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Northumberland's Vital Issues

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Northumberland's Vital Issues Northumberland’s Vital Issues 0 Researched and written by Roger Mould Page with Mark Pierce, Community Foundation Tyne & Wear and Northumberland Contents Foreword 2 Executive summary 3 Introduction to themes and priorities 5 The Vital Signs themes Work 8 Fairness 10 Housing and homelessness 12 Safety 14 Learning 16 Arts, culture and heritage 18 Strong communities 20 Environment 22 Healthy living 24 Local economy 26 Civil society organisations 28 Young people 30 Sources and acknowledgements 32 1 Page Foreword This report, Vital Issues, is part of a major new project for the Community Foundation, Vital Signs. Our intention is that Vital Signs will inform the development of effective community philanthropy in our area by providing a „health check‟ on key local issues informed both by national statistics and local knowledge and experience. In tandem with other Community Foundations in the UK, we are piloting Vital Signs, drawing inspiration and learning from colleagues in the Community Foundations of Canada, who originated the model. We started with a Tyne and Wear‟s Vital Signs report in May 2013, and Northumberland‟s Vital Signs will be published as part of the nationwide launch of the Vital Signs project on 1 October 2013. Vital Signs reports are focussed on 10 nationally agreed themes. This will allow progress to be compared between areas across the country, and enable common issues and priorities to be identified. However the main focus of the initiative is on informing local decision making. To this end we will also focus on two local themes, Civil Society Organisations and Young People, where we feel there is a particular need for local action. This Vital Issues report provides the data which informs Northumberland’s Vital Signs. In it, we are seeking to do the following: Report on the vitality of Northumberland‟s communities using a range of nationally gathered statistics, alongside evidence from local experts. Identify the priority issues that present the most significant challenges and opportunities for change here. Describe how civil society organisations – charities, community groups, social enterprises and the like – are involved in addressing the priorities identified. Suggest how community philanthropy can best respond. Vital Signs is not designed to be the “final word” on the issues it addresses. Importantly, we now need to know what people, businesses, public bodies and local groups think about the evidence and priorities, where they think Northumberland is doing well, and where they want charitable efforts – by donors and civil society groups – to be focussed for most effect. Publication of Northumberland’s Vital Signs is just the start of an on-going process of discussion. And, we ourselves will be working even harder to apply vital philanthropic resources to vital projects to address our community‟s vital issues. We hope this will be just the first Northumberland‟s Vital Signs. Please join us in the conversation. Rob Williamson Chief Executive Community Foundation Tyne & Wear and Northumberland July 2013 2 Page Executive Summary Northumberland has many positive aspects. The county has beautiful countryside and coastline, and scores highly on measures of natural beauty and tranquillity. The richness of its history is reflected in an enviable array of heritage sites including some of the most striking historical buildings in the UK. However the local economy is weak. In recent decades the county has struggled to adapt to the decline of two key industries: coal mining and agriculture. To this may be added the on- going effects of the more recent contraction of the public sector, which employs around 42,000 local people, and the closure of the county‟s largest private sector employer the Rio Tinto Alcan aluminium smelter. Turning the local economy around will be a major challenge. Civil society organisations, supported by local philanthropists, can play a significant role in supporting work towards this goal. They can underpin the county‟s offer as a good place to live, do business and work. They can help ensure that local people, particularly the young and those from disadvantaged backgrounds, are able to benefit fully from new opportunities as they arise. Despite its economic problems, quality of life is generally good across much of the county. Infant mortality, teenage conceptions and suicide are all low, as are crime rates including youth offending and re-offending. The Place Survey also shows high levels of satisfaction of residents for things like respect and people getting on with each other, a strong sense of belonging, and satisfaction with home and neighbourhood. Indeed, taking county-wide statistics at their face value, it would be easy to conclude that Northumberland was doing very reasonably against a large number of indicators. In many instances, as we will see later, this is actually true and should be celebrated. In other areas, however, county-wide statistics mask strong variations in the fortunes and experience of people in neighbouring urban and rural areas across the county. This is by far the most challenging conclusion of this research. It requires that local data - much of which relates still to the districts and wards which were absorbed into the unitary authority in 2009 - should always be checked rather than relying only on county-wide data. Doing so reveals that in relation to all of the 12 Vital Signs themes there are examples of significant deprivation in parts of Wansbeck, Blyth Valley, Berwick and specific settlements such as Lynemouth. The following examples may be cited to illustrate this issue: there are high levels of benefit dependency, and lower rates of employment for key groups such as lone parents and people with disabilities in many urban wards; there is a relatively high rate of youth unemployment for the county as a whole, but the level varies between neighbourhoods with rates in some urban wards being amongst the highest 1% in the country; levels of educational attainment are markedly lower in Blyth and Wansbeck than the figures for the county as a whole might suggest; the lower than average county-wide level of homelessness masks the problems faced by communities in towns like Blyth or Berwick where levels are significantly higher; 3 Page in Wansbeck the setting of deliberate fires emerges as a particular challenge not experienced elsewhere, with incidents running at 5 times the national average; election turnouts are a key indicator of strong communities. In Northumberland they are lower in urban than rural areas. In some cases the levels of deprivation in specific neighbourhoods within Northumberland equals or exceeds those in the most challenged wards within Tyne and Wear. The Fairness section of this report in particular identifies a number of almost exclusively urban wards as performing badly against seven Indices of Multiple Deprivation (IMD); employment; income; child poverty; health; education, older people‟s poverty and crime. But disadvantage in Northumberland is not an exclusively urban phenomenon. The following problems can be identified as particularly significant in Northumberland‟s rural areas: lack of access to services, opportunities and amenities and subsequent social isolation underpinned by poor public transport; poor housing in some places, including no central heating (which is responsible for high levels of fuel poverty); poor Broadband connectivity which affects the viability of businesses and limits access to new forms of service provision and social connectivity; The marked disparity in quality of life between individuals and communities within Northumberland has led us to identify Fairness as a key priority. Lifting living standards in the county‟s most deprived neighbourhoods is essential if inequality is to be prevented from undermining Northumberland‟s strong sense of community. Our research has identified many areas where action by civil society organisations, supported by community philanthropy, can make a real difference. The local community and voluntary sector is a key asset of the county, contributing much to the quality of life enjoyed by Northumberland residents. It has an in-depth understanding of local communities, and can offer holistic and innovative approaches to meet local needs particularly in deprived areas. As important, it can provide a route for communities to engage in local decision making and help shape the development of local services. Unfortunately the funding situation for much of the sector is worsening as a result of recent cutbacks in public expenditure. Alternative sources of funding such as social investment and contracting for services are slow to come on stream. Support for the civil society organisations therefore emerges as a major priority. Community philanthropy cannot make up the funding that has been lost, but it remains key to civil society‟s vitality and may be able to ease the process of transition through a more strategic funding approach. 4 Page Introduction to themes and priorities Methodology This report covers 12 themes. Ten of these are based on the nationally agreed Vital Signs UK themes. An additional two were selected as being of particular local interest. The table below shows this relationship: National Vital Signs theme Northumberland theme Labour market Work Tackling disadvantage and exclusion Fairness Housing Housing and homelessness Safety Safety Education and skills Learning Arts, culture and heritage Arts, culture and heritage Strong communities Strong communities Environment Environment Health and well-being Healthy living Economy Local economy Local themes for Northumberland Civil society organisations Young people At a national level a range of indicators have been agreed for each of the 10 national themes that allow for a relatively objective grade to be awarded showing how each Vital Signs area is doing relative to the rest of the UK. In the Northumberland’s Vital Statistics report we have set out grades for Northumberland showing where it sits in a range from the top 20% of comparable areas (grade A) through the middle 20% (grade C) to the bottom 20% (grade E).
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