Perspectives on regeneration: Darren Barton (1)

Darren Barton was township manager for Scholes at Wigan Council when first interviewed in January 2007. This summary has been approved for publication.

The issue in a soundbite

I’d like to develop plans for the area that are really honest and bring out the character of the area and what the real issues are so we can have achievable aims over the next five or six years – I think that’s the timescale we want to look at to try and improve issues such as employment, health.

Background and key challenges

We’ve got an unusual situation with Scholes. I personally don’t think Scholes is as bad as the figures say. I think certain things skew its ranking and make it a deprived area.

There are 2,800 people living in the area and 40% of them live in high rise flats. They are many people who have worked and lived in the area all their lives. It’s very accessible. My grandparents were very happy there all their lives.

There may be small pockets of areas where people wouldn’t feel safe but when we do ask, I feel the feedback will be that it’s a good area to live in really, and people are pretty happy– why should they work when they don’t need to work, when they can survive on a relatively small amount of money?

I think other people’s opinion of Scholes and Birkett Bank may have deteriorated. I think the murder that we had a few years ago has had a psychological effect not just on the people living in the area but on other people’s view of the area.

We have the new Grand Arcade development with 1,000 jobs associated with it on the Scholes doorstep, however talking about how it could impact positively for the residents of the Scholes area, I get the feeling that currently some employers may not be interested in the ‘type’ of people that come from Scholes – they generally wouldn’t have the evidence of the qualifications, skills.

I think there’s some work that needs to be done there to bring the community together and we need to make sense of all the agencies that have been granted money to do work in the area and to make it simple, so people understand what’s going on and ensure that agencies are not duplicating work.

There are issues in and around the community centre regarding the management of it – members of the community took over responsibility for managing the community centre fairly recently and it’s tough. It’s hard work balancing the books but they know what they need to improve on.

One Voice have 1,000 members… through that organisation we could probably get to a third of the population. Half the population live in the flats, and the flats have had their own community association – Scholes Tenants and Residents Association.

Some of the young people who are the ones known to the police, had antisocial behaviour orders or warning letters, have come and engaged with all the activities put on for them through the community centre, but a small number then go out and continue to cause problems.

Progress so far

What we have done so far is agreed a structure for the way we’re going to work in future, with a core group team of 10-12 people including a majority of people from the community and key officers who will take a facilitation and support role to the group.

We have a young people’s practitioners’ group that was set up following the murder, they’ve been meeting 18 months – it’s all the agencies that would relate to young people… Practitioners include Groundwork, the youth service, drugs action team - reps who support the young people. It’s a really good group.

Hopes and aspirations for Regenerate

I want to get a real true story for Scholes and Birkett Bank. I really want to find out what the needs are for the area, and what the aspirations if any are, because I think we’ve got in the next three or four months to be able to prove that there’s only so much we could achieve, and if there’s only so much we can achieve that’s OK. You can’t achieve the unachievable. There are a significant number of people in my mind who live in that area who are happy with their lot and wouldn’t want to change their lifestyles and wouldn’t want or see the need to engage as such.
To make the change to go and get some training and qualifications, to go and work and then earn hardly any extra money, it doesn’t make people feel that great.

I think some of the agencies in the area need to take a real responsibility in terms of getting to the people. I’d like Regenerate to be able to signpost people to services that are available to them. Things like the WIAC advisory service that can give advice to people on benefits for people in work rather than benefits for people out of work. They’re funded to cover the area but I don’t think they’re getting to the right people.

We need to look at things like training, confidence building, part time working that doesn’t affect residents’ earnings, but will get them back into work and if they want to progress further then great.

What should be achieved after 18 months?

I want good communication systems to have been set up. I want information out to the community about what’s happening in the area, but I also want officers to start addressing some of the issues we’ve got in the area to make a real push to improve things.

I’d like more people in the flats to come out of the flats, I’d like one or two of them to come and represent their community on a kind of area board, which involves all members of the community. I’d want employers to start addressing some of the issues of trying to recruit people from the local area, not people who live six or seven miles away. We need to do some work on that – we’ve contacts with the Grand Arcade management group and we need to bring them into things.

I’d like to develop plans for the area that are really honest and bring out the character of the area and what the real issues are so we can have achievable aims over the next five or six years – I think that’s the timescale we want to look at to try and improve employment, health and things like that.

What needs to be done in the next four months?

All the agencies will have a clear understanding not just of what role they’ve been given but of how it’s part of improving the lives long term of people from Scholes and Birkett Bank.

Agencies working in the area have to be aware that the young people they’re dealing with are statistically the most unemployable in the whole borough, and the work they’re all doing is to improve the confidence of those young people, but also to encourage them to take up activities that will get them into a job. That’s part of their job and we all need to do that – if we have four or five clear targets for the area that everybody, whatever they do, must have a clear link to achieving… that’s the main thing I want to achieve.

[Agencies] need to go to the flats and need to do work with people in the flats themselves. Everybody should have a clear understanding of what they’re achieving and actually reporting back as to what they’re doing.

We need communication through the core team so they feed information in and report back. The core group can then work on the ongoing plans for the area. Officers from the council, relating to the different departments, taking an increased level of responsibility in bending their services to meet need.