Social Provision In
Eastover
This report emerged from a fact-finding visit to Bridgwater
by workers from ‘Family Centres’ in the Czech Republic. Paid for by the
European Social Fund and managed on the ground by local international links
group Bridgwater International, the trip saw the Czech visitors link with the
Eastover Sports and Social Trust to learn about social inclusion in a deprived
area of Bridgwater.
The Czech Republic doesn’t have a system analogous to our
state-funded Children’s Centres, and the group, while including state-employed
social workers and psychologists, was predominately made up of managers and volunteers
from private, non-profit Family Centres (while the majority of their funding
does come from the Czech government, it comes in the form of grants that have
to be frequently applied and re-applied for). The visit was therefore an
opportunity for them to experience how the kinds of services they provide to
communities in the Czech Republic have been traditionally funded and delivered
in the UK, and, at a time when the future of publically funded frontline services is
increasingly uncertain, how the British situation is changing amid large-scale
cuts to local government budgets.
Visiting a variety of services and social resources,
predominantly in Eastover but also with some comparative visits to areas run by
other authorities, the trip also provided an opportunity to reflect on the
situation from a British perspective. This report aims to collect together the
week’s experiences and attempt to assess what resources are available for
residents of Eastover, where more provision is needed, and, given the changing
nature of both central and local government funding, suggest how vital services
can be financially supported going forward.
2) Eastover General Overview
As the name implies, Eastover is an area of central-eastern
Bridgwater, serving as a ward of both Bridgwater Town and Sedgemoor District
councils. Bounded on the its west side by the River Parrett and, apart from a
small protrusion around Penzoy Avenue, on the east by the main Bristol to
Exeter railway line, it contains two main residential areas – one that extends
northwards along Bristol Road and Bath Road, and another roughly central area
where estates off St. John Street meet those surrounding Eastover Park. The
majority of the housing in both these areas was constructed in the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries, mostly consisting of very long terraces comprised of
two-up two-down-style houses, and, as such, were originally designed to be used
in very different social contexts than today. However, a third area of new
builds was constructed to the south of Eastover Park in the 1990s, known
locally as the ‘Duck Estate’.
Eastover has two main commercial areas – although their
significance to the town and overall economic health have declined markedly
over the last three decades, Eastover itself and St. John Street still house a
mix of small independent shops, other small businesses, medium-sized chain
stores, pubs and restaurants. It’s also here that two of the town’s six major
supermarkets can be found. Lidl is off Eastover itself, while Asda is the other
side of the bus station, just to the north. The second major commercial area is
centred on Bridgwater Retail Park, which houses several major national
retailers and a MacDonalds restaurant, and sits alongside a large Sainsbury’s
supermarket.
While Bridgwater’s present-day industrial activity is much
reduced from what it was decades previously, Eastover remains one of the most
industrialised areas of the town. It contains two sizeable industrial estates –
one in the far south of the ward, known to locals as Colley Lane, and the
Castlefield estate in the north-west of the ward. The latter also contains a number
of very large warehouse-sized retailers like Matalan.
2a) The Political
Context
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| Bridgwater House HQ of Sedgemoor District Council |
Eastover is subject to three tiers of local government –
Bridgwater Town Council, Sedgemoor District Council and Somerset County
Council. Earlier in Bridgwater’s history, town-level government was the most powerful
and the most important – by the mid twentieth century, Bridgwater’s
then-Borough Council had control over housing, social services and other major functions.
In 1972, the Heath government legislated to change the structure of local
government, and Bridgwater’s 770 year-old borough status was revoked. A new
system based around larger Districts was created, and the focus of power
shifted away from Bridgwater itself to new largely rural Sedgemoor.
It wasn’t until 2003 that Bridgwater regained a degree of
town-level representation with the establishment of Bridgwater Town Council.
The body was largely powerless, and while this hasn’t changed much in the
intervening decade, it is increasingly being called upon to pick up
responsibilities being shed by the District and County Councils as budgets are
cut.
Sedgemoor District Council now has a wide range of
responsibilities, including presiding over social security payments and social
housing, making planning decisions, refuse collection and street cleaning, car
parks, environmental services and regeneration projects. Somerset County
Council, meanwhile, oversees schools and youth services, social services and
highway maintenance among other socially strategic functions.
2b) Demographics
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| Eastover Ward |
The most recent and reliable data about Eastover and its
population comes from research conducted for Somerset County Council by its
Partnership Intelligence Unit in 2011. That year, according to these figures,
there were 4,633 people living in Eastover. 2,519 of them, over half, were
working-age adults between the ages of 25-64. At 34, the median age was
relatively young. 569, approximately 12% of the total population, were over 65,
and 263 were over 75. At the opposite end of the spectrum, 878, or
approximately 19%, were under the age of 16. 620 were under the age of 9, and
384 were under the age of 4.
The total number of households in Eastover was 2,060 in
2011. A sizeable portion of these, 690, were only occupied by one person, 208
by sole occupiers over the age of 65. Here we see a section of the population clearly
at risk of social isolation, the combination of sole occupancy and advanced
age, likely to be complicated by health or mobility issues, leaving individuals
housebound without social interaction or mental stimulation. Single-parent
households represent another key at-risk group – 180 Eastover households were
occupied by lone parents with dependent children.
Like Bridgwater and Somerset as a whole, the vast majority of
people living in Eastover are indigenously British – at 97.1%, the percentage
of Eastover residents who self-describe as white British closely matches the
98% who do when Somerset is taken as whole. Only 135 residents are classed as
‘Black or Minority Ethnic’. It is worth noting, though, that the popular
perception of a situation is often more important that verifiable reality, and
locals view Eastover as one of the more multicultural areas of the town. This
is perhaps because its extra-European ethnic minority community is especially
visible, owning a number of restaurants and takeaway businesses along St John
Street.
There is also a heightened awareness of the increased
inter-European migration of the previous decade – Polden Street, Eastover, is
colloquially known by some as ‘Poland Street’, because of the high number of
Central and Eastern Europeans thought to live there. Around 500 current Eastover
residents who were born overseas arrived in Britain within the last decade, 309
of these from countries that joined the European Union between 2001 and 2011.
In 116 Eastover households, no resident has English as their first language. Here,
there’s potential for much social isolation, Eastover now being home to a
sizeable migrant community not just cut off from familial support networks but
also struggling with language and other cultural barriers. It’s also a sad but
undeniable fact that this section of the community is sometimes subject to abuse
and discrimination, particularly in a political climate turning increasingly
hostile to migrant workers.
The Partnership Intelligence Unit also gathered statistics
on the health of Eastover’s population, separating it into those with ‘Very
good health’, ‘good health’, ‘fair health’, ‘bad health’ or ‘very bad health’.
The problem with this kind of data is immediately apparent – how do you
quantify an individual’s level of health? And what are the criteria for each
category? What is the difference between someone in ‘Good health’ and ‘Very
good health?’? And could that difference simply be down to the temperament of
the individual in question, with, for example, a more positively–inclined
person more likely to describe their state of health as being better than it
objectively is?
These issues aside, we can assume the figures give a
reasonably accurate insight into the health of the population, and can be taken
as a rough guide at least – 2,075 are described as being in ‘Very good health’,
1,667 in ‘Good health’, 672 in ‘Fair health’, 181 in ‘Bad health’ and 38 in ‘Very bad health’. 325
people are described as having a long-term illness that limits their day-to-day
activities ‘a lot’, 176 of them between the ages of 16 and 64. 426 are
described as being limited ‘a little’, 242 of them in the 16 – 64 age bracket.
Of particular interest to any discussion of social inclusion are people who
provide unpaid care to an ill or disabled friend of family member, and are
often left struggling in silence without sufficient emotional or material
support. The Intelligence Unit counted 351 carers, with 205 of them providing
care between 1-19 hours a week, 60 providing 20-49 hours of care a week and 86
providing 50 or more hours a week.
The economic activity of Eastover residents is easier to
accurately assess – of the 3,492 aged between 16 and 74, 2,629 were deemed
economically active. 1,526 were in full-time employment, 541 in part-time
employment, 263 were self-employed, and 90 were full time students. The kinds
of work undertaken by Eastover residents was heavily weighted towards the
service industry – 543, the highest total for any occupational bracket, worked
in retail or motor vehicle repair. 151 worked in accommodation and food
services, and 142 worked in administrative and support services. 374 worked in
manufacturing - still a sizeable amount but far lower than would’ve had similar
employment in the ward decades previously.
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| Eastover 1905 - a busy commercial street |
863 residents between the ages of 16 and 74 were deemed
economically inactive. Of these, 863 were retired, 107 were students, 181 weren’t
able to work because of their responsibilities as carers and 161 were described as being
long-term sick or disabled. Of the 209 labelled officially ‘unemployed’, 67
were between the ages of 16 and 24. 85 were designated ‘long term unemployed’, and
34 had never worked. Among these groups especially, potential for social
isolation is high.
Eastover is also ranked as one of the most deprived areas in
Somerset. When measured by Indices of Multiple Deprivations, Eastover ranked as
the tenth move deprived ward in the county in 2010. It’s unsurprising but still
deeply saddening to find that four out of Somerset’s top ten most deprived
wards are in Bridgwater, with Sydenham ranked as the county’s most deprived. According
to mid-2012 estimates by the advocacy group End Child Poverty, 23% of
Eastover’s children were officially impoverished. Especially startling is the
fact that 146 houses in Eastover still have no central heating.
Assuming that the situation hasn’t changed dramatically
since 2011, the picture we’re left with is of an Eastover that is
socioeconomically deprived, despite the majority eligible to work being in paid
employment. We can identify key minorities more at risk of social isolation,
and more in need of resources to enable them to life safe, healthy, fulfilling
lives – Eastover’s child population, for example, nearly a quarter of whom are
officially impoverished, and their parents, particularly those struggling to
raise their offspring alone while juggling other life commitments; the elderly
in general, but particularly those living alone and/or struggling with mobility
issues; elderly or not, the section of the community with life-limiting
illnesses and disabilities; the often-forgotten unpaid carers, some of whom are
called on to provide over 50 hours a week of support every week; the migrant
community; and the unemployed. However, this isn’t to detract from the needs of
the elements of the population who don’t slot into any of the above categories
– in areas like Eastover, particularly given the prevailing economic and
political climate, life can be difficult for stably married able-bodied couples
with secure full-time jobs and 2.4 children.
3) The Resources
Available to Eastover Residents
This report will now attempt to assess what resources are
available to this population, grouping them into three broad categories:
societal resources, ie. non-state organisations like pubs, clubs and churches
that can provide significant informal support to the individuals that use them; politically funded resources, encompassing all public-run or publically funded organisations
within Eastover, whether they be funded by the Town, District or County
Councils; and commercial resources, the shops and businesses whose social
importance can go far beyond simply providing people with things to buy. It
will begin, though, with a brief discussion of a highly important but very
difficult to assess fourth category, namely family resources.
3a) Family Resources
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| Cllr Julian Taylor (Eastover) |
The extent to which individuals can rely on their families
for support obviously differs hugely between cases. That established, it’s still
worth briefly dwelling on which groups among Eastover’s population are less
able to call on the kind of familial support network many others take for
granted as it’s often these people who have to rely more heavily on the other
kinds of resources outlined above. As previously observed, a startling number
of Eastover residents live alone. This could be for any number of reasons –
family breakdown, lone individuals moving into the area for work purposes, the
death of a spouse or childlessness, for example. The children of the elderly
often ensure their care needs are met, and that they have a minimum level of
social interaction on any given week. If elderly individuals don’t have
children, or their children have moved away, they go without this familial
safety net. Working families often rely on their own parents to supply unpaid
childcare, freeing them up not only to work but to lead sociable, fulfilling
lives. Migrants who have left all their families ties back in their country of
origin cannot rely on this support. Cllr Julian Taylor, one of Eastover’s two
District Councillors, also described another local phenomenon to the group,
noting a tendency for young people from more affluent areas of Bridgwater to
move into small flats in the ward after disagreements with their parents, and,
in some cases, turn to binge drinking and illegal drugs.
These are all examples of sections of the community in need
of extra support. Again, though, these aren’t problems restricted to vulnerable
minorities. Broad socioeconomics trends over the past thirty years have
drastically changed the nature of work, increasing the number of people working
unsocial hours, and as wages have consistently failed to keep pace with
inflation, some individuals find themselves having to hold down several jobs
just to stay afloat. Concurrently, state support has dwindled. Grandparents,
once stalwarts of childcare, are likely to be younger and still in work, or
forced to work for longer a) because the real value of the state pension has
fallen while living costs have sharply risen and b) because the age at which
individuals are eligible to receive it continues to rise. The kinds of family
support that one would have been taken for granted have become harder to
maintain.
3b) Societal
Resources
By their very nature, societal resources are relatively
informal and sometimes, therefore, difficult to identify. The following
discussion of societal resources is Eastover doesn’t in any way aim to be
comprehensive, as there will always be obscure clubs, societies and other very
small but still important informal networks of support virtually unknown
outside the individuals that use them. Instead, this will be an attempt to
provide an overview of what’s available within Eastover, paying particular
highlights to individual cases deemed especially high-profile, interesting or
informative.
3bi) Pubs
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| A typical Eastover pub |
Pubs are essentially private businesses, and therefore might
seem a natural fit for the economic resources category. However, choosing to
label them as examples of societal resources is recognition of their
traditional role within the community, a role which, in some cases, continues
to this day. Historically, pubs performed a highly significant social service
as the main place where local people could meet and socialise. Eastover, like
Bridgwater as a whole, had a high number of pubs given the size of its
population. They tended to serve relatively small but highly loyal client-bases,
largely living in the immediate vicinity – it wasn’t unusual for a pub to
effectively function as a social club for the population of just a few
residential streets. During the latter part of the twentieth century and into
the early twenty-first, large proportions of these pubs have been forced to
close, the supermarket revolution leading to people buying and drinking alcohol
at home.
Many of those that remain have being forced to conform with
modern business realities and become half-restaurants, unable to make a living
selling alcohol alone. In Eastover, however, perhaps more so than other areas
of Bridgwater, a number of old-style pubs have managed to stay in business. In
the last decade, pubs have become negatively associated with binge drinking,
alcoholism and anti-social behaviour, but this has sadly distracted from their
positive social potential. These kinds of traditional pubs continue to serve as
highly localised community hubs, meeting places where locals can socialise,
relax, talk about their lives and receive informal emotional and psychological
support from people in similar situations. Given the increasing loneliness and
social isolation that has characterised the last quarter-century, this little-acknowledged
secondary function is highly important. Some pubs compete with one another in
competitive skittles leagues, firstly providing a source of recreation for
locals but also allowing them to meet and mix with people from other areas of
the town.
In Bridgwater, pubs also have additional significance given
the town’s historic Carnival tradition. The Carnival Clubs that construct carts
to take part in November’s processions have traditionally been based in pubs
around Bridgwater – Lime Kiln Carnival Club, for example, is based at the pub
of the same name on Salmon Parade, Eastover – and bring people from around the
community together, increasing social ties and making lasting friendships
through a shared endeavour. The effort and dedication clubs pour into producing
their carnival entries is often extraordinary, and it’s unsurprisingly a very
positive, rewarding experience for those who take part.
Pubs like The Railway
Club, known locally as The Shack, offer an additional service to the
community, hiring out their facilities for music nights and other social
events, as well as for political meetings.
3bii) Other
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| St John's Church |
St John’s Church,
Blake Place, Bridgwater, affordably hires out its facilities for meetings and
events, notably hosting highly beneficial, socially worthwhile organisations
like Alcoholics Anonymous. Elsewhere in Eastover, situated next to the
Children’s Centre on Westonzoyland Road (see below), is a building which was
once known as the Eastover Community Centre, but since 1999 has been run as a
charity called the Eastover Youth Centre.
Aiming to provide recreational activities for local youth, the centre hires itself
out as a venue for a variety of clubs and community groups, including judo,
Budo Juku karate, kickboxing and other martial arts classes, the Chameleon
Majorettes, and the youth arm of the St John Ambulance service, the Badgers.
Jointly with the neighbouring Children’s Centre, the Youth
Centre also acts as a base for the Eastover
Organic Food Co-op, a group that sells organic vegetables from Plowright
Farm, Over Stowey both to members and the general public. Socially and
environmentally conscious, the organisation aims to help people reduce their
food bills and support local agriculture, lessening their reliance on
supermarkets and putting money back into the local economy rather than into the
coffers of transnational corporations. For more details, interested members of
the public can ask at the reception of the Children’s Centre.
Another innovative local organisation is the Eastover Sports and Social Trust, the
body our Czech visitors twinned with to enable their EU-funded project. The
trust was set up by Eastover councillors and local people when a little-used
tennis court owned by Sedgemoor District Council was earmarked for sale to the
private sector to be turned into flats. An entirely voluntary organisation, the
Trust fought the decision and instead proposed the court should be converted
into a multi-purpose games area for the local community, particularly young
people living in an area that doesn’t offer them much else to do. The Trust is
now working with Sedgemoor, and, partially funded by the council, is in the
final stages of making this vision a reality.
Adjoining the tennis court is the Eastover Park Bowls Club which leases land from the District
Council to provide bowling greens for the club’s members. Club users are mostly
elderly, and it provides a valuable recreational space where members can stay
fit and active, socialise with their peers, meet new friends and ward off the
social isolation that may be a feature of other aspects of their lives. The
Club also generously gave a home to itinerant Bridgwater youth football team
Rhode Lane Wanderers, which gives direction as well as opportunities for
recreation and socialising to the town’s young people.
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| Bridgwater Senior Citizens Forum |
During the project, our group also met with the Bridgwater Senior Citizen’s Forum, a
group based in Eastover but drawing over-50s from all around town. The group
brings local pensioners together to socialise and make new friends, hear talks
from a variety of speakers, discuss local political issues and provide a voice
for local older people.
3c) State Resources
National and local government is of huge, unquestionable importance to Eastover
residents, as it is for everyone in the country. However, there are few publically funded resources physically based in the ward itself.
Eastover Community
Primary School is state-funded through Somerset County Council. While the
building itself is mostly Victorian, the school is well situated on Wellington
Road, in the middle of a large residential area and within reasonable walking
distance for able-bodied individuals living anywhere in Eastover. At the time
of the school’s latest OFSTED inspection (dated 16th – 17th
January 2013) it was educating 403 4-11 year-olds, with two classes in each
year group, making it larger than average.
The subsequent OFSTED report was very complimentary about the school, rating
it ‘Good’ in terms of the achievement of pupils, the quality of teaching, the
behaviour and safety of pupils, and its leadership and management, all of which
translated to a ‘Good’ rating overall. Incidentally, OFSTED’s report also
confirms that the proportion of Eastover pupils with special educational needs
and disabilities is well above average, as in the proportion eligible for the
so-called ‘pupil premium’, additional funding for pupils in receipt of free
school meals.
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| Cranleigh Gardens Medical Centre |
Eastover is also well served by a very modern GP surgery in
the form of Cranleigh Gardens Medical
Centre, which was opened in February 2011. Prior to this, the surgery was
known as Brent House and based in Westover, on the other side of the River
Parrett. Thus its relocation to Eastover was of great benefit to residents, not
only providing them with access to medical care within the community, but also with
a brand new medical centre designed for optimum disability access. The
consulting rooms are all downstairs, while a large lift makes upstairs
facilities accessible for wheelchair users. Doors have been made especially
wide, again for wheelchair access. All door signs are in Braille as well as
English, and corridors have been purposely painted to have good colour
definition, enabling individuals with impaired vision navigate more easily
around the building.
Situated next to Eastover Children’s Centre (see below) on
Westonzoyland Road is New Prospects,
an outpost of the Somerset Youth Offending Team. Young people between the ages
of 10 and 18 who have been arrested on at least one occasion come to the centre
to be assessed, and to establish a plan of action for ensuring they do not become
repeat offenders. Socioeconomic deprivation is strongly linked to higher
incidents of crime, and it’s unsurprising that between May 2013 and October
2013 41.9% of reported crime in Eastover related to anti-social behaviour, much
of it by young people. In addition, the service can connect the young people
concerned to a variety of other resources, including social workers,
psychologists, drug workers and others.
Eastover also contains the three-hectare of open grass area
known locally as either Cranleigh
Gardens or Eastover Park. It
contains a fenced children’s play area, predominantly aimed at toddlers and
younger children, as well as a half pipe skate boarding facility for teenagers,
both run by Sedgemoor District Council. Both are reasonably new and
well-maintained, receiving weekly inspections from members of Sedgemoor’s Parks
Department.
3ci) Eastover
Children’s Centre
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| Julie Simmonds at Eastover Children's Centre |
By far the most impressive and, arguably, important state
resource visited during the project was Eastover Children’s Centre, located on
Westonzoyland Road. Children’s Centres were created as part of the Sure Start
programme, initiated by the 1997 – 2009 Labour government with the aim of tackling
child poverty and improving early years education, healthcare and standards of
parenting. In Somerset currently, one manager is placed in charge of a
‘cluster’ of three centres – Eastover is clustered with a centre in nearby
Sydenham, and one in the village of Woolavington. Primarily focusing on
children between birth and the age of five, the three centres are technically
responsible for 2,013 children – the number who regularly using the centre is
obviously far smaller, but all are entitled to the services provided - and are
informed of every new birth within their jurisdiction.
The Eastover centre hosts visits by midwives and health
visitors. The health visitors try and see new-borns within six days of birth to
take parents through the process of weighing and immunisations to come in the
baby’s first few months, as well as offering advice about breast-feeding for
the first time and other important parental skills. These sessions are hugely
helpful to the parents who attend them, not just for being instructional, but
also for offering inexperienced or anxious new mothers a safe place to chat,
express worries and receive informal emotional and psychological support. Other
sessions encourage parents to bring their children in to play with the centre
staff and other children, again enabling potentially isolated mothers to mix
with people in similar situations, developing supportive relationships with
their peers and centre workers trained to be on the lookout for signs of
trouble at home, post-natal depression etc.
In this sense, the name ‘Children’s Centres’ is somewhat
misleading - it gives an overly narrow first impression of the types of
services and support available. Ironically enough, the Czech equivalent,
‘Family Centres’, would be more apt. The Centre, for example, plays a vital
role in helping the victims of domestic violence, a phenomenon that’s sadly
common in the Eastover area. Through developing trusting personal relationships
with members of staff at the centre, victims are able to express their concerns
about their situation and be encouraged to seek further help. Our group was told
that a common worry voiced by abuse victims is that their children would be
taken away from them if they came forward. By coming to trust the Family Centre
staff and confiding in them about their concerns, these individuals can be
talked through the process from the state and social service perspective,
reassuring them that taking children into care is avoided at all costs. It
takes an average of seven attempts before an abuse victim in able to leave a
domestic violence situation, and the Centre can be a vital source of both
emotional support and practical advice during a long, traumatic process. The
Centre also runs a Community Café, offering employment advice to parents and
helping them get back into training or education.
 |
| Marcela Bradova discussing with staff |
Staff members are passionate about what they do and the
benefits of early intervention. The Centre has a warm, inclusive ethos,
typified by its use of a selection of core values rather than a list of stern
do’s and don’ts for service users. It was also notable that some signage inside
the centre was in both English and some Eastern European languages, ensuring
Eastover’s now-sizeable European migrant population feels welcome at the
Centre. With connections to the police, social services and others, the Centre
also plays an important role in linking individuals in need with other state
resources.
Given the fantastic work it does for Eastover, it’s deeply
concerning that at the time of writing the future of the service looks
uncertain. The Children’s Centre network has already been subject to extensive
funding cuts by the County Council. Two years ago, the budget for management
was cut by 58% as the Centres were reorganised into the current ‘cluster’
system. However, the County Council is now seeking to make further savings, and
have previously suggested that as many as 18 of the county’s 41 centres could
be stripped of their ‘Children Centre’ status, the consequences of which remain
largely unknown. In addition, they aim to cut even more from the service’s
management and administration budget. The County-level Cabinet Member for
Children & Families, Cllr Frances Nicholson, claims that she wants to
‘reduce spending on management and administration and increase spending on the
front-line by restructuring the service on an area basis’. When councils are
looking to cut budgets, management always presents a soft target. Cutting
bureaucracy is easy to sell to the electorate. However, it's wrong to suggest
that management and ‘frontline services’ are somehow entirely separate from one
another. Yes, where extravagant amounts are spent on administration, in some
cases budgets can be cut without affecting service users. But it’s managers and
administrative workers that enable frontline staff to spend as much as their
time as possible on those service users. More pertinently, Children’s Centres
have already endured cuts to the extent that managers are left coping with
three centres over large geographical areas. It’s hard to see how further
cutbacks could do anything but reduce the quality of the service provided.
Unfortunately, this is an area where the mechanics of the
political system – or at least the priorities of mainstream politics – work
against the running of a high quality public service. There needs to be
strategic thinking looking ten years into the future, rather than the political
horizon being no further away than the next election. At present, every
Children’s Centre receives the same amount of funding, regardless of its
location. In effect, this adversely affects areas like Eastover, which, given
its level of deprivation, has far greater needs than other areas of the county.
What’s more, in attempting to cut even more from management budgets,
councillors and council officers seem to either lack understanding about what
the centres do and how they are run, or just not care about the consequences.
3d) Commercial
Resources
In the nineteenth century, Eastover was a bustling
commercial district of Bridgwater. The last century has seen the economically
healthy town centre area steadily retract back across the river, and is now
limited to a very small area centred on Fore Street and the eastern end of the
High Street, including the Angel Place shopping centre. Until the 1970s and
1980s, St John’s Street was a major shopping area. In the 1990s, Eastover (the
road in the ward, not the ward itself) could still be considered part of the
town centre. In 2013, both are economically ailing.
In a sense, the area’s economic trajectory has reflected
Britain’s over the last two centuries. In the nineteenth century and early
twentieth century, it was full of small and medium sized family firms,
extending to the heart of the Eastover community. It also contained the extensive
industry and manufacturing that employed a large swathe of both the ward’s and
the wider town’s population. Over the last thirty years, however, the country’s
focus has abruptly shifted from a manufacturing to a service economy, and
smaller businesses have repeatedly lost out to huge retail chains.
This isn’t just a historical distraction – it’s crucial to
how Eastover’s residential areas were designed and laid out. Houses were within
walking distance of practically all a household’s commercial needs, with
grocery stores, butchers, bakers, pubs, and, in many cases, employment lying
with reasonable walking or cycling distance. Just as importantly, small local
businesses offered something that the best examples still do today – a place to
bump into people, hear news, and develop social relationships. Shopping wasn’t
and doesn’t need to be just about spending money, it can have a fulfilling
social function as well.
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| The same street scenes 100 years apart |
The arrival of supermarkets and other big retail chains,
with vastly greater resources than anything local businesses could ever muster,
has effectively killed dozens of small local businesses, and concentrated a
large portion of the town’s commercial activity under one roof. Very little of
that money ends up back in the local economy – whereas local businesses are
likely to employ the services of local electricians, carpenters and other
tradesman, the big chain stores tend to use national contractors.
Both planning decisions and, again, the prevailing political
and socioeconomic climate have gone against small local businesses, leaving
them to flounder largely unassisted while councils cheerlead for multibillion
pound corporations. Despite this, there are still small and medium-sized local
businesses in the ward, particularly along St John Street and Eastover. Many of
these are takeaway restaurants. While these are very conveniently positioned
for people living in the area, there is a lack of businesses providing more
essential services in the community. Again, the sale of groceries, bread and
meat products have been monopolised by supermarkets, although long-standing
local business Judith’s Bakery still
exists on St John Street. Bridgwater retailer Hooks is still in the area, and has just expanded, opening a small
branch in Angel Place Shopping Centre. Ironically, the section arguably best
able to access the kind of traditional, sociable shopping described above are
the ward’s European migrant community. Two
small shops specialising in Eastern European goods have opened in recent years,
one situated where Eastover meets Broadway and another on New Road, giving a
potentially isolated section of the community a place to socialise and make
connections with others in a similar situation. Also on New Road is the
newly-opened Akropolis Restaurant,
serving Eastern European food. On Eastover (the road) a Portuguese café serves as a focus for the local Portuguese
community.
Attempts by Sedgemoor District Council to regenerate
Eastover have thus far been tokenistic. The arrival of the Asda superstore on the site of the old Territorial Army Centre and
part of the old Bus Station was originally sold as being part of an attempt to
rejuvenate the area. Council officers have since privately admitted that this
was a failure, citing, among other things, a very poor pedestrian layout as
being behind the disappointing outcome. There has yet to be an admission that
the whole premise of involving a supermarket in an attempt to rejuvenate the
local economy is highly dubious – indeed, with the forthcoming Tesco
development at Northgate, Bridgwater, the council is ably demonstrating that it
learned nothing from the Asda situation.
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| The Town's main Post Office locating to Eastover |
At the time of writing, the council is seeking to gain
members’ approval for its Eastover Supplementary Planning Document, a report
detailing Sedgemoor’s latest plans to regenerate the area – the proposals are based
round increased pedestrianisation of the area, partly to account for the
perceived failings of the Asda development.
However, there have been some positive developments
recently. The decision to locate Bridgwater’s new main Post Office in the ward (on the corner of New Road) is likely
to prove very beneficial, bringing potential shoppers into the area to use the
services. Post Offices are also known for bringing people together in the
manner described above, allowing for chance social interaction and human
contact for isolated members of the community.
4) Conclusion
This report’s conclusion is relatively straightforward –
within Eastover itself, there are very few resources available for residents.
Many of the resources that do exist, particularly those that are state-funded,
are of high quality and indispensably important to the local community –
Eastover Children’s Centre, Eastover Community Primary School and Cranleigh
Gardens Medical Centre stand out in this respect. Hard work and perseverance by
community-minded volunteers is also yielding promising results, the example of
the Eastover Sports and Community Trust showing that if residents are willing
and able to organise themselves, and have backing from local councillors, they
can intervene to change the fate of threatened public resources. When the
proposed games area opens, it will combine with the an already high quality
children’s play park and half-pipe skating area to create an excellent
recreational hub for local young people. However, given its deprivation,
Eastover is in need of far greater support and, unfortunately, at a time when
existing resources are under threat, it’s difficult to see where this support
is going to come from.
4a) The Political
Dimension
 |
| The elephant in the room |
National politics is the elephant in room – firstly at a
broad, socioeconomic level. It’s an indisputable fact that social and economic
trends have sharply gone against areas like Eastover and towns like Bridgwater
over the last thirty years. The town’s predicament is very similar to that of
large parts of the North of England. For generations, thousands of local people
worked in the manufacturing industry, which provided them with secure, skilled,
well-paid jobs. They were trained and made into desirable employees, giving
them a certain amount of choice in where they worked. It was possible for one
wage-earner to comfortably provide for a whole family. In the mid-1970s, one
political consensus gave way to another, and in the years that followed the
economic basis of whole communities was destroyed, as the economy was hurriedly
converted from one largely based around manufacturing to one based on retail
and other service industries. Individuals were now forced into poorly paid,
low-skill jobs that were far more precarious. They had to work longer and
harder to stay afloat, and, both because their workplaces gave them very little
training and because the service industries were much lower-density employers
than the manufacturing companies that came before, they were left having to
take whatever they could get in terms of employment. Crudely put, shops and
offices don’t employ as many people as factories do. As governments
concurrently abandoned their previous commitment to achieving full employment,
this also meant that large numbers became unemployed.
Decades on, places like Eastover are arguably still
struggling to recover from that socioeconomic trauma. The new highly
financialised economy was largely focused in the south-east, and post-industrial
areas were left to flounder. Successive governments neglected towns like
Bridgwater, as inequality soared, and the fruits of the boom years were being
enjoyed elsewhere. It’s worth remembering that Bridgwater was declining even
during the longest sustained period of economic growth since the Industrial
Revolution, from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s. By the early 2000s, timid
steps were being taken in the right direction, with the establishment of the
Sure Start scheme and the Building Schools for the Future Programme, as well as
the Single Regeneration Budget scheme in Hamp and Sydenham, but these were
modest given the scale of the problem. Now, as the current British government
joins its counterparts around the developed world in choosing to respond to the
2008 financial crisis with ‘Austerity’, it’s these parts of the country that
are bearing the brunt of deep cuts in public spending. Somerset County Council
was only local government body in the country to cut its Arts budget by 100%.
Similarly, during the course of the project our group attended a meeting of the
Sedgemoor Youth Network at Bridgwater YMCA, where representative from youth
clubs and organisations were bracing themselves for the imminent cancellation
of all County-level funding after May 2014.
Both at the level of national government and local
government, the solution offered is, simplistically put, to replace public-funded
resources with societal resources. As we’ve seen, societal resources are of
massive importance, and help millions of people live happier, more fulfilling
lives, and they should be stoked and encouraged wherever possible. However, an
individual we met during the project (who will remain nameless) summed up the
prevailing governmental attitude the best – that if you throw enough volunteers
at a problem, it will just go away. It’s here that we encounter the paradox at
the centre of what has previously been called the ‘Big Society’ – firstly,
volunteers need training, and the funding to train them has to come from
somewhere. Secondly, there isn’t, sadly, an equal distribution of fit, healthy,
enthusiastic people with lots of time on their hands around the country. In
some areas, which have undergone far less socioeconomic trauma during recent
decades, where residents tend to be wealthier and traditional community ties have been left
intact, more people can afford to donate their time for free. In places like
Eastover that just isn’t the case. In previous decades, it was seen as
government’s role to redistribute wealth from areas and sections of the
population that could afford to spare it to those that couldn’t. Unfortunately,
that notion has been largely banished from the political mainstream.
If the town’s plight largely comes down to decisions beyond
local control, the loss of town-level power has also had an impact. Sedgemoor
District Council is responsible for a largely rural area, and dominated by
councillors from outside Bridgwater. Anecdotally, it’s clear that there is a
culture at Sedgemoor whereby council leaders see Bridgwater as somewhat of a
nuisance, and their lack of attachment to the town would certainly explain a
succession of decisions that have gone against the interests of local residents.
If Sedgemoor were to be abolished and the main focus of local power be returned
to Bridgwater itself, central government funding cuts would still leave a
revived Bridgwater Borough Council with very difficult decisions to make.
However, it could be more reliably expected to make those decisions in the best
interest of the people of the town, rather than in those a rural electorate
with no interest in its predicament. Britain remains the most centralised
country in Europe, and a more lasting, satisfactory solution would require the
return of the powers stripped from local government during the last half-century.
4b) Funding and
Future Provision
 |
| Call for greater resources |
There are clear gaps in provision for Eastover’s elderly,
migrant, full-time carer and general working population, both in terms of state
and societal resources. This isn’t to cast doubt on the quality of state-level
care outside the ward, but is instead
a call for greater resources to be embedded in communities themselves, where
residents, particularly those with limited mobility, are best able to access
them. What form these resources might take is open to question – certainly, a
Children’s Centre equivalent instead designed around the needs of older people
would be a very welcome development, for example, but those kinds of decisions
are well beyond local control. Furthermore, it would be too be too easy to
place the blame entirely at the doors of local and national government. When it
comes to societal resources, public apathy does play a part in accounting for
the lack of provision. Clubs require people to attend them, and when people
don’t it gives local and national government a very easy excuse not to fund them. However it’s also
the sad case that the people most in need of recreation and relaxation –
thinking particularly of carers, single parents, working people in general –
are those with the least free time to be able to enjoy it. Again, without a
marked shift in national-level political priorities, these problems will go
unsolved.
However, a more pressing concern is how to fund already
existing resources as government continues to cut funding. There are only three
broad ways in which services and resources can be funded – local or national government can pay
for it, individual service-users themselves can pay for it, or private
companies can pay for it. For some it’s a very controversial conclusion to come
to, but of these three options public funding is by far the most preferable.
Reliable state funding guarantees the consistent functioning of the service and
enables long-term strategic planning. Our Czech visitors run their Family
Centres with what could be termed unreliable state funding, having to
repeatedly apply for grants that they may or may not be given, and thus not be
able to look much further into the future than the next grant application
deadline.
Given its levels of deprivation, and residents’ very low
levels of disposable income, it would be completely unacceptable for anything
but the most nominal of payments be requested from service users themselves.
This leaves us with the third option – private funding. From a rational
perspective at least, it would seem obvious to ask the private sector to help
fund vital services and resources – public budgets are being cut, while large
companies continue to make multimillion pound profits. As has been repeatedly
demonstrated during the last few decades, privatisation of public services
adversely affects the quality of the service delivered. The notion that
facilities like the Children’s’ Centre could be privatised is grim, and
completely unacceptable - it would create a situation where the welfare of
vulnerable children and their parents would constantly come second behind the
imperative to make a profit. Thus, a far better way of using private money for
the public good would be for the kinds of large retailers and other
corporations who have flocked to Bridgwater in recent decades to be asked to
contribute towards the upkeep of services. For example, in order to receive
planning permission, a new housing development proposed by a major housing
developer could be required to include a community building donated to local
residents. To receive permission to build a new superstore, a retail giant like
Tesco might have to agree to fund a number of youth or other clubs, or make
sizeable donations to facilities like the Children’s Centre or Eastover School.
The skewed balance of private and public power was
demonstrated when French energy company EDF, behind the proposed third reactor
at Hinkley Point, was asked by Sedgemoor District Council to make an annual
payment to compensate the town for the continued disruption its construction
and upkeep would cause. The company simply said no, and the council could do
nothing but accept its decision. A far more progressive arrangement would
require such payments by law – a small price to pay in return for making
millions of pounds out of local people. However, such a situation would still
only be a least-worst solution. It would raise uncomfortable questions about
the extent to which the public was said to ‘owe’ the private sector, and
whether in future local facilities will come sponsored by Asda or Tescos.
 |
| Simon Hann gets his thoughts together in thinkers corner |
Realistically, in the short to medium term, the most likely
outcome will be a ramshackle combination of all three sources of funding.
Perhaps limited public grants to everything from Children’s Centres to Youth
Clubs will be combined with (hopefully nominal) on-the-door fees for service
users, topped up with donations from major businesses. Such a situation would
be far from ideal - as generous as it is for private corporations to make
voluntary donations to local services, said payments are inevitably going to be
small, tokenistic and made purely for their public relations value. It would
also be a far less stable financial basis than full public funding can provide,
and the quality of the services provided would be bound to fall.
Simon Hann, December
2013
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