Responsible Citizens and Accountable Service Providers ...

Environment and Planning A 2014, volume 46, pages 1716 – 1731

doi:10.1068/a46127

Responsible citizens and accountable service providers? Renegotiating the contract between citizen and state Liz Richardson Department of Politics, University of Manchester M13 9PL, England; e-mail: [email protected] Kingsley Purdam Social Statistics, Humanities Bridgeford Street Building, University of Manchester M13 9PL, England; e-mail: [email protected] Sarah Cotterill Centre for Biostatistics, University of Manchester M13 9PL, England; e-mail: [email protected] James Rees Third Sector Research Centre, Park House, University of Birmingham, Birmingham B15 2TT, England; e-mail: [email protected] Graham Squires Department of Geography, University of Birmingham, Birmingham B15 2TT, England; e-mail: [email protected] Rebecca Askew School of Law, LJMU Redmonds Building, Brownlow Hill, Liverpool L3 5UG, England; e-mail: [email protected] Received 11 March 2013; in revised form 7 October 2013 Abstract. New forms of governance, conditional approaches to public service access, and initiatives to engage citizens in taking on new responsibilities are being developed in the context of the scaling down of the welfare state. We examine the extent to which collaboration and multidirectional accountability can be developed between the state and citizens, with a focus on a case study of Community Contracts in England. These quasi-legal agreements, operationalised at the local level, involve citizens and service providers cooperating in tackling social problems through agreed responsibilities and behaviour. Findings from interviews and focus group research suggest that Community Contracts represent an innovation in governance. Citizens are given a voice and there are new pathways for effective service delivery and accountability; conditionality applies to citizens and service providers. However, although there was evidence of increased service accountability, the impact on civic responsibility and conditionality beyond already active citizens and beyond certain issues was less apparent. Although citizens and service providers were ready to take on new roles, the legal status of the contract was only loosely defined. Challenges remain concerning how contract-based approaches can be fully realised in practice. Keywords: conditionality, contract, engagement, governance, neighbourhood, responsibility

Responsible citizens and accountable service providers?

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Introduction In this paper we explore the issues of citizen and service provider responsibility and accountability, drawing on empirical evidence from a case study of Community Contracts in England. Led by the UK government’s Department for Communities and Local Government, the stated policy aims of Community Contracts were to contribute to neighbourhood qualityof-life outcomes through improving and tailoring public services, as well as developing relations of coproduction between local governance actors, public service providers, and citizens. Community Contracts are quasi-legal contracts identifying priorities for action and requiring citizens to take on new responsibilities and service providers to agree to fulfil a set of performance commitments. As such, they set up a mutual conditionality. In each locality Community Contracts were developed by the local authority or public service provider in partnership with other service providers and the community, usually through a residents’ association or neighbourhood group. Community Contracts are varied in the geographic areas they cover, but the emphasis is on a sense of being at a local neighbourhood level. Community Contracts exemplify wider policy and governance shifts in England, where the discourse of contract and conditionality are an increasing focus. Citizens are being encouraged, and to some extent required, to take greater responsibility for their own lives and their local communities. The policy debate has centred on the definition and scope of the conditions, the monitoring process and the sanctions in place for noncompliance. One key driver for Community Contracts was the end of ring-fenced regeneration funding, which challenged the public sector to look for alternative ways to secure public service reform and to involve citizens in area improvement. Multilayered governance and coproduction in policy making is considered to be a means to more informed and effective policy (Durose et al, 2009; Lowndes and Skelcher, 1998; Newman, 2005; Stoker, 2004; Watson, 2013; Wilson, 2004). A focus on civic responsibility and accountability is designed to make public services more responsive, whilst also reducing demands on those services. The relationship between the individual and the state is more direct, with citizens being required to be more accountable as other forms of governance are bypassed. The UK Coalition government is promoting an ideology of localism alongside a strong state (seen by some as a contradictory tendency), including the right of individuals and communities to challenge service providers and to set up alternative service provision (Cabinet Office, 2010; HM Government, 2011; Lowndes and Pratchett, 2012). In part, this policy shift is linked to initiatives under the Big Society agenda, which has attempted to mobilise citizens to take a greater role in looking after themselves and the areas where they live as the state withdraws and public funding is reduced (Dorey and Garnett, 2012; Pattie and Johnston, 2011). This policy approach, based on developing the responsibility of citizens, has already extended across a wide range of policy areas, including: health, finance, housing, local area management (parks and libraries), parenting and school attendance, free schools, and also in the form of the National Citizen Service. The revised UK Citizenship Test introduced in 2013 includes a new focus on the responsibilities and expectations of being a citizen. In this paper we present empirical research findings concerning the workability of responsible citizenship and increased service provider accountability. We have undertaken an in-depth study of six Community Contracts. This involved secondary data analysis and qualitative research, including interviews and focus groups. We examined the extent to which Community Contracts could renew the relationships between citizens and the state at the local level, enable accountability and conditionality in local service provision, and the extent to which new responsibilities could be realised amongst the wider, often less engaged, population.

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L Richardson, K Purdam, S Cotterill, J Rees, G Squires, R Askew

Theory and context Community Contracts take us to the heart of the debates regarding the nature of citizenship, governance, and mechanisms for accountability of citizens and the state. Community Contracts can exemplify the four key rationales of local neighbourhood-level governance identified by Lowndes and Sullivan (2008): civic, societal, political, and economic. We begin by looking at these rationales in the context of Community Contracts and consider the policy focus on behaviour change. While citizenship is multidimensional and made up of rights and responsibilities, debate continues about how and by whom the rights and responsibilities are defined, and their ideological underpinnings (Dwyer, 2004; Marshall, 1950; White, 2000). At the same time there is evidence of a democratic deficit in many liberal democracies and questions surrounding the weakening connections between citizens and the state (Norris, 2011; Pattie and Johnston, 2011). This has led to further questions about whether there are enough volunteers for the Big Society agenda to be realised—though the notion of a decline in civic participation is contested. Dalton (2008) has pointed to the new types of civic engagement activities people are involving themselves in. Citizen involvement in public governance and civic society is seen as a way of promoting empowerment by holding decision makers and service providers to account. However, there is debate about what is an effective level of scrutiny and accountability (Hupe and Hill, 2007; Sorenson and Torfing, 2007). In the UK, responsibilities for welfare are increasingly being returned to individual citizens. In part, this has taken the form of the introduction of various types of contracts between the state and citizens as a means of changing behaviour and reducing the costs of public service provision. This is linked to a behaviour-change agenda being led by the Coalition Government (Cabinet Office, 2011), which has involved experimental studies in using so-called ‘nudges’—including information provision and design techniques, choice framing and changing defaults, norm and peer awareness, and incentives (John et al, 2011; Thaler and Sunstein, 2009). However, see House of Lords (2011) and Wilkinson (2013) for a review of developments and limitations to date in the UK. Critics have also highlighted the evidence for the risks of potentially negative and counterproductive effects of conditionality and piecemeal behaviour-change interventions for already-vulnerable groups. It is notable that the introduction of Universal Credit, as part of the Welfare Reform Act (2012), places an emphasis on individual conditionality and behaviour change. Benefit claimants are required to sign a personalised ‘Claimant Commitment’ which documents their responsibilities, which include actively looking and preparing for work. Sanctions for noncompliance for those who do not meet their responsibilities include reductions in welfare payments. Such an approach has been criticised by campaign groups such as the Child Poverty Action Group (2010) for its potential impact on vulnerable groups. The previous, New Labour, government’s approach to engendering more responsibility, conditionality, and governance through partnership and networks was joined with a tendency towards centralisation and performance management—such as, for example, welfare-towork, including Job Seekers Allowance; New Deal programmes; and Sure Start Maternity Grants—and in relation to tackling antisocial behaviour as part of the Crime and Disorder Act (1998) (Dwyer, 2004; Giddens, 1998; Hood, 2006; Perri 6 and Peck, 2004; Watson, 2013). This shift marked a move away from welfare rights to active and responsible citizens reliant on their own efforts and resources. Contract-based approaches have usually been seen as ‘principle–agent’ relationships—adversarial and low trust (Sullivan and Skelcher, 2002). As a result, there has been a growing interest in more ‘relational’ contracts which involve higher levels of engagement, dialogue, trust, reciprocity, and longer term commitment.


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Under the Coalition government the responsibility agenda has proceeded alongside the far-reaching scaling back of public services, public spending cuts, and the restructuring of the welfare state, including support for the voluntary sector. Community Contracts are, by design, linked to greater citizen activity and greater efficiency in service provision. Critics of the wider policy agenda have expressed concerns about how the focus and scope of ‘responsibility’ is determined and by whom (Taylor, 2011), and the oversimplification of structural inequalities (Bevir, 2011; Taylor-Gooby, 2012). It is also important to consider the assumption that more citizen participation is better. Do citizens themselves want and/or have the resources to engage? Moreover, the extent to which initiatives around engaging and empowering citizens are driven by a real commitment to devolving power has been subject to debate (Purdam and Crisp, 2009). Lawless and Pearson (2012) question the extent to which power was actually transferred from the centre to the local level under the New Deal for Communities partnerships. In qualitative research, Durose and Lowndes (2010) found only limited support and even evidence of cynicism amongst senior council officials and elected representatives towards involving citizens in governance. By contrast, they found that the value of citizen involvement was recognised by neighbourhood officers and community workers. A further issue is that evidence consistently suggests that volunteers and those who are civically active tend to be those with higher qualification levels and higher relative incomes (Pattie et al, 2004). However, research in the UK by Williams (2003) suggests that affluent people are more likely to recall and report participation in voluntary groups but the neighbourliness and mutual support in lower income areas are not always captured in surveys. Moreover, Durose et al (2009) have argued that there are tensions within the new language of citizenship and governance triggered by understanding people from a collectivist perspective—as members of neighbourhoods and communities—while they are simultaneously being understood from an individualised perspective as differentiated users or consumers of responsive and tailored services. Our focus in this paper is on contract-based approaches in the form of Community Contracts, which potentially offer an alternative model for involving citizens in governing and mobilising a more active and responsible form of citizenship and service provision. We consider the evidence and theoretical implications emerging from our case-study research and also highlight limitations and evidence gaps. Methods and data We conducted six in-depth case studies of Community Contracts across England. Formally, eleven Community Contract pilot areas were established in England in 2008 with the support of the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG, 2008). More widely, although there is no formal list, our review identified thirty-seven local authorities, which had a Community Contract at some point in the previous five years. The pilot programme did not provide additional funding but instead offered management help. Case-study selection rationale

The six case-study Community Contracts were selected to reflect a range of population sizes, areas covered, political leadership, and control. The case studies were located across five regions of England and included urban, rural, and suburban neighbourhoods. The Community Contracts were initiated by a variety of bodies including a regeneration scheme, local authorities, housing associations, and a public health body. A summary of the type and policy focus, location, coverage, population, and socioeconomic profile of the case-study Community Contract areas is shown in table 1. As the table highlights, the case-study Community Contracts focused on environmental issues, community safety, and anti-social behaviour. They also covered very different sizes of

Four launched across local authority (including 11 specific to individual neighbourhoods) —focused on local environment and safety

Three launched—focused on local environment, crime, and antisocial behaviour. Two more planned focused on communities and health

One launched—focused on feeling safer and healthier

One launched—focused on cleaner and greener streets, including reducing antisocial behaviour

C

D

E

F

Local authority 1 ward

R/S

Shire district

Unitary authority

U/S

Neighbourhood Management Pathfinder 1 ward

Metropolitan

Mixed–urban

Regeneration scheme 2 wards

Shire district

Mixed

Metropolitan

Unitary authority

Local authority All wards

U/S

U/S

Urban (U), Type of suburban (S), local rural (R) authority

Census data refer to the ward or LA profile in which the contract is predominantly based.

a

One launched—focused on environment and community safety. Further planned, including a focus on young people

B

Housing association 2 wards

One launched—focused on local Public health body environment, health, antisocial 1 ward behaviour, and active parenting

Case-study lead body; number of wards

A

Case- Community Contracts study theme area

Table 1. Summary of case-study Community Contracts and areas.

Conservative

No overall control

No overall control

No overall control

Labour

No overall control

Political control

Tenure profile

17 500 people in ward

1 500 households

7 500 households

Low (3% of ward population are ethnic minorities)

High (47% of ward population are ethnic minorities)

40% economically inactive. 2% council rented Housing Benefit/Council Tax Benefits claimants 10%. 31% economically inactive. 26% council Housing Benefit/Council rented Tax Benefits claimants 15%.

High (25% of ward population are ethnic minorities)

40% economically inactive. 30% council rented Housing Benefit/Council Tax Benefits claimants 11%.


110 000 people 35% economically inactive. 17% council (whole Housing Benefit/Council rented authority) Tax Benefits claimants 9%.

Average (10% of ward population are ethnic minorities)

Relative ethnic diversity of wards


36% economically inactive. 43% council rented Housing Benefit/Council Tax Benefits claimants 18%.

Deprivation of wards (2005)

39% economically inactive. 7% council Housing Benefit/Council rented Tax Benefits claimants 13%.

1 300 households

12 300 people (in ward)

Contract population size a


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area and population. The different Community Contracts included service providers, elected members, and citizen representatives on their governing bodies. Data gathering and fieldwork

Semistructured interviews In each case-study area in-depth semistructured interviews were conducted with around ten key stakeholders involved in the Community Contracts, including: residents, service providers, and local councillors. Interviewees included: the nominated lead for the Community Contract, the local authority neighbourhood engagement lead, ward councillors, lead officers from relevant service providers, and residents who were actively engaged in the process. The interviews focused on the process of setting up the contract, engagement, and perceived impacts. Focus groups In-depth focus groups were held in each case-study area with around ten local residents who had some familiarity with the Community Contract but were not directly involved. The focus groups covered such issues as: civic involvement in the neighbourhood and the civic responsibility behaviours required in the Community Contract. Vox pop street interviews In each case-study area around fifteen vox pop street interviews were conducted with people recruited in the streets within the Community Contract area. Only people who indicated that they lived in the local area were interviewed. The interviews took around ten minutes each and were tailored to each case-study area. Using a semistructured questionnaire, interviewees were asked about: their involvement in their local community, their awareness of the Community Contract, and their views on the responsibilities and behaviour involved. Findings

Setting up Community Contracts and mutual conditionality

All of the case-study Community Contracts were set out as quasi-legal contracts and involved the use of legal language such as, “I hereby sign up to the Contract.” However, only one of the case-study Community Contracts asked individual residents to physically sign the Community Contract, and even this was largely a symbolic act by those residents who attended a launch day. This in itself may have undermined the whole approach as it can be questioned how the wider population can be expected or required to adhere to a contract they have little awareness of. Community Contracts request that citizens ask services to fulfil a set of commitments and in return services ask residents to fulfil their responsibilities. The conditionality is mutual. In the case study of Community Contracts the responsibilities of citizens included: not causing antisocial behaviour or being a nuisance to neighbours, not dropping litter, keeping gardens tidy, cleaning up dog mess and not doing graffiti. Within a single Community Contract the agreed behaviours can be wide ranging, but are developed in collaboration by citizens and service providers. It is important to examine and compare the detail and scope of these responsibilities. We summarise some examples below. (i) In one of the community-safety-based Community Contracts the behaviours included: the police committing to “Respond to an emergency call within ten minutes” and citizens agreeing to “Report instances of serious and/or persistent anti-social behaviour and encourage others to do so”; the police committing to “Maintaining a neighbourhood police team”, and citizens agreeing to “Think carefully about the consequences of your own actions and show respect towards others” and to “Take responsibility for the children in your family, making sure you know where they are and what they are doing.”

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(ii) In a local-environment-based Community Contract the local authority committed to “Sweep and litter pick the main roads in the area weekly”, and citizens agreed to “Not drop litter” and “Use public litter bins and encourage others to do the same”; the local authority committed to “Investigate incidents of fly tipping and take enforcement action against offenders” and citizens agreed to “Not dump rubbish”, “Not leave rubbish in alleyways”, and to “Report problems and offenders”. (iii) In a housing-based Community Contract social landlords committed to “Uphold tenancy agreements and give advice on rent and benefit queries” and citizens agreed to “Check on your neighbours and ask for help if necessary” and “Be a good neighbour”. We found evidence of core groups of residents being actively involved in creating Community Contracts, and participating in their governance. However, with one exception, this participation was from citizens who were already civically active in their neighbourhoods. In case-study area D, where fifty residents had been recruited to form a resident team to develop and monitor the Community Contracts, a third were residents who had not previously been actively engaged. We also identified specific examples of behaviour change by residents where enforcement measures had been used alongside Community Contracts. For example, in case-study B, estate inspections involving walkabouts with the housing manager and a worker from the community centre had led to several enforcement notices being served to residents with untidy gardens. This had resulted in evidence of a change in behaviour by the residents who had received notices. In the same case-study area a garden competition had rewarded residents for keeping the outside of their homes in good order, although the residents who entered were mostly those who already took pride in their gardens. The behaviour change was not necessarily due to residents reading the Community Contract and acting on it, and the individual offenders may not have been aware of the Community Contract. However, the walkabout and the requirement that gardens should be maintained did result from the discussions between providers and active residents that arose from the Community Contract development process. Separate enforcement notices were still required. There were some claims made about impacts on citizens’ behaviour, which our research was unable to substantiate fully. For example, in one area, stakeholders (including active residents and community volunteers) argued that the Community Contract had shifted the balance of responsibility. As one local councillor stated: ““people realise it’s the community that might be causing the [problems], etc … . You can continue paying for that, or sign up to agreeing not [to do it]. You’ll end up with a cleaner estate that won’t cost you anything.” Other residents in this case-study area argued that a better environment would improve people’s behaviour, and that peer pressure could operate to enforce standards of behaviour. Active residents stated that the Community Contract had created local pride, with local people being able to challenge their neighbours on issues such as littering. For example, as one resident stated: “People can stand up to [other residents] better.” There was an acknowledgement that the Contract cannot necessarily be enforced but, as one resident stated: “it creates knowledge that we care about our area, which creates better behaviour”. There were, however, only low levels of public awareness of Community Contracts in some of the case-study areas. Some Community Contract areas conducted house-to-house campaigns, door-to-door visits, and surveys to try to gain citizen input into the development of the priorities for the Contract and also to measure awareness of them amongst the population. However, there was no systematic measurement of public awareness and engagement across the case-study Community Contracts. One area did report that a survey had suggested that just over a third of the population had heard of the Community Contract, but no details were


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available of the sample size or response rate of this survey. Moreover, even if this estimate were accurate, given the issues of measurement error in the surveys, this would still indicate that nearly two thirds of the population had not heard of the Community Contract. A lack of wider citizen behaviour change and individual civic responsibility were not necessarily related to the acceptability of the idea of people being more responsible for their own lives. Surveys conducted locally in Community Contract areas suggest that, where asked, residents were positive about the idea of the Community Contract. For example, in case-study B, a specific household survey related to the Community Contract was conducted prior to its launch. The sample size of the survey was 320 people from 1300 households; 79% of respondents agreed with the proposal that residents should be asked to sign up to a common set of values and principles. This survey result indicates some level of support, albeit from a selected part of the population willing to take part in such a survey and of course taking account of the issues of response bias. In general, the residents we consulted in our case-study research welcomed the emphasis on civic responsibility and followed the requirements themselves. There was evidence of a desire to see a stronger emphasis on this in the Community Contracts. One resident stated: “It is not the council’s problem, it’s people dropping the litter. The council can only do so much, people need to change.” For residents a stronger emphasis on behaviour change often meant a more robust approach to enforcement alongside Community Contracts, as explained by an officer in one case-study area: “The community demanded strong action—this is not always necessarily ‘liberal’—they wanted enforcement in some cases, and also a stronger articulation of how residents should behave. It seemed like a [Contract] fitted the bill … . it sets out: we will do this; you will do this—it is a two-way expression of what can be done to improve the area and community.” The elected members we consulted also agreed that requests for residents to behave differently needed to be backed up by enforcement measures for those who did not comply. However, it seems that, overall, residents in the case-study areas were pessimistic about the prospects of Community Contracts being able to influence the lack of civic responsibility of what they perceived to be a minority of unhelpful citizens: “It might have made a difference to people who care about their environment, but certainly not to those who don’t give a monkey’s.” Furthermore, some residents in the case-study areas were uncomfortable about being the person who reported problem behaviour, and respondents had concerns about possible intimidation, harassment, or even retaliation. This is an important and neglected aspect regarding the idea that citizens should take responsibility for their own communities. Accountability, service provision, and governance innovation

Community Contracts do, it seems, offer a framework for residents to monitor and scrutinise service performance. Across all the case-study Community Contracts, groups of active residents were involved in the writing of the Community Contract, agreeing its content, and then sitting on governance bodies to monitor implementation and delivery. Detailed performance information, such as response times to neighbourhood incidents, were brought by individual service providers to regular governance body meetings that were set up to have oversight of the Community Contract. This information had not previously been made available to residents, or even to other service providers. In case-study area D the resident group completed feedback forms each time they contacted service providers. This area also saw the creation of a network of street representatives to monitor the Community Contracts. In case-study area E one officer stated: “The Contract is done with people rather than to people and they are involved in the thinking behind it. It has given residents the power to challenge.” Through the negotiation of service standards and intense scrutiny on neighbourhood-level service performance, respondents felt that

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Community Contracts had focused attention on existing standards. Community Contracts clarified both what standards of service residents could expect to receive and how well existing service standards were being achieved. Ongoing intelligence gathering and progress reports on outstanding problems and service failures were achieved via community organisations and active community volunteers within the governance arrangements for the Community Contracts. In case-study area C regular performance reports with information on service requests and response times were collated by service providers and presented to the Community Contract’s governance body through area liaison officers. These figures were also published in the local press, which ran a regular feature called “Challenge the Council”. As one council officer stated: “We have to say when we aren’t delivering.” A senior manager in the same area agreed: “[The Contract] shows that we are not afraid to be held to account.” An elected member stated: “People have a stick to beat us with. There has been a 400% increase in the number of people contacting about problems. The local press ran a story ‘Can you catch the council out? ’ ” Active residents in one of our focus groups felt that they could use the Community Contract in meetings with service providers and agencies as a way to “talk to providers about their commitments”. Residents who were involved stated that “it gives us power” to hold service providers to account. They had used this power to request that one service provider publish performance data at a neighbourhood level rather than the more general-level data that residents were currently receiving. In case-study area D residents involved in the strategic board gave out ‘champagne’ and ‘turkey’ awards to reflect examples of good and bad practice, respectively, among service providers. Service accountability was also mediated through democratic accountability. There was evidence that Community Contracts had enhanced relationships between elected councillors and those citizens who were more closely involved in Community Contracts. A number of local councillors felt that Community Contracts could potentially reduce contact between citizens and elected members on specific service and neighbourhood problems, as day-today service failures could be dealt with directly by service providers, rather than complaints being channelled via elected members. Whilst some practitioners viewed this as a threat to their role, others felt this could free up their time to address more strategic issues. Face-to-face relationships between individual professionals and active residents were also important in strengthening accountability. Through the process of creating the Community Contracts, residents who were involved got to know individual professionals, often on firstname terms; they learned who did what, and who to contact if there was a problem to be resolved. As residents across different Community Contracts highlighted: ““I know who to get in touch with to refer people”; ““We feel more empowered, and connected to the right people. We no longer ring up and get passed from pillar to post.” In case-study area D, a presentation by a residents group to the governance body overseeing the Community Contract highlighted “a stark picture of what it is like here”, including photographs of the environmental problems caused by poor management of empty properties. This challenge by the community was something that, as one council officer stated, “services have to respond” to, and as a result “it has led to a borough-wide response on empty homes”. The manager of the neighbourhood team argued that “[the resident group] are able to speak to service providers face to face … they have a better understanding and are great advocates for the services once they understand them”. The infrastructure of stronger accountability and innovation was highlighted by a number of examples of services delivering on their responsibilities. For example, services had increased enforcement activity to tackle environmental problems, including requiring a building firm


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to keep its yard and surrounding areas clean, and prosecuting the managers of a public house that had previously been a site of antisocial behaviour. Resident feedback in another casestudy area prompted a restructuring of existing resources used for environmental services into a more efficient, single-response team, leading to the better targeting of the service. In case-study area F residents worked with service providers and councillors on joint actions including clean-ups of their local areas. More accurate information about specific hot spots and better intelligence about neighbourhood problems were being communicated, which enabled more effective targeting of service responses. It is notable  that the commitments made by public service providers through the Community Contracts were often a clarification and restatement of what was already supposed to happen, rather than an attempt to increase service levels. However, the large majority of stakeholders interviewed felt that contract-based approaches were needed to tackle the gaps between the public sector’s stated service standards and the actual levels of service delivery. Even though service standards were already publicly available information, in practice, publicising these standards was seen as a challenge, as one council officer explained: “We were working on council targets before, but this was a way of sticking our heads out by publicising it.” Another councillor identified a political risk that the Community Contract “is about meeting commitments and if needs are not met then [the public and partners] will disengage with the process”. In this way, Community Contracts highlighted a key gap in accountability—that service providers felt unable to deliver on their stated commitments—and this gap had not previously been made transparent in public. For some stakeholders Community Contracts were seen as part of a wider process of organisational change. One local councillor in case-study area C stated that the aim of the Community Contract was to develop a performance culture within the organisation to motivate and empower employees to take pride in their area. In case-study area F, organisational change was about how service providers interacted with the public. A police officer described the change from an “old-style” way of engaging with the community in poorly attended formal meetings to informal day-to-day contacts or “street briefings”, leading to “more success in the last six months than two years of meetings”. Relationships in case-study area D between local community activists and the police had shifted from confrontation to more collaborative working. Discussion Community Contracts bring together the civic, societal, political, and economic rationales for local governance identified by Lowndes and Sullivan (2008): civic—in terms of citizen engagement and empowerment though cooperation and joint responsibilities; societal— in terms of joining up citizens, key local stakeholders, and service providers; political—in terms of increasing citizen contact with policy makers and establishing new systems of accountability and equal responsibilities; and economic—in terms of the efficiency gains from involving citizens in new roles, through identifying and targeting service interventions informed by local needs and delivered through joint working. However, whilst citizens and service providers may have been ready to define and take on new roles, there were challenges in how this could be realised and there are limits to what a contract-based approach in this form can achieve—not only in terms of issue, but also because of the potential costs of further excluding vulnerable populations. The use of a contract-based approach also carries the risks of alienating those citizens who might already be behaving in a way that enacts the Community Contract, as they may not respond well to being compelled. Developed through voluntary collaboration and discussion between citizens and service providers, Community Contracts have, on the whole, established a new architecture for mutual accountability and conditionality and, by implication, the risks of failure were also

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increasingly being personally and professionally shared. Service providers became much more visible to those citizens involved in the Community Contracts. Citizens knew what was expected of them and what they could do to help improve their local area, though this arguably involved becoming a certain type of citizen and following a certain set of standards. Community Contracts can provide a new starting point and focus for combining neighbourhood governance, management, partnership, and engagement. The evidence suggests that Community Contracts clarified both what standards of service residents could expect to receive, and how well existing service standards were being achieved. Community Contracts proved to be a highly focused and purpose-driven approach, informed by local knowledge. In general, the residents in our case-study research welcomed the emphasis on civic responsibility. Community Contracts offered a framework for residents to scrutinise service performance. As such, they can be viewed as local deliberative and participatory democracy in practice, involving joint working, not just consultation. Through the process of drawing up the Community Contracts, across all the case-study areas a governance relationship developed between residents, local politicians, and public sector officers. Residents’ meetings were routinely given access to data on service responses and citizens concerns, which had not been easily available previously. Moreover, residents were given much clearer information about why service providers had been unable to deliver. Not only were citizens empowered, but so too were service providers, by agreeing to, and acting on, priorities and being able to communicate the limitations of the services they could deliver. There were also examples of the media playing a direct scrutiny role with regard to Community Contracts. This represented a step change in accountability: a shift from paternalism to facilitation, with citizens as active partners rather than passive recipients. As such, conditionality was a two-way process rather than just imposed on and/or required of citizens. Overall, across the different case-study Community Contracts there were examples of behaviour change; however, widespread behaviour changes were not evident. Moreover, our evidence suggests that other behaviour change policy tools were also being relied upon, such as enforcement notices. We found particular examples where existing enforcement measures were used as part and parcel of the Community Contracts process and, while working in partnership with local residents to implement the Community Contract, opportunities were identified where enforcement would be an appropriate solution. Although Community Contracts were a key part of the process of mobilising engagement, identifying issues of concern, and ensuring a response or intervention by citizens and service providers, they could not ensure widespread behaviour change on their own. The local scale of Community Contracts was particularly important in all of the casestudy areas even though they varied in size and geographic coverage. The local, grass-roots, focus of Community Contracts may be a key feature for ensuring engagement and citizen commitment. The local scale has been found to be a key driver of civic participation and also as an important context for behaviour change (John and Richardson, 2012; Onyx et al, 2012). Community Contracts were designed to engage communities collectively, with the benefits being not only for individuals but also for the areas in which they live. Citizen responsibility in Community Contracts goes beyond the individual citizen and affects the lives of others. In general, Community Contracts were low cost in terms of resources. The resources primarily concern citizens’ knowledge of their local area. There are potential cost savings as mutual responsibilities develop between citizens and service providers. Our research suggests evidence of information sharing and social network effects amongst those involved and a sense of self-help, collective action, and joint responsibility with service providers. Social network effects at the local level (including social pressure, such as informing neighbours about behaviour and awareness of the behaviour of others) have been shown to be important


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in terms of the likelihood of someone being civically active (Davenport et al, 2010; Goldstein et al, 2008; Pattie and Johnston, 2013). It is notable that in our case-studies there was also some evidence of peer pressure between service providers, who wanted to demonstrate effective working alongside other service providers. However, peer pressure can also create negative reactions and lead to people becoming more resistant to changing their behaviour. A barrier to delivering simultaneous accountability and responsibility was the difficulty of raising awareness about the Community Contracts and getting the wider population to engage. Overall, evidence of public awareness of Community Contracts was limited. There is a clear tension here. The idea of signing the Community Contract was more symbolic or, at best, part of staged community events rather than a requirement to ensure everyone had physically signed the contract. Even though there was some support for the conditionality element of Community Contracts, it is clear that the legitimacy of the Contract can be questioned if the wider population is not aware of it. Whilst for some citizens the Community Contract was providing a more direct relationship with service providers, they were in a minority. This also raises issues for how the conditional aspects of Community Contracts can be enforced. Conditionality can be counterproductive for already-vulnerable populations, such as those with physical and mental health problems and populations who are working but are on low incomes (Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 2012). It can also assume that macrofactors, such as economic downturn and structural changes in the economy, can be tackled by the individuals affected when this may not be realistic. As has been argued by critics such as Dwyer (2004), Goodin (2002), and Taylor-Gooby (2002), conditionality can put individual rights at risk regardless of how vulnerable the person might be, or what, or how urgent, their needs might be, and so can serve to reinforce inequality. At the same time, evidence from the use of conditional requirements (such as attending prenatal care, mandatory health checks, and minimum school attendance) in relation to accessing additional government welfare payments in areas of acute poverty in different countries has been shown to have an impact beyond the effect of the extra income. See, for example, Save the Children’s review of cash transfers and child health outcomes (Sridhar and Duffield, 2006). Unintended consequences include examples of overinvestment in certain sectors and, at the individual level, the overfeeding of children and the advancement of pupils in education who have not achieved the required standard; although it should be noted that unconditional access to funding also had a positive outcome on children’s health (Bastagli, 2010). A key debate here is what aspects of behaviour are targeted for conditional interventions and how these are agreed. One aspect of this is the extent to which Community Contracts manipulate citizens and impose certain types of behaviour. There is a risk that, if they do not involve citizens, then they just become paternalistic and coercive with respect to specific groups or local and central government agendas, rather than being based on collaboration and mutual conditionality. The Community Contracts did all have a transactional basis, but our evidence suggests that in design they were relational and codesigned, at least in relation to those citizens involved in the process. Of course, any kind of contract requires scrutiny and this is the case with Community Contracts if they are to fulfil the aim of being based on mutual responsibility. For a related discussion of behaviour change and paternalism and, in particular, nudging, see Wilkinson (2013). A critique in relation to development aid at the country level has concerned requirements to privatise public services including health care, and water and electricity supplies (see, for example, Hall and de la Motte, 2004). It is notable that among some citizens who had become involved in Community Contracts there was a concern about being targeted by other citizens who did not know about the Contract or who had not followed the conditions. This issue is an important and neglected

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aspect of the policy approach focused on trying to make citizens more responsible. Moreover, amongst many of the residents and service providers who were consulted there was a positive view of the need to focus on civic responsibility but also an awareness of the limitations of enforcement. As we have outlined, a number of residents highlighted the need for a stronger framework to ensure that citizens fulfill their responsibilities, including the need for enforcement. Across all the Community Contracts there had only been limited consideration of how conditionality could be enforced. The evidence suggests that they were largely reliant on consensus, with an emphasis on relationships and monitoring, without strategies in place to deal with those unwilling or unable to cooperate in a Community Contract. However, one resident stated that, whilst the Community Contract cannot necessarily be enforced, “It creates knowledge that we care about our area, which creates better behaviour”. A further challenge to the idea of multidirectional accountability and responsible citizenship can be found in the relatively limited coverage of the Community Contracts. Our case-study research suggests they have not to date addressed more entrenched social issues such as, for example, socioeconomic and health inequalities. A number of residents raised concerns about planning consents, housing allocations, and public transport, none of which had made it into their Community Contract. Many entrenched issues go beyond the scope of what individuals and local communities can achieve or take responsibility for. As such, it seems that there is a limit to what Community Contracts can achieve without widening their reach to the economy beyond the neighbourhood. The devolving of power, as has been debated in relation to many other neighbourhood-level initiatives, seems yet to be fully realised. It could be argued that, despite cooperation and collaboration, the framework and content of Community Contracts was ultimately determined by the existing governance structures and the local authority and public service providers. Conclusions For Community Contracts to be successful there needs to be a rigorous approach to ensuring wider community involvement and for tracking the levels of engagement. Without this, Community Contracts have very limited leverage to engage and change behaviour and the quasi-legal language may prove to be counterproductive. There is a risk that Community Contracts will create further barriers between already-active and nonactive citizens and particularly those citizens with fewer resources to ensure that service providers, including private sector suppliers, deliver on their contracted commitments. As Coote (2010) and Evans (2011) have highlighted in relation to the Big Society, certain populations are likely to be limited in the resources they have available, including time. There are risks of the governance architecture remaining top-down and driven by policy makers, rather than in collaboration with citizens. The extent to which the accountability of individuals can be implicit with an unincorporated entity like the ‘community’ can also be questioned. Responsible citizenship needs to be part both of a responsible state and of a responsible community. To date, Community Contracts have to some extent avoided this through the focus on the joint process of agreement and responsibility and an emphasis on collaboration between professionals and citizens. However, as our research evidence has outlined, the actual proportion of people physically aware of, and signed up to, the Community Contracts was low. Community Contracts have an important relevance in contemporary policy debates. They were seen by some as a wider process of democratic and organisational change. This innovation extended to the roles which elected representatives play. The Coalition government’s Big Society and localism policy contains many similar ideas in its focus on the transfer of control and services directly to local groups and neighbourhoods. The Localism Act (2011) and the Welfare Reform Act (2012) have begun to set the policy framework that Community Contracts align with. Yet under the Coalition government Community Contracts


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have not been a policy priority as there has been a shift from citizens’ rights to public services provided by the public sector to citizens having the legal right to provide their own services. However, Community Contracts are still in use in some places, and being implemented for the first time in some local authority areas five years after the initial government pilot. It is notable that the policy focus on conditionality is also to some extent supported by shifts in public attitudes. Recent evidence from the British Social Attitudes Survey suggests that there is increased public support for individuals taking responsibility for their own lives (British Social Attitudes, 2012). Overall, it seems that approaches such as Community Contracts provide a practical and operational illustration of multidirectional accountability, conditionality, and responsible citizenship. It is possible to develop new, mutually responsible relationships between citizens, communities, and the state; and contract-based approaches such as Community Contracts can be a way of improving relationships and understanding between citizens and service providers. Community Contracts challenge the way in which actors within the local state and citizens viewed their roles and can crystallise citizenship and public services into a partnership based on joint, mutually dependent responsibilities. Community Contracts can lead to improved service responsiveness and accountability and are potentially a good way to bridge the gap between service providers and the public. As such, they represent a pathway for enabling citizen involvement and have the potential to remodel the more traditional relationships, roles, and working practices in local governance. However, questions remain about how involved citizens can become and the extent to which conditionality is shared rather than imposed. References Bastagli F, 2010 Poverty, Inequality and Public Cash Transfers: Lessons From Latin America European Report On Development European University Institute, Florence Bevir M, 2011, “Governance and governmentality after neoliberalism” Policy and Politics 39 457–471 British Social Attitudes, 2012 British Social Attitudes 30th Report National Centre for Social Research, London Cabinet Office, 2010 Building the Big Society Cabinet Office, London Cabinet Office, 2011 Behavioural Insights Team Annual Update Cabinet Office, London Child Poverty Action Group 2010, “Universal credit: universal panacea? ”, Child Poverty Action Group, London, http://wwwcpag.org.uk/content/universal-credit-universal-panacea Coote A, 2010 Cutting it: The ‘Big Society’ and the New Austerity (The New Economics Foundation, London) Crime and Disorder Act, 1998 Public General Acts—Elizabeth II chapter 37 (The Stationery Office, London) Dalton R L, 2008 The Good Citizen (CQ Press, Thousand Oaks, CA) Davenport T C, Gerber A S, Green D P, Larimer C W, Mann C B, Panagopoulos C, 2010, “The enduring effects of social pressure: tracking campaign experiments over a series of elections” Political Behaviour 32 423–430 DCLG, 2008 Communities in Control: Real People, Real Power Department for Communities and Local Government, London Dorey P, Garnett M, 2012, “No such thing as the ‘Big Society’? The Conservative Party’s unnecessary search for ‘narrative’ in the 2010 General Election” British Politics 7 389–417 Durose C, Greasley S, Richardson L (Eds), 2009 Changing Local Governance, Changing Citizens (Policy Press, Bristol) Durose C, Lowndes V, 2010, “Neighbourhood governance: contested rationales within a multi-level setting—a study of Manchester” Local Government Studies 36 341–359 Dwyer P, 2004, “Creeping conditionality in the UK: from welfare rights to conditional entitlements? ” The Canadian Journal of Sociology 29 265–287 Evans K, 2011, “ ‘Big Society’ in the UK: a policy review” Children and Society 25 164–171

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