Only a small minority of people want to be actively involved in local decision-making and the design and delivery of public services, according to a report from Ipsos MORI.
And while many people would like more of a say on local issues, they need to be engaged in a variety of ways rather than solely through traditional methods such as public meetings and resident boards.
The report, Searching for the impact of empowerment, set out to assess the impact of community empowerment on key outcomes. It reanalysed the data from the New Deal for Communities (NDC), which questioned people about their perceptions of local areas, quality of life, sense of community, and trust.
Overall, the report suggests that feelings of influence and levels of involvement in NDC activities do have some positive relationships with many of the key outcomes examined - but increasing empowerment is very far from being a guarantee of success.
Among the findings were:
- There is a spectrum of interest in community empowerment, with only a very small minority at one end who want to be actively involved, a larger minority at the other end who have no interest at all, with most in the middle.
- The simplest analysis suggests that empowerment is highly related to believing the NDC partnership has been successful in improving the area, to perceptions of local
quality of life, to people feeling more part of the community and having greater trust in
local agencies. However, further analysis reveals that other issues - particularly connections with others in the neighbourhood, liveability factors such as crime and the physical appearance of areas, housing, health and views of other services are more important. - Feelings of influence seem to be more important than actual involvement in NDC activities, e.g. two-thirds of those who feel they can influence local decisions have not been involved in any NDC activities, and conversely 51% of those who have been involved in NDC activities still do not feel they have influence over local decisions.
- Lapsed involvement can have a very negative impact - some of the most negative changes in perceptions of key outcomes are seen among those who feel they used to be able to influence local decisions but no longer can.
- Further work is needed to clarify the purpose of empowerment and how it is measured.
