Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Book launch - 'The council hasn’t had a good track record of engagement'
Former Haringey councillor Denis Dillon is launching a new book exploring community participation in Haringey.
'Lessons for the Big Society: Planning, Regeneration and the Politics of Community Participation', co-authored by Dillon.
Professor Marjorie Mayo of Goldsmiths said of the book:
‘This important book illustrates the impacts of successive government policies to engage communities. These are explored through experiences of planning and regeneration in Haringey, North London – itself a microcosm of wider social divisions and spatial inequalities. Despite decades of policy initiatives, the voices of less advantaged communities were still not being heard effectively, in comparison with the voices of more advantaged residents, in leafier parts of the borough. As this topical book concludes, there are key lessons here in relation to the current policy context.’
The book comes after Dillon studied a PhD on community involvement and started researching how residents groups can prompt council action across the borough.
He said: “One of the conclusions of the book is that, historically, the council hasn’t had a good track record of engagement with the eastern part of the borough.”
He added that the “Big Society” - a flagship policy from the Conservative party - may work in areas with a history of community involvement, but areas like Tottenham will need “ongoing public investment”.
Dennis told me that Harringay Online even gets a mention (though whether good or bad, I'm not yet sure).
Dennis has added an event listing with the book details here.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Clive Carter on
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Hugh I can now tell you how Harringay Online is mentioned in the book by "Denis".
HoL is briefly discussed in the context of GreenN8 and the "middle of the borough" - there are several passages about GreenN8, then on page 100:
Green N8 came to overlap in membership with a new web-based community network 'Harringay Online', a self-described centre-of-the-borough 'virtual community'. AGRA, Green N8 and Harringay Online collectedly [sic. he means collectively] represented a growth of community capaicity [sic] to identify and contest planning issues in the centre of the borough. However, these had yet to achieve anything like the track record of success in doing so that had been built up in the West over a number of decades.
Even in such a short quote (in this passage relevant to HoL) there's evidence of repetition and spelling issues. I'm surprised this met the standards for a Ph.D. thesis: historically such candidates were expected to exhibit correct spelling: just for starters!
The book received criticism from Amazon reviewers (here).
Given that Mr. Dillon is a former Haringey Councillor and Executive Member for Regeneration, it was a little surprising that the council's Library Service hadn't acquired the book – until now, following my request. I will continue to read the book to see if there's anything worthwhile in it.
The book has a pretentious title.
However due to the subject matter – planning matters in our Borough - and it's author – someone who held a senior role in council in this area - one would have thought it would be of wide interest, especially to Members of HoL. I remember there were a number of follow-up posts to your original thread - but they are now missing.
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Permalink Reply by Hugh on
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Thanks for the update.
I wonder what success he's talking about and how he's judging it. I guess, like many serving on the Council, he doesn't get that HoL isn't an organisation. On first reading I assumed that he was referring to success in contesting planning issues. Given that that's not what HoL was set up to do nor primarily to enable, I'm sure its fair comment. As far as anything else is concerned, I'd be interested to know what's he talking about, how's he's reached his conclusions and whether they are at all evidence-based.
Follow-up posts missing? Really? No idea. I haven't done anything with them. If people have deleted their own posts, I'm unable to track why or when that happened.
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Hugh despite the flaws of the book I'll read it with interest, including Mr Dillon's Chapter 3, "Local Politics in Haringey".
Mr Dillon seems to have a bee in his bonnet about "Community Planning Elites" "in the West", a term he much uses. Presumably those in the aspiring "middle-of-the-borough" aren't yet upgraded to élite status.
My first impression is that the book says as much or more about the author, a former Council Regeneration Supremo, and about the municipal outlook, as it does about planning matters in Haringey.
Apparently, some of these impudent Community Planning Elites are equal (in terms of knowledge and expertise) to the council and even to Council Officers. Imagine that! The cheek of ordinary folk thinking they can talk to the council on equal terms!
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Permalink Reply by pamish on
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'What has happened to academic research? How did this work get two higher degrees and an academic publication? Did they not have supervisors? This is the worst example of an academic publication I have seen.' The Ama*on reviewers agree with you.
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Hi Pam, the book is not wholly bad and parts are quite interesting, but I too am surprised that it made it into print in its current state (and never mind qualified for a Doctorate, that are supposed to push back the frontiers of human knowledge). There are spelling errors - the kind that would have been picked up by a computer spell checker. I'm not sure that the professor (top of thread) did herself a favour by associating herself with the book.
Some, unfamiliar with Haringey, will take this book as authoritative, despite the glaring errors identified by Joyce Rosser on Amazon (calling Hornsey Town Hall a grade 2 nineteenth century building is careless. Does this reflect general carelessness about buildings by the council?).
The book is repetitive and needed editing.
Community Planning Elites is used over and again and I'm not sure that whatever little meaning there is in this term can bear such over use. I think the authors find it difficult to suffer the idea that the ruled have the temerity to challenge what their masters believe is best for them. I don't think its helpful; I see it as a jargon term that's no more than a coping concept for the council, to try to make sense of planning challenges.
Messrs Dillon and Fanning describes most or all campaign groups as "single issue", as if this is somehow noteworthy. The book includes discussion of Alexandra Palace, Hornsey Town and Wards Corner.
Wards Corner is described on page 141 as having been "allowed to become very run-down". Four sentences on, "The Bridge NDC ... were concerned that the area had become very run down". The council's alternative is described as intensive and high density.
Much of the planning and regeneration-related community activism in the East was accounted for by a small group of people in a few overlapping groups that comprised a local community planning elite.
As with much of the book, there's a mixture of insight and inaccuracy. Take for example:
To some extent their [i.e. emerging community planning elites] virtual communities - the online magazines on heritage and environmental issues in Tottenham, the online chat rooms and bulletins of Harringay N8 [sic] - bypass longstanding excluded and mostly black and ethnic minority communities in the the more deprived parts of the East. Who speaks for them?
Property-led regeneration
The authors speak about Tottenham Hale and the council's property-led regeneration plan for wider Tottenham had led to the development of a retail park alongside large amounts of high-rise apartments in nearby Tottenham Hale. ... By 2010 significant elements of the Tottenham Hale development was 'owned' or likely to be owned by NAMA, the Irish government's bad bank which had taken over the debts of investors in the property-led regeneration of the area. Property-led regeneration had been less successful in other parts of Tottenham.
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Permalink Reply by Chris Setz on
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Went to the launch of this book at the marvellous Big Green Bookshop and met several interesting and engaging people there - as far as I can see, almost every Big Green Bookshop event is worth attending!
I do want to read anyone's view of our area (particularly if they've been here a while and were in the 'centre' of things) and how we got where we are now, however ill-informed, misjudged etc because it's all about context. We don't seem very good at preserving objectivity as to what has happened, so seem to miss some of the opportunities to not repeat mistakes and to learn lessons.
What I'd like to better understand in order to help bring about change is, how come we seem to be in an 'us and them' situation with the Council, when the Council are employed by us and we are responsible for their actions?
People seem keen to criticise but not, apparently, accept this responsibility. The way it works as far as I can see is that we have a system of collective decision making - it's a bit rich if all you did was to moan about it afterwards. We should accept that the Council operate on a 'best efforts' basis - we get the Council we deserve.
If we knew more about how both progress and the inevitable mistakes were made, we could maybe begin to fulfil more of our responsibility - to improve our situation. Were we to somehow encourage more academics to focus on us, we'd surely have a wider range of sources on which to draw conclusions.
So I wanted to support the authors at the launch, but regretfully decided against buying the book when I noticed the price (£50)!
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Chris I too attended the book launch and I thought David Lammy's speech was of a better quality than the book it was promoting!
What is a little irritating about the book is that its presented as an objective, dispassionate analysis, almost as though by an onlooker. And yet as Executive Cabinet Member for Regeneration, the author was there at the heart of it all. I think Mr Dillon means well, but I haven't yet come across anything that accepts responsibility for failures. After Mr Dillon's time, but in time to be included in the book, was the council's plans in 2009 to build housing over part of Down Lane Park, Tottenham. This may be in the book, but it doesn't appear in the index. I wonder if its there? The local (and successful) opposition to this, does not fit with Mr Dillon's thesis.
How did we come to be in an 'us and them' situation?
Mr Dillon has a chapter that includes Anti-Municipalism and as in Hugh's title, the council hasn't had a good record of engagement. I can hazard some suggestions to answer your question:
- secrecy
- low aspirations
- municipal arrogance
- policy of privatisation
- too close to developers
- grasping parking monetising
- council too big and too remote
- standardised, off-the-peg solutions
- chronically poor and insincere consultation
- all opposition treated as political opposition
When on the occasions the council gets things right, I am practically overcome with the desire to lavish praise. Where I live, the street lighting is signficantly improved and Stroud Green and Harringay Library has been signficantly improved and ... the council did a good job. There I said it!
But it is remarkable, because its rare. Should we not be able to take excellence for granted?
But I cannot fail to report that (in the nineties) the council had wanted to close our library. Its remaining open and the big improvements followed a campaign by local residents: the thing that Mr Dillon would disparage as a "single issue campaign". Some residents actually care about where they live and some are prepared to fight council plans to degrade facilities. Council policies are done to areas.
The idea that the council are employed by us, is something that Mr Dillon himself might well argue against. In the chapter In Defence of Local Government on page 149, he quotes someone as saying:
Council officers deliver the services for us. They are professionals. Like soldier they do what they are told. There is no need for them to consult citizens to find out what they think. That's the councillors' job. And if they get it wrong they get voted out. It's simple isn't it?
Mr Dillon notes It is by no means simple.
We, the public, are not responsible for council officer's actions and indeed some of us have opposed some of their "actions". If it were less costly to take the council to task by way of judicial reviews, I believe we'd see more of them. The courts are a level playing field and a forum where council cannot deploy its overweening power. The number of successful JRs of council decisions shows that the council is not always operating well. Every JR allowed is a sign of failure by the council and the wins are often an indictment of council processes.
I for one do not accept that the Council operates on a 'best efforts' basis - if we did, then we might as well cover our ears and close our eyes, we, the residents who have to live with council actions. Everyone deserves a better council!
I don't suggest you buy the book, but it will become available to borrow from perhaps the only council service that operates well: the Library Service.
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Permalink Reply by Joanna Rosemary Foster on
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I could write a PhD on my twelve-year-long unsuccessful efforts to persuade Haringey Council to allow a proper farmers' market in front of Hornsey Town Hall. I wonder if Denis was aware of this, (it would make an interesting case study) and whether he is able to enlighten us as to the repeated declarations from the Council that they welcomed this offer but had a few loose ends to clear up, such as "consulting the shopkeepers". This went on over and over again, with the issue being kicked around from one department to the other, at one point handed to "regeneration". Haringey Council is famed among national environmental and food organisations for this unique resistance to a popular initiative which would have cost it nothing. It obviously has something to do with East and West.
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Clive, I fully understand the need to characterise the Council they way you do but it's more about you than them, I think. I don't think there can be a council anywhere in the world that can submit to a range of opinions that are so hard to be objective about.
We don't even seem to be able to make comparisons. There is no credible list of how secretive councils are, how low their aspirations, how arrogant etc. You can't have it both ways - either you support the will of the people or you don't. The will of the people is that we have a Labour Council and have done for decades. People generally are not very interested in the topic - most can't even be bothered to turn up to vote once very few years.
I totally understand how you might feel. I've been 'up against' the council myself (albeit far less than you) in an effort, as a resident, to help them be better at their job and 'do the right thing'. The deep cynicism that experience provoked in me and my continuing annoyance help me better understand better how you must feel having waged a long and partially successful campaign to highlight calumny. What I want to know is, short of revolution, how can we make a material improvement and what makes us think that our opinion as individuals counts for much?
I think it's worth reminding you how councils measure themselves. They simply avoid the anthropomorphism I think we all suffer from - the council isn't a person with a character, however easy it us for us to think of 'them' like that. As I guess you know better than I, according to the Local Government Association, they see themselves 'at the heart of leading local communities and commissioning better public services'.
Haringey spends over £1Bn/yr and has measures that try to objectify so, ideally, if you're going to criticise them, it might carry more weight if you were to take them on in their own terms. They publish their own self-assessment, the so-called 'performance reports' every quarter, based on the Council Plan - how else would you have it done? You have used this approach before, so it's a bit of a surprise to see you resort to unquantifiable opinion.
For me, the danger in what you write is that you inadvertently make things worse.
I think Council officers are striving to create and grow their profession as civil servants. Increasingly, (like footballers), the players are not locals, they move from team to team. I notice that there are those in the Council I guess have been there a long time. They'd survived such swingeing cuts that I guess that they must occupy positions hard to abolish.
I think Councillors too are people who care deeply about local issues and we've seen the way they do the job evolve as we evolve as a society. Public service is a mark of our civilisation and a fine thing to do. That's not clear enough from you what you have written on this site. Surely, above all, you support and endorse the political process, don't you?
I think you are promoting a series of myths that are damaging all of us. Let's try to agree that:
1) Few, if anyone, who works for the council, either as an employee or a politician, is corrupt - far from it. In any group of people there are likely to be a range of behaviours so yes, we'll never be free of crime. Generally they're no more or less corrupt that any other council. My impression is that people who are employed by the Council generally possess a high degree of personal integrity, even when I think they're badly wrong. It can't be much fun to be a public servant in a time of severe cuts and in a borough with residents who appear to mistrust and denigrate. That's just my impression though - I could be wrong.
2) Politicians have a right and a duty to push through political policies, and so they do. That's why we elected them. There is no long term hidden 'ethos' that runs through a council that has been Labour for decades. Political parties change to reflect the people who elect them. This Council leader is not the same as her predecessor. There is a permanent tension between the political aims of those in power at the council and the civil servants who are avowedly non political. The politicians decide on our behalf, the civil servants execute the policies on our behalf - they both work for us in the same way that doctors, the police, teachers etc work for us.
3) Councils that have a majority from one party try to oppose central government if it's a different party, but also whatever party is in power centrally they try to stop the government telling them what to do and preventing them from doing what they want. They are far from autonomous, there is a whole body of complex rules and regulations designed to prevent folly and central government has a lot of power to force change through. They are heavily constrained and a key service they provide us is to help us achieve what we want by navigating through these constraints for us.
It seems to me that they genuinely try to promote and exchange methods proven to have worked elsewhere, and to learn from each other. There are 423 local councils. They might very well be a self-satisfied, power-hungry bunch but abuse of power comes as no surprise, does it?
Ours has decided on these priorities:
Work with local businesses to create jobs
Deliver regeneration to key areas of the borough
Tackle the housing challenges
Improve school standards and outcomes for young people
Deliver responsive, high quality services to residents
We can help by being more constructive, following your example over Ally Pally. I think they're wrong over Hornsey Town Hall - instead of giving a private school the whole huge campus for £1/yr for the next 125 years, they should obtain a commercial rent similar to the £80,000 they're earning from renting out a bit of it at the moment, and use the money to grow community participation.
It makes me annoyed that we have a great opportunity, promised to locals for years, to enrich this town - something we're ripe for. I don't know all the facts and am in no sense 'qualified' to get my view enacted, so why should anyone follow me when I cannot gather enough support from others?
Surely the best outcome is, however reluctantly, to accept that the way things are done is collectively endorsed and we have solo, unrepresentative and probably idiosyncratic views. Shouldn't we try to reinforce respect for the Council rather than undermine our own system?
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The relationship between central government and local authorities is to be codified, apparently, with the draft code published today. The very first paragraph makes the point that, within their spheres of competence, local authorities are 'co-equal', not subordinate to central government.
It seems that Local authorities in England are not as free in many respects as those in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
This helps endorse my point, I think, that it's not as simple as:
'Haringey' did such-and-such
implying that crazy people in the Civic Centre committed yet another error.
There seems to be a lot more going on around almost all council activities than people realise, so many factors to take into account, so much experience elsewhere to learn from.
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Permalink Reply by Colinloves on
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50 quid !!!!!
Did he print it all off his home computer?
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If you have a Kindle, a saving can be effected by buying the Kindle Edition on Amazon, here. The price is £41.20 that includes the VAT applicable to digital books and free delivery (!). Amazon claims this version contains "real page numbers". One fears the numerous spelling and grammatical mistakes are also carried over.
The main "thesis" of the book is that residents in the "West" seem to care more about planning matters and are better organised.
The author confirms he had time as an ex-officio board member on the Bridge NDC. In the several paragraphs about the Bridge NDC, there appears to be no mention of the huge sums this body handled ... and about the accounting irregularities.
It's acknowledged that "one third of the eighteen community representatives on the Bridge NDC who joined between 2002 and 2006 either resigned or decided not to stand for re-election when their term was up." (p.123). But this is put down to a lack of time. There is no mention of the significant resignation of a councillor, nor the two sackings of community representatives. Did the latter two manage to win a judicial review on the matter over merely work or family commitments?
The author is mildly critical of some aspects of the council's approach to planning matters. But one needs to bear in mind that its written by a former politician who puts a gloss on some things and more seriously, manages to omit much.
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