Transferring British Community Entreprises to the Dutch Context

1Challenge the future

Transferring British Community Enterprises to the Netherlands Context: Sense or Nonsense?

Dr. Reinout KleinhansDelft University of Technology, OTB – Research for the Built Environment


Context

• Prolonged crisis, budget cuts, and retrenchment of welfare states

• Searching for alternative ways to regenerate neighbourhoods and combat social inequality

• Looking for innovative ways to realise important goals in service provision without spending large sums of tax money

• Stimulating active citizenship and promoting citizen self-organisation is high on the political agenda• UK: Big Society -> community empowerment• NL: Active Citizenship and self-responsibility


A Cross-Channel Interest

• Strong Dutch interest in the British concept of Community Enterprises

• UK: more than 600 community-led organisations which are supported by Locality

• NL: national program of experiments with a presumably Dutch equivalent of community enterprises (bewonersbedrijven)• Two-year program initiated by LSA (Netherlands Organisation

representing residents in Priority Neighbourhoods)• Support by Ministry of the Interior (BZK)• Also commissioned our two-year monitoring study

• Will CEs truly ‘work’ in the Netherlands?


Defining Social Enterprises (Pearce, 2003)

1. Having a social purpose or purposes;

2. Achieving the social purposes by, at least in part, engaging in

trade

in the marketplace;

3. Not distributing profits to individuals;

4. Holding assets and wealth in trust for community benefit;

5. Democratically involving members of its constituency in the

governance of the organisation;

6. Being independent organisations accountable to a defined

constituency and to the wider community.

•CEs define their social purpose in relation to a defined population or sub-group living in a spatially defined area (Bailey, 2012).


CEs Aims and Activities

• Many CEs arise from a particular local demand, need or service deficiency not taken up by government or commercial entrepreneur

• Activities and projects undertaken by CEs (Bailey, 2012: 28):• Provision and management of workspace, or even property management• Out of school education, training and advice• Provision of nurseries, childcare, play space and community facilities• Provision or facilitation of social and affordable housing• Provision and enhancement of parks and open spaces• Health and healthy living programmes,• Sports, leisure, recreation, festivals, theatre and the arts• Income generation and welfare benefits advice, • Programmes for sub-groups, e.g. young people, pensioners, BME groups

• Potential for ‘new’ forms of neighbourhood regeneration


Critique on the Big Society (UK)

• CEs may take a crucial position in the Big Society Agenda, but …

• “The Big Society is nothing more than funding cuts in disguise, hitting those in deprived neighbourhoods hardest.”

• "Big Society rhetoric is all too often heard by many therefore as aspirational waffle designed to conceal a deeply damaging withdrawal of the state from its responsibilities to the most vulnerable.“ (Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, 2012)


Source: http://cowlingreport.blogspot.nl/2011/02/friday-facts-uk-big-society-is.html


Active Citizenship in the Netherlands

• No ‘Big Society’ but the term citizenship has increased in popularity since the late 1990s. Now a key policy tool to address many issues.

• ‘Active citizenship’ entered the public spotlight on the back of two developments (Hurenkamp et al. 2011):• Fear that rising self-centeredness handicaps civic engagement.• Fear that growing diversity is putting an end to social cohesion and

leads to a lack of shared language and solutions.

• New momentum by the Social Support Act (2007), promoting:• Participation and active involvement of vulnerable groups within society• Active citizenship: participation of able-bodied citizens and their

associations in the development and implementation of local social policy.

Source: Lub, V. & Uyterlinde, M. (2012). Evaluating State-Promoted Civic Engagement and Participation of Vulnerable Groups …


Can the British concept be copied to the Dutch context …..? (1)

• Ample opportunities for “bottom-up” self-organisation

• However: it takes decades to establish sound CEs • Acquiring long-term assets is a slow and difficult process

• Crisis lowers value creation of many assets (land and properties)

• Difference in organisational and civic cultures • UK has a long tradition of co-operative and mutual organisations• NL: government as main provider of public services

• Dutch residents groups inevitably face a cultural transition to a more entrepreneurial form of governance


Can the British concept be copied to the Dutch context …..? (2)• Netherlands: Government calls upon the responsibilities of

people. It is your duty to help. Citizens should not get more power… only more responsibility. It is OK to be negative about citizens who are not responsible and help others.

• UK: Government aims to empower people. You are invited to take action, show initiatives. In the UK moving responsibilities and power from national to local governments and local communities is seen as necessary to give citizens more power.

• In UK there seems to be more energy, optimism, and funding. In the NL, policy may instrumentalise citizen action at the cost of the intrinsic motivation of citizens to help each other.Source: Verhoeven, I. & Tonkens, E. (2013). Talking Active Citizenship: Framing Welfare State Reform in England and

the Netherlands


Can the British concept be copied to the Dutch context …..? (3)• Paradox: localities with the greatest need to solve social problems,

usually have the lowest capacity for self-organisation

• Well-equipped citizens may develop activities to the benefit of their own interests, but not to the interest of other community members• Exclusion from CE benefits

• Self organisation can thus lead to selection and more inequality. Issues important to the most vulnerable might not be taken up.

• Governments torn between self-responsibility discourse and fear • Officials have difficulty in behaving supportively (“affectionate neglect”)• What if residents’ initiatives fail …..?• Citizens not necessarily do what the government thinks is good for them


Some BIG questions remaining

• Does the Netherlands approach of ‘forced’ active citizenship work? What role should the government play?

• Do citizens have time for all of this? Do they all want to participate and take action themselves? What if not?

• Are citizen initiatives allowed to fail?

• Who looks after the interests of those who cannot successfully organise themselves?

• Who is responsible for our key services (education, health, housing)… and the liveability of our neighbourhoods?

Education

Transferring British Community Entreprises to the Dutch Context