Street reps: an everday story of trust and power

The other day I was running some workshops with street reps in Shipley with my daughter, three years since the first set of workshops I ran with them.

On the surface, the initiative has gone well, with a good sprinkling of residents taking up the role and ready to talk about it. And their contribution seems to have had an impact. For example, the proportion of people in East Shipley who say that rubbish and litter lying around is a problem has decreased from 50% to 36% in three years. Anecdotally, the drugs presence has diminished significantly as people have at last felt supported in raising concerns.

But there is disquiet. This is a predominantly white low income area, part of which comes within the 2% most deprived in the country. One report notes that a lot of people feel that all the ‘big’ regeneration money goes into areas of central Bradford dominated by black and minority ethnic groups, and that ‘white Shipley’ misses out. Well, I don't know the central areas of the city, but there's no evidence of any kind of regeneration money going into the two neighbourhoods of Shipley where I've been working. So it doesn't feel wrong to sympathise if these people feel a sense of marginalisation and abandonment.

What do we expect from the community cohesion indicator? The percentage of residents who believe that people from different backgrounds get on well together declined a disconcerting 10% (from 66% to 56%) between 2007 and 2009. The national average is 76%. So it was not totally unsurprising, if unnerving, to overhear one of the street reps delighting in the prospect that a BNP candidate is likely to get voted in to a local ward. This could be a nasty, dingy corner of local politics.

The second group we spoke to insisted that their role is not political, by which they mean, it's not characterised by party politics. But it's profoundly, inescapably political: these are unpaid volunteers living among people whose neighbourhood they 'represent' - often anonymously because of fears of reprisals - without democratic process or accountability but with the essential task of standing at the interface of citizen-as-subject and state-as-provider.

Every call they make to environment or housing services, every conversation they are having with the police support officer, perhaps every time they step outside and have a word with a neighbour, they're trying to reassert the citizen's influence over what happens, and juggling the fizzing firesticks of responsibility, responsiveness, interference, surveillance, vigilantism, identity, collective interest and so on. They do this from a base of controlled influence and minimal power.

We'll be going back for several more sessions, but (partly because they've not had much press for a long time) I'm already concerned that the street reps movement may not be in blooming good health.

I see it as an important experiment, as much about new forms of engaged democracy as about making services locally responsive; as much about co-delivery as about efficiency. But it's apparent that, as with Neighbourhood Watch before it, the whole initiative can be weakened by lack of trust.

Neighbourhood Watch empowers its representatives, but is based unavoidably on a foundation of distrust. Street reps take their place on a basis of pro-social action, but (sometimes for very good reasons) may have neither the power nor the necessary level of generalised trust to have the influence that justifies the effort.

Maybe too little has been tried. The potential of neighbourhood websites is certainly one area that cries out to be developed alongside support for street reps. We're not done yet.

Comments

[Tony Bovaird]

Hi Kevin

This is really important and it's worrying to read about your concerns here. I wonder if we need to rethink the incentives which we give to people who take up these roles as street reps - if they are essential to the future health of local democracy, as I believe they are, do we need to find some more effective ways of supporting them and making them feel what they do is worthwhile? Would be interested in hearing other people's ideas and experiences on this.

[Kevin Harris]

Tony - thanks for your two comments and I'm especially pleased to hear that you too believe the street reps movement to be important. I've been very disappointed at the limited interest in how the idea has been taken up, examined and discussed.

It may be that too many old-fashioned 'awkward' local activists have been put off by managerialist attempts to sanitise the role. But we still need people who know how to be awkward, at local level; and we need services to get into conversation with them about their issues and not avoid or neutralise them.

Obviously we have to be very careful about incentives, but it's apparent that as offical funded support decreases there could be a sudden decline of interest and involvement, and the movement could be in jeopardy.

Our work with street reps continues, but I would welcome a suitable forum to explore the emerging issues, before the threatened public sector funding constraints take effect.

[Hannah Worth]

Hi Kevin
I think there is a lot to be learned from looking at some of the contrasting experiences in Birmingham; from city-wide approaches such as Street Champions - very formal, attracted people who like filling in forms, ultimately not that successful- to Community Watch in Perry Common - started by local women walking about their neighbourhood, still going, great partnership working with local police.
Be interested in exploring issues with you, Chamberlain Forum would be happy to help facilitate some debate.

[Nick Booth]

There's a real balancing act for street reps who also use the web. Very local sites help them put things into the public domain - they also raise the stakes in neighbourhoods where the anti social want the opposite to be true.

You know I'm a passionate advocate of local active citizens sharing publicly - but I've yet to figure out the right way to structure things in neighbourhoods where they may be menaced, or worse, for doing so.

[Kevin Harris]

Agree Nick - work with street reps seems to throw up lots of tensions and balancing acts.

I think most are hoping that these are temporary: that their efforts will help restore a sense of order in their neighbourhoods, which in time will allow the kind of transparency that fits with social media. At the moment, with most of those I'm talking to, the closed channels of telephony are where most of the communication has to take place.

Hannah thanks for your comment also - will be in touch so we can open this out a little.
k

[Leo Romero]

Kevin, Could you please refer me to resources on street reps? I know something about Neighborhood Watch ( http://ourblocks.net/neighborhood-watch-and-citizen-patrols-evaluation ), but street repping's new to me. Particularly interested in how to set them up, and how they compare to other approaches. I've got a community meeting coming up in late April, and have invited Oakland CA Housing police to talk about Neighborhood Watch and community policing. Might be good to discuss alternatives. - Thanks; Leo

PS: Your link above ( http://neighbourhoods.typepad.com/neighbourhoods/2007/03/you_can_come_ba.htm ) is broken. I think the right link is http://neighbourhoods.typepad.com/neighbourhoods/2007/03/you_can_come_ba.html

[Kevin Harris]

Many thanks for pointing that out Leo, now sorted.
I'm not aware of any general summaries of SRs but haven't had time to renew my research since I first looked in 07. There are one or two unpublished evaluations I've seen, and my own reports unfortunately not in the public domain, but I'm hoping to write something later this year. Sometimes they're called street champions or street ambassadors. They are part of the modern tradition of neighbourhood management, elements in state-funded approaches to local governance. Beware glossy newsletter reports saying how wonderful the initiative has been. K

[Leo Romero]

Thanks Kevin. That may explain why I found almost nothing about street reps on The Google (although there's lots about Wall Street champions). Had better luck by searching just the UK pages http://bit.ly/aEtViu - at least I can see how the concept's applied in neighbourhouds there.

Your recent http://neighbourhoods.typepad.com/neighbourhoods/2010/03/street-reps-empowerment-and-statistics.html says more about how the thing actually works in the real world than I've read elsewhere.

You should copyright "Beware glossy reports" and manufacture some street signs.

[Liz Ixer]

Hi Kevin
I'm a very 'out and proud' commmunity volunteer (as we call our street reps here)who documents and is guided by what people talk about on Harringay Online. I also photograph and put on Flickr some of the issues and get a little debate going around the images

Although some of my posts on HOL have a slightly self deprecating air with references to sensible shoes and busybodies, I am very serious in my commitment to the idea.

Recently I got a neighbourhood walkabout going with street enforcement and local police and I asked people on HOL to tell me where they wanted us to go and what they wanted to talk about. So we are potentially quite a force for chanelling concerns from neighbourhoods.

My problem is that we are often focusing on the negative aspects and this can have the effect of making volunteer meetings quite depressing moan fests. I try very hard (as you can imagine) to inject some positivity into them and I am pushing to get us some involvement in designing solutions not just reacting to problems.

We have noticed a move to make us neighbourhood watch style reps but we have so far resisted this in favour of being 'green' and interested in championing environmental issues over criminal ones. This kind of lets us 'off the hook'in terms of dealing with the menacing element of neighbourhoods, although I have had one or two showdowns with local charmers over dog poo.

It would be great to have a forum for reps/volunteers/champions to talk more at 'street level' as it were about successes/failures and ways forward.