Green Spaces and Sustainable Communities Final Report to BIG March 2008
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Green Spaces and Sustainable Communities Final Report to BIG March 2008 This report was researched and written for the Big Lottery Fund by Sally Downs Associates in collaboration with Alison Millward Associates Copyright: Big Lottery Fund 2008 Published by: Big Lottery Fund 1 Plough Place, London, EC4A 1DE Tel: 0207 211 1800 Fax:0207 211 1750 Email: e&[email protected] Use of material in this report must be appropriately acknowledged. © The Big Lottery Fund Evaluation of the Green Spaces and Sustainable Communities programme Final Report to the Big Lottery Fund, February 2008 ____________________________________________________________________________________________ Evaluation Team: Mike Dando Sally Downs (Project Director) David Haffey Stephen Hughes Alison Millward 2 Evaluation of the Green Spaces and Sustainable Communities programme Final Report to the Big Lottery Fund, February 2008 ____________________________________________________________________________________________ Table of contents Executive Summary …………………………………………………………… 5 1 Introduction ………………………………………………………………15 2 Key features of the initiative …………………………………………. 25 3 Reaching out to disadvantage ………………………………………. 30 4 Community involvement and building social capital ……………. 42 5 Contributing to sustainable development .………………………… 51 6 Review of overall performance .……………………………………… 60 7 The Award Partner route to delivery ……………………………….. 77 8 Lessons for future programmes …………………………………….. 95 List of annexes Annex 1 Terms and acronyms ……………………………………………96 Annex 2 Background to the GSSC initiative …………………………….98 Annex 3 Evaluation methodology ……………………………………….101 Annex 4 Review of projects funded through the GSSC initiative ……107 Annex 5 The case study sample used in evaluation of GSSC ………115 Annex 6 Scorings from the case study evaluations …………………..126 Annex 7 The Award Partners ……………………………………………130 Annex 8 The individual programmes in the GSSC initiatives ………..144 Annex 9 What happens when the funding runs out …………………..149 3 Evaluation of the Green Spaces and Sustainable Communities programme Final Report to the Big Lottery Fund, February 2008 ____________________________________________________________________________________________ Acknowledgements This evaluation has been rooted in wide ranging and frank discussions with people too numerous to acknowledge by name. They come from community groups fighting for change in their local neighbourhoods, from special interest groups like mothers working to ensure that their children with disabilities got opportunities and places to play, from organisations committed to reducing our environmental footprint, and many others. They also include organisations trying to help things happen, like local authorities, charitable trusts, non-departmental public bodies, and all the Award Partners. Without these many generous people, the research could not have been completed. Their help is gratefully acknowledged. 4 Evaluation of the Green Spaces and Sustainable Communities programme Final Report to the Big Lottery Fund, February 2008 ____________________________________________________________________________________________ Executive summary Introduction to the programme 1 The environmental remit of the Big Lottery Fund (BIG) was to improve the environment of communities across the UK, particularly those facing disadvantage. Green Spaces and Sustainable Communities (GSSC) was the first environment initiative of BIG. It supported projects that ‘help disadvantaged communities understand, improve and care for their local environment’ and, as such, had a strong people and community focus. It had an overall value of £126 million. 2 Across the UK, nearly 3.500 projects have been delivered, many of them in the most disadvantaged communities. These projects have invested in a better future – for people and for places. As a result, there are new community green spaces, improved playing fields, cycling and walking routes, initiatives to reduce use of the world’s scarce resources, children’s play projects, and much else. Project diversity is a hall-mark of the initiative. 3 The vast majority of these projects began with a local focus, but many also had much wider impacts. There are communities with new perspectives on how they want to live, young people trying out improved environmental practices that can last throughout their lives, individuals newly equipped to tackle the workplace or to bring about change in their local communities. There are projects that are exemplars of good practice, continuing to influence the ways that our public services and goods are delivered. And there are many more people now able to go to somewhere local, green and inspirational, beyond their own homes, which they can share with others in their community. 4 The Policy Directions for the GSSC initiative envisaged funding projects that: • either create, preserve, improve or promote access to green spaces of educational, recreational or environmental value to the community, including the acquisition of land, reuse of derelict land, and creation of habitats which encourage biodiversity. Three quarters of the funding was for these green space projects, including playing fields and children’s play • or, encourage small community-based projects, which engage local people in improving and caring for their environment and promoting sustainable development. One quarter of the funding was for these projects. 5 The initiative was tailored to differing priorities in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. 5 Evaluation of the Green Spaces and Sustainable Communities programme Final Report to the Big Lottery Fund, February 2008 ____________________________________________________________________________________________ 6 Grant making and delivery of the GSSC initiative was delegated to ‘Award Partners’, enabling BIG to build on existing skills and experience in the environment sector. There were ten Award Partners in all, each running their own branded programme, and made up of organisations from the public and voluntary sectors. This was the first time that the Award Partner route to delivery had been used by a Lottery Distributor and represented an important innovation in grant making for BIG. From the outset, Award Partners were allowed significant levels of freedom to determine their own programmes. Introduction to the evaluation 7 The terms of reference for the evaluation set two themes: • the impact of the initiative on social inclusion: this theme covered questions regarding achievements of the initiative in the context of BIG’s commitment to addressing disadvantage, and with respect to the sustainable development agenda • the programme delivery route using Award Partners: this theme considered BIG’s decision to delegate delivery. 8 Much of the evaluation has been concerned with process. At both Award Partner and project levels, the area of concern has been the same; namely, have they contributed to positive social outcomes – but also to environmental and economic ones – and how have they worked to achieve this? Depth of understanding has been achieved through a review of available data on the whole initiative, individual interviews and group discussions with all the Award Partners over the duration of the initiative, and interviews with project initiators and beneficiaries from 101 case studies. 9 The sample of case studies was selected on a structured and independent basis to cover the ten programmes, project types, sizes, and geographical spread. The sample provides a robust reflection of the whole initiative. Most projects have been evaluated at least twice, with many visited a number of times to meet with beneficiaries and understand impacts over time. GSSC and social inclusion 10 Making a real difference in the lives of the most disadvantaged was a central feature of the GSSC initiative. There were exemplary projects which responded to this in a wide variety of ways. These included, for example, delivery of benefits to local communities in areas affected by social exclusion; targeting of groups which have their own special needs; and incorporation of this targeting into projects with wider environmental objectives. Success with the social inclusion agenda was unrelated to project type, and was found in green space projects, play schemes, skate parks, local nature reserves, recycling projects and many others. 6 Evaluation of the Green Spaces and Sustainable Communities programme Final Report to the Big Lottery Fund, February 2008 ____________________________________________________________________________________________ 11 It is clear, however, that the commitment to tackling disadvantage was interpreted in a wide range of ways across the various GSSC programmes, and that it did not always sit comfortably alongside other considerations. For example, the spread of projects across all parts of the UK meant that regions and areas with particular concentrations of deprivation got fewer projects than their levels of deprivation would have justified; interpretation of ‘facility-based’ deprivation meant that more conventional definitions of deprivation and disadvantage were effectively put aside. 12 Just over half the case study projects were strong performers in terms of BIG’s commitment to prioritising social inclusion. Given that these projects clearly demonstrated how disadvantage can be joined up with other agendas, it has been concluded that the overall performance with respect to social inclusion was not as good as it could have been. However,