Whose priorities? Whose agenda?

Karen Lucas describes research that gives local people a voice to express environmental concerns in neighbourhood renewal

There is growing body of research evidence to suggest that people living in the most deprived neighbourhoods in the UK are also disproportionately affected by poor environments . Research has also shown that local authorities with high levels of deprivation tend to have poorer performance standards than average in relation to environmental issues such as refuse collection, public parks and street cleaning .

Local Strategic Partnerships (LSPs) were specifically set up to ‘spearhead’ the process of improving public services in the most deprived neighbourhoods. Their key role is to bring the various delivery agencies and other key stakeholders together with residents in order to address local problems and concerns more effectively. Our research aimed to examine the extent to which LSPs recognise the environmental concerns of the local neighbourhoods they represent. Secondly, based on the evidence of good practice in this respect, we aimed to develop policy recommendations to ensure that local people’s environmental concerns and priorities are better recognised and addressed in the future.

The Tameside and Wolverhampton LSPs fitted our selection criteria and agreed to act as our two case studies. Each identified three suitable neighbourhood renewal areas for the fieldwork studies. The fieldwork investigations were undertaken in four separate but iterative stages.

Approximately 8-10 participants were recruited on an ad hoc basis at key activity points in each of the six neighbourhoods (e.g. outside the school/post office/shop). Care was taken to ensure that different ‘communities of interest’ (e.g. older people, young people, parents, people from minority ethnic backgrounds, etc.) were represented. A key aim of the first round of discussions was to expose and discuss the differing needs, concerns, aspirations and priorities of different groups living in the same neighbourhood. Stage 2 involved two elected representatives from each neighbourhood to identify how LSPs to consider their local concerns within the context of the borough-wide strategy for neighbourhood renewal. Stage 3 was designed to allow participants to feed their ideas back to the two LSP. Two resident representatives were elected from the each of the Stage 2 groups to present their ideas to officers at a sub-group meeting of the LSP Board. Stage 4 involved re-contacting officers from each LSP six-months after the fieldwork stage to allow a report-back on policy responses to the issues raised by residents in the feedback meetings.

Whilst a recognised benefit of discussion groups is that they allow interactions between a group of people, this can lead to tension and sometimes even heated argument between different group members. The people we recruit usually have long-standing, deep-rooted and not necessarily consensual opinions and concerns about the areas in which they live. Most are very angry by the dirty and degraded environments in which they are forced to live, the poor level of services and amenities which are available to them in their local area and repeated agency failures to sort these problems out. Many are unused to articulating their frustrations in front of strangers and discussions can quickly turn into ‘free for all’ arguments, which are difficult to bring back into control, even with the most experienced focus group facilitators leading them. For this reason, we were looking for a way to better structure and strengthen our fieldwork practices.

As an ‘ice-breaking’ exercise, each of the first round groups began with a neighbourhood puzzle game. This was loosely based on a technique that one of our group facilitators had used in diversity training workshops. As illustrated in Figure 2 below, the puzzle comprises ten key components based on elements of the local environment: Environment, Housing, Safety, Wealth, Education, Regeneration, Amenities, Transport, Community and Health.

Each participant was asked to select one word at random and to come up with three ‘ownership statements’ describing what that word means to them and present these to the rest of group. For example, if the word selected is transport they might say, “Hello, my name is Maureen, I am transport, I am able to carry lots of people, but I am expensive for short hop journeys”. The word is then opened up to the rest of the group to express their own opinions about that word in the same way. Each statement is recorded on a flip chart by the group facilitator for use in the next stage of the group.

In this way, we were able to generate a number of statements about the local environment in these neighbourhoods, whilst, from the outset, also introducing the idea that people’s opinions about this are their own and that different perceptions are equally valid. Once the puzzle is completed, the group is asked if any elements of their own neighbourhood environment are missing, any further suggestions must be presented in the same way. At the end of the game the facilitator recaps on the issues that have been raised and listed on the flip chart and asks the group to prioritise these in order of importance.

Edward De Bono’s Six Thinking Hats

Next we introduced De Bono’s ‘Six Thinking Hats’ idea . This method was specifically designed to assist with conflict resolution and consensus building around differing needs and aspirations. The method recognises that most people come to a group with their own personal interests and opinions to the fore. These are often difficult to set aside and may prevent another point of view being properly considered, which not only cause friction between people with different opinions but also serves to block any creative thinking about that issue.

The method is designed to allow people to set their personal feelings aside in order to creatively consider a wider range of concerns and ideas. Consensus may not always be reached but when this happens it is easy to identify where tensions lie and collectively decide these can be constructively addressed. Broad definitions for the ‘six hats’ are outlined in the table below:

HAT DESCRIPTION OF HAT
WHITE Used to feed in pre-existing information e.g. from reports, newspaper articles, previous discussions with the group, also to identify missing information and how to get it - direct focus on facts/information.
RED Used to express gut feelings about a situation; intuition; emotions - no need to explain or justify what is being said
PURPLE Negative or critical thoughts; potential problems; caution; risk assessment; critical hat.
YELLOW Positive thoughts - look for benefits, values, how to make things work.
GREEN Creative solutions; new ideas; alternatives; possibilities; lateral thinking
BLUE Organising - acts like conductor/orchestra for managing the session

A relevant statement is devised up front, in our case these were based on the environmental issues and concerns generated in the neighbourhood puzzle game. An example statement might be:

“The houses in this neighbourhood are of poor quality, what can we do about this”

The hats are then ‘worn’ (hypothetically) in a sequence that is pre-defined by the facilitator. When one colour hat is in play, everyone must speak from that perspective. Usually the facilitator will begin with the white hat, this allows any information that is already known to be presented. Next a red hat might be used to allow people to express their feelings about that issue. If comments up to that point have been predominantly negative, the facilitator might suggest the yellow hat to draw out more positive ideas and opinions, then the green hat to generate some creative ideas about how that issue might be addressed. The yellow hat and purple hats would then be used in turn to explore the positive and negative aspects of each of these creative ideas in turn. Participants are actively encouraged to come up with new and innovative ideas; no idea is too crazy for consideration.

When the facilitator calls for the hats to be changed to a different colour, everybody must speak from this new perspective. Each hat is strictly time limited (de Bono recommends that hats are changed every five minutes – less time is generally given to the red hat and more to the ‘ideas generating’ green hat). A single statement can take up to twenty minutes to explore fully, so there is generally only time to explore two or three in any one focus group session.

Lessons

One of the most important outcomes from the use of this method for our research purposes has been that it allowed residents to generate their own ideas about how the problems they had identified could be addressed and systematically consider the pros and cons of adopting these in practice. People enjoyed the element of fun these games introduced and this added to the richness of the discussions. Participants reported that they could more openly say what they wanted without fear of intimidation and the ‘hats’ helped them to consider other people’s points of view more favourably. The success of the method was particularly noticeable in the final report backs to the LSP Boards, where residents were able to articulate their ideas to ‘the professionals’, something they said they would not have been able to do without the experience of the group sessions.

Dr Karen Lucas is the research co-ordinator for the Centre for Sustainable Development (CfSD) at the University of Westminster and a founder member of the co-ordinating team for the Government’s Sustainable Development Research Network (SDRN).

The final report ‘Representing neighbourhood environmental concerns within Local Strategic Partnerships’ will be published in November.

Contact: lucask1@wmin.ac.uk or 020 7911 5073top