s the time when we tell ourselves (and anyone around who will listen) that this is the year that we’ll mend some of our less noble personal traits and finally  commit ourselves to ‘the good life’ through a programme that combines equal measures of self denial and dogged self improvement.

It was this happy-go-lucky outlook that I got myself along to the LSE public discussion, ‘About Time: examining the case for a shorter working week’. What I discovered both reactivated my love of policy and induced a severe bout of self-loathing. Allow me to explain...

21 is the magic number

For those of you lucky enough to have avoided my pun-heavy Tweeting on the subject, About Time was an in-depth look at the case for a shorter working week, as set out by the New Economics Foundation (or nef) last year in their report, 21 hours. The report sets out a case for how a ‘normal’ working week of 21 hours could help to address a range of urgent, interlinked problems: overwork, unemployment, over-consumption, high carbon emissions, low well-being, entrenched inequalities, and the lack of time to live sustainably, to care for each other, and simply to enjoy life.

An impressive selection of speakers had been assembled for Wednesday’s event. In addition to 21 hour’s co-author and nef’s head of social policy, Anna Coote, who chaired proceedings, we heard from three notable academics with expertise in this field. First up was Juliet Schor, Professor of Sociology at Boston College, and author of Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth, and The Overworked American. Next up was Lord Robert Skidelsky, Emeritus Professor of Political Economy at the University of Warwick. Lastly, Tim Jackson, Professor of Sustainable Development at Surrey University, and author of Prosperity without Growth, reflected on the discussion.