St Chad’s College Professorial Fellow, Fred Robinson and Research Fellow, Ian Zass-Ogilvie have been working closely with  Citizens House, a community group in Consett, helping them to develop and expand their community centre. Now,  three years of hard work have at last paid off: the Big Lottery has pledged over £650,000 to build a new centre.

Over the past few years, Fred and Ian have been supporting  Durham County Council’s ‘asset transfer’ programme. They have been  helping  local organisations  to take responsibility for community centres  that the Council was struggling to maintain. Of course it’s not been easy, but most of these buildings have now been successfully transferred — and are continuing to provide valuable local services.

Citizens House in Consett is one of these centres. The building doesn’t look attractive, the layout is poor and it’s outdated. But it is very well used by a remarkable variety of local groups, ranging from AA to the WI. Following asset transfer, the management committee began to think about how to modernise the building and accommodate more activities. Ideas were generated and ambitions grew.

A partnership was developed, comprising the Citizens House management committee,  officers from Durham County Council, building experts — and Fred and Ian. That partnership supported the asset transfer process, then worked on proposals to secure funding to develop plans for the future. There were a lot of hoops to jump through. There have been difficult meetings and times when it looked like it wasn’t going to work out. A great deal of work had to be done to develop plans that really could bring out the potential of Citizens House, making it a beacon of hope and community support in Consett.

The original idea was to reorder the internal layout and build on to the existing building. But, late in the day, mine workings were discovered under the site. That was a huge challenge — but partners worked together to come up with a radical Plan B. That involves demolishing the existing building, stabilising the site, and building a brand new Citizens House. The Big Lottery has agreed to provide most of the funding for the new building – a major grant of more than £650,000.

Fred commented: ‘We are delighted that Consett is going to get a new Citizens House – it’s a wonderful project. We’ve been glad to play our part in helping to make it happen and we will continue to offer our support’.

He went on: ‘This is a project that shows how research skills can be used to make a real, tangible difference – and it shows how we at St Chad’s can respond to the needs and challenges that our region faces’.

A summit will be held in Newcastle to discuss civil society and the Northern Powerhouse. The event will bring together a wide range of people from the third sector and wider civil society in the North of England, in order to discuss what the Northern Powerhouse and the devolution agenda means for them, and how they can adapt to a changing landscape, in order to help build a more progressive and inclusive North.  Key topics include:

• The opportunities and threats posed to civil society organisations by devolution and the Northern Powerhouse agenda
• How to engage with new structures such as combined authorities and metro-mayors
• New campaigns and movements for a fairer North

Organised by IPPR\North and funded by Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the Charities Aid Foundation, the event will take place on 30th March 2017. 9.45am – 4.30pm. Location: Event Northumbria, 2 Sandyford Road, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, NE1 8SB

The event will also be showcasing headline results from the Third Sector Trends 2016 study, run by Professor Tony Chapman at St Chad’s College, Durham University. This landmark study, funded by Community Foundation Tyne & Wear and Northumberland, JRF and Garfield Weston presents findings from a study of 3,500 third sector organisations across the whole of the North of England. Speakers at the event will include:

• Ed Cox, IPPR North
• Rob Williamson, Community Foundation Tyne & Wear and Northumberland
• Professor Tony Chapman, St Chad’s College, Durham University
• Emma Stone and Katie Schmuecker, JRF
• Rhodri Davies, Charities Aid Foundation
• Sara Bryson, Citizens North East
• Jane Hartley, VONNE
• Eve Holt, DivaManc
• Simone Roche, Northern Powerwomen

If you want to reserve a place, sign up with eventbrite here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/ippr-norths-third-sector-summit-whose-powerhouse-is-it-anyway-tickets-31599107782?aff=es2

We’ve had a busy year in Policy & Practice where we have started work on a number of big new projects which will start to produce results in 2017 – especially in relation to the position of the third sector in Northern England.

If you’d like to know more about the work we’ve been doing – here’s a link to the PolicyPractice Annual Report 2016

Tackling issues surrounding economic restructuring, geographical isolation and social marginalization.  A seminar organised by the Institute for Local Governance

Hartlepool Council Chamber, Friday 27th January 2017, 9.30 – 1.00

Coastal communities have been given a bad press for many years. Typically, media stories focus heavily on the decline in tourism in many coastal towns, their apparent inability to draw in new investment to restructure the local economy and sensationalist stories about the influx of residents who are dependent on benefits. These issues can play a part in the way coastal communities fare economically and socially – but no two coastal towns are the same – and responses to the challenges or opportunities they face can be very different.

This seminar has been devised to attract an audience which is interested in making change in coastal communities from different points of interest, including local authorities, businesses, charitable foundations which invest in coastal areas, voluntary and community organisations, housing associations, health and wellbeing services. To bring the debate to life, we have invited speakers to speak about three very different coastal communities: the fishing port of Amble in Northumberland, port and industrial town of Hartlepool, and the seaside holiday town of Scarborough.

The history of a place shapes its culture to some extent, but not necessarily its destiny. So even defining these three towns in such short-hand ways is controversial – as is the case in any coastal town – but that is the point of the seminar: to see what defines a coastal town and what needs to be done to secure their positive futures.

This seminar will consider the situation of coastal communities against the backdrop of recent policy and practice interventions at national and local authority level to tackle economic, geographical and social issues in coastal towns. In so doing, it will concentrate on what has been working well and what new interventions show tremendous promise. But it will do so with cultural and economic undercurrents in mind so as not to assert that approaches that may work in one area can simply be transplanted into another.

The event will be introduced and chaired by Councillor Kevin Cranney, Chair of Hartlepool Regeneration Committee, Hartlepool Borough Council

Speakers will include:

• NickTaylor, Investment Manager, Scarborough Borough Council, on the role of major public and private sector investments in the transformation of Scarborough.
• Katherine Blaker, Community Research & Grants Manager, Joseph Rowntree Foundation, on the role of the ActionLab in tackling issues surrounding embedded poverty in Hartlepool.
• Tony Kirsop, Community Regeneration Manager, Northumberland County Council, on the development of Amble quayside and the promotion of small businesses and tourism.
• Fernanda Balata, Policy Director, Coastal Economies Unit, New Economics Foundation, on the national policy environment and NEFs 20 point action plan for coastal communities.
• Denise Ogden, Director of Regeneration & Neighbourhoods. Hartlepool Borough Council, on the role of local government in partnership with the private, public and voluntary sectors in shaping the destiny of coastal communities.

This is the second seminar in the current season which will covered a variety of topics including: graduate enterprise and employability; evidencing personal wellbeing and social value; tackling the unforeseen consequences of unmet need; and, tackling the democratic deficit in the context of devolved responsibility.

The seminar is free to attend, but places are limited and they tend to book up quickly, so please register your attendance via: Janet Atkinson, Institute for Local Governance, Durham University janet.atkinson@durham.ac.uk.

The Institute for Local Governance is a North East Research and Knowledge Exchange Partnership established in 2009 comprising the North East region’s Universities, Local Authorities, Police and Fire and Rescue Services. Further information about the content of the event can be obtained by contacting:- tony.chapman@durham.ac.uk or john.mawson@durham.ac.uk.

Presentations from the event can be located here: 1 Regenerating Coastal Communities – Fernanda Balata – New Economics Foundation – Hartlepool – 27 Jan 20174 Regenerating Coastal communities Amble – The Seafood Town (Tony Kirsop) 2 Regenerating Coastal Communities Seminar (Hartlepool Denise Ogden) Presentation 27 01 17Hartlepool ILG 27Jan17 Nick TaylorCoastal communities Katherine Blaker JRF