Day For Failure: What I Learned from ‘Deferred Success’ at Islington Council

Green direction signs giving directions to Success Lane and Failure Drive. Photo: Chris Potter / Stockmonkeys.com

So apparently today has been declared International Day For Failure (hashtag #DayForFailure), where we’re encouraged to share our tales of failure in order to challenge our collective reluctance as human beings to acknowledge and learn from our mistakes. To borrow a phrase from the tech start up world, we should all be aiming to ‘fail fast’, figure out what’s working and what’s not and then take steps to improve.

As a former local government officer, it’s taken me a while to come round to the idea of being comfortable acknowledging one’s failures. I certainly don’t remember this being covered as part of the National Graduate Development Programme. Still, if I’ve learned anything in the five and a bit years since I left the sector (and some days I do question whether I have), it’s the importance of being honest with yourself at least about how projects went, what my contribution was to the deferred success and what I would do differently (given the chance).

To celebrate Day of Fail, I would like to share with you with you the fail I think about the most. I’m not sure if it’s my biggest fail (after all, it’s never wise to rule out unconscious incompetence) but it’s the one I have learned from the most.

Can you relate to my fail? If so, I’d love to know what happened and what you’ve learned from the experience.

Do you think failure can ever be honestly acknowledged or is the tendency to airbrush our pasts too great?

You can share your own fails (and what you learned from them) on Twitter using the hashtag #DayForFailure.

Failure to launch: Implementing a Disability Equality Scheme at Islington Council

Between 2007 and 2009 I worked as lead officer for disability equality at Islington Council. My overarching responsibility was to ensure the council took a pro-active approach to advancing equality for disabled people when delivering its functions.

Essentially, I was attempting to move the council’s approach to disability from one where staff would try to help individual disabled people who had difficulty accessing a library or leisure centre to one where the council worked with disabled people to design accessible services and identify barriers BEFORE an individual had to complain or ask for help.

So far, so simple. Unfortunately, for much of my time at Islington I found myself bogged down in the process of developing ambitious departmental action plans and getting these signed off. This took up energy and attention on both side – the time spent negotiating and renegotiating what actions would go into the action plans would have been much better spent actually getting out there and working with disabled people to make real world improvements to services.

Looking back on the episode with the benefit of hindsight, I can see both what I did wrong and the scale of the challenge I faced in trying to advance disability.

The way I approached the task contributed to the Disability Equality Scheme becoming bogged down. As a young(ish) and idealistic council officer, I sincerely believed in disability equality and was optimistic about the role the council could make to enabling disabled people to play a full and equal role in society. I naively assumed other officers would be on my wavelength or, at the very least, quickly come round to my way of thinking and make disability equality a priority.

I eventually realised that this was an unreasonably optimistic worldview. In the majority of cases, disability equality was but one of many priorities which departments were responding to. The more experienced senior managers I often found myself negotiating with got this and understood that whatever the letter of the law stated Islington Council should be doing on disability equality, local political priorities came first.

It also goes without saying that in any change process you should never under-estimate resistance that comes from fear of the new and possibly apathetic tendencies.

My passion for disability equality, together with my natural tendency to be a stickler for the letter of the law, led me to push for commitments from departments that were never going to fly. Were I to have my time again, I would like to think I would be more realistic about how much I could change the council and what tactics I would use to secure changes.

My top 3 lessons from my failure are:

1. Be realistic about how much you can change and how much authority you have. 

Just because the law says an organisation should be doing 10 things, don’t hold out for complete implementation. Form a realistic assessment of how much change is possible right now. Have frank conversations with senior leaders (both political and managerial) and agree with them how far they are prepared to go, explaining to them the risks they will have to assume if they should be deemed to not meeting their legal requirements

2. Get some early  quick wins in early

This point is pretty obvious but when faced with a complex task, it’s easy to get bogged down in the more contentious aspects. I did partly achieve this at Islington, securing important improvements to the accessibility of public buildings and council information. I wish I had spent less time negotiating action plans and more time making sure staff were supported to spot and address the little barriers which collectively make a big difference.

3. Recognise and work with the grain of different personalities

I mentioned earlier how I assumed most people would be committed to disability equality. I was wrong about this. It’s not that people were hostile to equality, it was that it was not top of their list of priorities.

At Islington I got over my initial naivety and used a variety of carrots and sticks to secure change. With any change project it is necessary to use different tactics to bring on board supporters or neutralise blockers but looking back now I wish I had spent more time working with those people who were amenable to disability equality, rather than spending time and energy trying to persuade more reluctant departments and individuals.

Can you relate to my fail? If so, I’d love to know what happened and what you’ve learned from the experience.

Do you think failure can ever be honestly acknowledged or is the tendency to airbrush our pasts too great?

You can share your own fails (and what you learned from them) on Twitter using the hashtag #DayForFailure.

Do we really want social mobility after all?

This past week, a couple of different things have proverbially rocked my world.

This first is Run The Jewels 2, the latest album from El-P and Killer Mike. It’s abrasive, brash, aggressive and I can’t recommend it highly enough. You can download it for FREE by clicking here.

The second thing has far less swearing and sonic dissonance (in fact none) but has had just as powerful an effect on my mind. That thing is a recent (16 Feb) Radio 4 Analysis podcast examining the case for social mobility.

With a general election round the corner, we’re certain to hear plenty about social mobility. In so far as the debate has been framed by the three main political parties, social mobility is seen as an intrinsically good thing. After all, who wouldn’t agree that in our society a bright child from a disadvantaged background should have the same chance as reaching the top as one from a more comfortable background?

As someone who considers himself to believe in progressive politics and has chosen to work in jobs where I can help improve outcomes for people, I would of course say I believe in social mobility. However, after listening to the arguments set out in the Analysis podcast, I feel less certain in my political beliefs.

What’s caused this shift in my thinking? Here are some of the the issues raised by the podcast which I am grappling with:

• How far should the state be allowed to go in order to prevent ‘opportunity hoarding’ by the more advantaged? The podcast pointed out that to achieve full social mobility, it is not enough to create more opportunities for the less advantaged by, for example, taking social factors into account when offering university places. Instead, more advantaged people would have to stop ‘hoarding opportunities’. This potentially covers everything from setting up informal work experience placements for your child right through to helping your child with their homework. The implications for individual right of pursuing social mobility are really quite scary.
• Would a society with true social mobility make us any happier? Assuming we put in place the requisite measures to deliver social mobility, we could expect to see individuals experiencing more significant changes in their life experiences. No longer would the less able child be cushioned from failure by the privileges of wealth. And conversely, the able child from a poor background could expect to rise to dizzying heights. While this may sound desirable in an academic exercise, I would be quite worried about the social pressures and anxieties it could create. Would the removing of social barriers create an even greater sense of individualism and an ‘all against all’ society? Would society feel quite nervy as a result of so many individuals experiencing extreme social journeys in the course of their lives?
• What about other characteristics of our society we should be addressing? Social mobility is all well and good, but let’s not forget about other things which make life feel worthwhile. It’s not enough for bright sparks to be able to extricate themselves from disadvantaged backgrounds. How about we take action to raise the safety net, so that nobody, irrespective of their intelligence or herculean determination, can live a decent life? That way, an individual’s relative mobility shouldn’t have such a bearing on how they experience life.

While it can be unsettling to have your political beliefs challenged, I’m glad I made the effort to listen to Analysis and didn’t just stick with Run The Jewels this week. Although I now have more reservations over both the feasibility and desirability of pursuing social mobility as an end in itself, I remain hopeful about the ability of people to work together to create a better world than the one we’ve got right now. In the meantime, there’s always Close Your Eyes.

Black Mirror Angst and Rights in a Digital Age

Today, I experienced a Black Mirror moment which has finally galvanised me into taking action on an area I’m interested in, namely the rights of individuals and organisations in a digital age.

My Black Mirror came about as a result of a knock to the screen my work Macbook, which my wife will attest to the fact that I love it a little more than is probably healthy. Due to the screen being damaged, I had brought my personal laptop to work and spent the first 20 minutes of the day setting up a new work profile on the machine and configuring my various accounts with the help of the invaluable LastPass password manager.

Setting up the laptop triggered mixed feelings. On the one hand, I couldn’t help but marvel at the way services such as Dropbox and my Google account made it easy for me to quickly get up and running at work in a way that would have been inconceivable five years ago. But on the other, the experience of seeing my online-connected identity being re-constituted before my eyes  made me mildly uncomfortable. Just how much of my life had I voluntarily entrusted to internet companies in the name of convenience and connectivity?

It’s fair to say my feelings of unease were fairly mild and were soon replaced by more immediate concerns to do with getting work done and whether or not to order a pudding from the school canteen. Nonetheless, the experience brought home to me how deeply digital has become embedded in all aspects of our lives and why it is important to think about how the rights of individuals are protected in the digital age.

Fortunately, around the same time as I was having a Black Mirror moment, my Google provided email service helpfully provided me with a way of channelling digital angst. I received an email from the Open Rights Group (ORG for short), whose stated objective is to preserve and promote your rights in a digital age.

I’d originally signed up to ORG’s mailing list sometime last year after being impressed by their campaigns around copyright reform, particularly around format shifting and parody. In today’s email I was asked whether I’d be be interested in becoming a local organiser to help develop ORG’s presence in Birmingham. Spurred on by my pre-lunchtime ruminations (food definitely helped calm my mind), I decided to get off the sidelines and get involved with ORG’s campaigning work.

I don’t know yet whether I will be selected to become a local organiser for ORG but, whatever the future brings, I hope to get more involved with the issue of digital rights this year and turn my digital angst into something tangible.

Generations Apart: Finding Work

The ultimate baby boomer: but how will today’s younger generation fare?

So far this month my head has been filled with all sorts of plans for self-improvement, not to mention preparing to get married this April. Thanks are due then to BBC Radio 4‘s recent Generations Apart programme for helping me get outside of my own head and helping me think about how we as a society can respond to the the challenges today’s generation of young people are facing.

Finding Work

The episode of Generations Apart I happened to catch was looking at young people’s experiences of finding work. Told through a series of personal stories, it contrasted the experiences and expectations of young people living in Britain today with the baby boomer generation which came of age in the 1960s. 

You can listen again to the episode by clicking here.

While you might expect any programme based around older people’s recollections of their younger years to suffer from the whiff of nostalgia, I felt the programme succeeded in providing a balanced view of people’s experience of work. By and large, the baby boomers described a world where work of one kind or another was plentiful for young people whilst the young people interviewed spoke of the intense competition to find work of any kind.

What Counts as Work?

Besides the drop in the total volume of work available to young people, the personal stories revealed how social attitudes and expectations around work had also changed significantly. For example, one retired journalist described how he and most of his fellow students were recruited to a paid trainee positions before they graduated. He described being recruited on the basis of his potential and with no expectation that he could do the job already. This world could hardly be further away from the one described by the modern day trainee journalist, competing for the opportunity to carry out unpaid work in the hope of one-day securing a scarce paid trainee post. 

Silver Linings

It’s not all doom and gloom, however, and the programme equally powerfully highlighted the restrictions female baby boomers in particular experienced in their working lives. It’s easy to forget how many workplaces operated a ban on married women, either formally or informally, and the consequences these policies continue to have on the economic security of today’s generation of women approaching retirement . Again, Generations Apart’s personal stories cut through the noise and to get to the heart of the issue.

No Future? No Thanks

While Generations Apart most definitely presented a sobering assessment of the life prospects for many of today’s young people, I am determined not to adopt a pessimistic outlook. To do so would be to ignore the many great personal qualities that were evident in the stories the programme’s young people told and to write off a generation.

Instead, what I took from the programme was a belief that it is possible to have a different society. Notwithstanding the clear social progress that has been made since the 1960s, it seems to me we’ve collectively lost our generosity and willingness to give young people a try. Certainly I know the expectations I place on young people joining organisations I work for are arguably higher than those that I could have fulfilled at their age.

Somehow we’ve got to create a more humane society, one that recognises the vital importance of giving all people the chance to make a positive contribution and be valued. Given the state of the economy and the long-term decline of ‘jobs with prospects’, I’m not sure whether the regular employment market will ever be able to offer today’s generation of young people the same opportunities it offered the baby boomers. Whatever the mechanism, Generations Apart confirms to me we need to give people more not less grounds for optimism.

Life is what happens to you while you’re making other plans (to blog about stuff)

  

‘Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans’. Photo: Swerdlow

 The other Lennon

I believe it was John Lennon who sang ‘Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans to blog about stuff’. Regardless of who said it, it would seem a universally acknowledged truth that the more blog-worthy stuff you’re up to, the less inclined you are to find the time to blog about it. All of which is a very round-about way of apologising for failing to keep this blog up-to-date in recent weeks. (What do you mean you hadn’t noticed?)

So what’s been happening with me, I hear you ask? Going back to John Lennon’s original expression, the past few weeks can be broken down as follows:

Reasons to be cheerful

The past few weeks have been hectic for the right reasons. Without meaning to sound too self-congratulatory I’m pleased with the way I’ve managed to keep up with the regular parts of my life such as the the projects I lead for thinkpublic and the ongoing development work for Roots of Reggae and Heritage of Ska (the latter of which held a successful launch party last Friday) whilst finding the time to make (and carry out) some of my other plans.

I’ve particularly enjoyed reconnecting with my more political side at the recent series of events organised by Political Innovation on the potential for technology such as social media and collaborative authoring tools to transform politics and policymaking. I’m also both excited and mildly alarmed about the very real prospect that UK Gov Camp may in fact help me with the costs of putting on an unconference-style event on how technology can support more flexible forms of collaboration between the public sector and smaller third sector organisations. While there were times in the past few weeks when I would have preferred to have been sat at home watching Pointless, I’m grateful I’ve had the chance to meet some really interesting people who have truly made me question my assumptions.

 It ain’t all good (and that’s the truth)

While overall I’ve had a good few weeks, I’d be lying if I said things were all good. 

Attending the events organised by Political Innovation, which have considered how new technology has the potential to support better citizen (and other stakeholder) engagement in policymaking has made it all the more disappointing to see the Health and Social Care Bill on its inexorable journey to becoming law.

As an individual I am still grappling with where the balance should lie between a government’s right to pursue its policy agenda and stakeholders’ reasonable expectations that their concerns will be listened to. Nonetheless, the apparent democratic deficit at the heart of the proposals (which were neither in the Conservative Party’s Manifesto nor the Coalition Agreement), combined with Government’s willingness to brush to one side the grave concerns raised by a wide cross-section of population, calls into question my faith in how policy is developed.

On a brighter note (oh yes), while I may be unhappy about the passing of Health and Social Care Bill and plans to scrap the 50p top rate of income tax, such developments are at least forcing me to think more deeply about the issues I care about and on what basis my beliefs sustained. With this in mind I’d like to leave with a line I’ve pinched from a Stewart Lee routine:

“I’m not interested in facts. I find they tend to cloud my judgement. I prefer to rely on instinct and blind prejudice.”

Wise words from the world of Pop

Grappling with life’s challenges? Trying to understand the big issues of today and tomorrow? Pop music has the answers.

John Lennon – Beautiful Boy

 De La Soul – All Good 

 Creedence Clearwater Revival – Who’ll Stop The Rain?

Policymaking in the Cloud: Increasing the Quality of Citizen Engagement

Clouds: a metaphor for our increasingly connected lives, apparently. Photo: Jhttp://www.flickr.com/photos/48813704@N02/5740160774/in

Since attending my first Political Innovation event earlier this month I’ve been thinking about the potential new technology such as social media and other digital engagement tools have to transform the way policy is made.

So far , much of the debate has tended to focus on how technology will change the way policy professionals (politicians, civil servants and assorted policy wonks) engage with citizens from static consultation windows to a more dynamic, conversational form of engagement. You can read a good summary of these developments by Dr Andy Williamson on the Political Innovation website.

While any progress towards  a more conversational form of engagement in policymaking should be celebrated, I feel in our excitement to ‘do’ crowdsourced policymaking we must not lose sight of the need for an attendant increase in policy literacy. Without us as citizens having a mature understanding of the wider context in which policy is developed and how our views on different issues relate to each other, there is a danger that new technology will simply add to the ‘noise’ which already surrounds policymakers.

By way of a practical example, the Health and Social Care Bill highlights the need to do more. Putting aside my personal views on the Bill and the Government’s motivations for introducing it, so far my engagement has been limited to re-Tweeting messages demanding the Government drop the bill and (after being prompted to do so by people I follow on Twitter) signing an online petition and template letter to Number 10 to the same effect. Arguably new technology has helped  keep me informed of breaking developments and allowed me to be mobilised as part of well-run political campaigns. In of itself, however, it has not resulted in me truly engaging with the substance of the Bill and the finer points of Health policy.

I believe there will always be limits to the extent to which we as citizens will want to or feel capable of engaging more deeply with the policymaking process, not least of all because of the time and effort this would entail. Nonetheless, there are some simple steps we can take to help us as a society increase both the quality and not just the quantity of citizen engagement in policymaking:

1. Increase the accessibility of policy information

In a previous lifetime I was strategic lead for Disability Equality for a local authority. This experience brought home to me the challenge of explaining often complex ideas and information in ways that people can understand yet retain their original substance. While Government departments do publish Executive Summaries and Plain English guides to major documents, large swathes of policy documents remain impenetrable to the average bod. If we are serious about achieving a shift to a more conversational engagement on policy, as a minimum we must ensure citizen have access to the information they need to understand and engage with complex issues.

2. Provide citizens with the tools to understand how their views relate to others

At the last Political Innovation event Steph Gray provided a round-up of digital collaboration tools that can enable citizens to play an active role in developing policy. Writeboard, for example, allows a people to write, share and revise a shared document, working together to agree a shared position on a particular policy. Before we get to this level of engagement, however, I believe there would be value in us at citizens understanding where our views sit in relation to other people. For example, if we as citizens were able t to know that our position on a policy issue was firmly in the minority, we would have a more realistic view of what our contribution to engagement exercises is likely to achieve. We could also choose to take steps to persuasive work to build support for our position, rather than ever-more loudly proclaiming our position across a range of online platforms to anyone who will listen (and those that won’t).

3. Provide citizens with tools to understand their personal outlook

Most of us (not me, obviously) are a tangled mess of fuzzy thinking and contradictory priorities.  For example, through the process of online engagement I could signal to policymakers that I wish to see the Health and Social Care Bill dropped and, in the next breath, express my dissatisfaction at the lack of choice in Healthcare (not my personal view I hasten to add). By creating more opportunities for engagement, there is a danger that these contradictory impulses further de-stabilise the policymaking process, thus reducing people’s faith in the democratic process.

Moving forward, I see value in applying the principles which underpin online collaboration tools to help citizens get a holistic view of their outlook on life, as reflected by their position on different policy issues. Using online surveys citizens could gain a clearer understanding of which issues they feel most strongly on and how their views differ from issue to an issue. For example, at the most basic level, a survey might tell an individual they are broadly liberal on social policy issues such as Equality and Diversity yet more conservative on wealth redistribution. In my view, having a better understanding of oneself would enable citizens to engage in policymaking in ways that are more productive and coherent for the political  system as a whole.

Over to You

As I’ve already stated, most of us are a tangled mess of fuzzy thinking. I’d love to know what you think about policymaking and the role for citizen engagement within it. Do you agree with me that political literacy is an important if we are to reform policy making? Or maybe I am a product of my background and my time working in policy has made me overly cautious about the potential for citizens to be involved in the policymaking process. Whatever your thoughts, please do get in touch – you’ll be helping me make my thinking just a little less fuzzy.

Meeting People is Easy: The World of Innovation beyond SE23

The Plan ZHeroes team at City Hall, 15th Feb 2012

February is traditionally the time of year when New Year’s Resolutions, if they haven’t done so already, fall by the wayside. With this thought in mind, and inspired by the great work my friend Craig Ennis is still doing on his New Year’s Resolution (Cinema Scraggadiso), over the past couple of weeks I’ve made a concerted to keep my commitment to get out more and connect with at least some of the mind-boggling number of events that are always taking place in London.

Being Amazing

To make things easier on myself, I started off by getting along to events that were in my comfort zone. To that end,  On the evening of 1st February I braved the cold chill and got myself along to Side Kick Studios in Old Street for an informal meeting of The Amazings‘ Street Team.

I’ve previously blogged about The Amazings before so I won’t say too much more. In a nutshell, The Amazings is a  great (amazing?) social enterprise that helps people who are about to retire or have retired create (and sell) amazing experiences with the skills, knowledge and passion they’ve picked up throughout their life. Last year I had a lot of fun helping out by serving on market stalls, introducing people to the service and selling tickets for the experiences on offer. I’m very pleased to say the The Amazings is doing really well and, after successfully securing funding from NESTA, has big plans to expand its reach across London. I for one am particularly looking forward to helping bring The Amazings to Forest Hill. The Amazings is always looking for new street team members, If this is something you’d like to be involved with, do get in touch by clicking here.

Policy Innovation in a reassuringly traditional setting

Adam Street: Reassuringly Traditional

 My confidence buoyed by a successful social outing, in no time at all I found myself signed up to an after work event on the 9th February. The event had the racy title ‘co-design and policymaking‘ and was organised by an organisation called Political Innovation. Given my love of all things political, policy and social innovation how could I say no?

At first glance, the contrast between The Amazings and the Political Innovation event couldn’t have been more stark. Whereas The Amazings hosted us at their tastefully scruffy design studio in trendy East London (see picture of Side Kick’s kitchen for evidence), the Political Innovation event was held in the type of venue which had its heyday when Macmillan was still Prime Minister: Adam Street Private Members Club, situated just off The Strand.

Side Kick’s kitchen: sweet

Thankfully, first impressions were deceiving and I found the evening largely unstuffy, with some excellent presentations and off the cuff presentations from people looking at ways of opening up traditional policymaking in order to increase trust in the political system and deliver improved outcomes. The only real downside of the evening was that I felt that sometimes there was an unhelpful ‘us and them’ attitude expressed, with people involved in innovation projects taking the moral high ground and criticising others for being ‘political’ as though this were intrinsically a dirty word.

As someone who has worked ‘on the inside’ of policymaking I understand how challenging politics can be and, at their best, how hard elected politicians work. If we are serious about wanting to reform the political system as a minimum there needs to be mutual respect for both sides. And proponents of opening up policy making (myself included) need to recognise that while all of us, either as individuals or collectively as ‘the people’, can provide our views, ultimately deciding which priorities to pursue at any given time will always be an inherently ‘political’ judgement, regardless of who makes it.

There were many excellent contributions made at last week’s event. I recommend you visit the Political Innovation website to find out more and to book your place at the next event. I would like to give a special mention to Paul Evans for setting up Political Innovation and arranging the event and to Steph Gray (@lesteph) for his excellent overview of the various tools available to help increase involvement in policymaking.

You can read a blog post from Political Innovation on the evening here.

Swapping Forest Hill for City Hall

The view from inside City Hall at the Plan ZHeroes Launch

Last but by no means least I’d like to end this post by telling you about my latest social venture (geddit?), which last night took me to the political heart of London, City Hall, for the Plan ZHeroes launch event.

Plan ZHeroes is a civil society group based in London with a mission to reduce food waste to zero. In the long term it plans to do this by lobbying for action to reduce waste at every level of the ‘food pyramid’, from farm to plate. More immediately, however, it is focusing its efforts on connecting the people who cannot feed themselves and their families properly with the millions of tonnes of food that is wasted every year.

To achieve their goal Plan ZHeroes has created an interactive map which allows food charities and other community organisations to easily connect with businesses such as cafes with spare food that would otherwise go to waste. The idea of a food waste map is such a simple one and is a great example of how digital technology can support social action. Now the challenge is to get people using the map.

Plan ZHeroes’ interactive map in action

Although Plan ZHeroes’ launch event was held at City Hall and featured contributions from prominent commentators such as Rosie Boycott the organisers successfully managed to combine serious intent with a sense of fun. Most memorably, they had hired student actors to role play an apocalyptic food crisis scenarios in a near-future London, which led on to some group working to come up with ideas to solve the crisis by promoting the interactive map. It may sound lame but because everyone involved approached it in the right spirit, it turned out to be a fun, creative way of getting people thinking about how we  can make the map a success.

Plan ZHeroes is asking for help to spread the word about food waste and the interactive map.and pledge to introduce the map to 10 organisations you know. This could mean telling your local supermarket about the map or perhaps a church or community group you attend. To find out more about you can do to help, click here.

What has being sociable taught me?

Looking back at the three events, I feel there are opportunities for each group to learn from one another and to improve. Future events by The Amazings and Political Innovation would benefit from the interaction of the Plan ZHeroes. Political Innovation could learn from the relaxed atmosphere of the Amazings. Political Innovation benefited from the quality and diversity of its attendees and is all organisations putting on events should look to emulate their approach.

Mind the Gap

The Great Wealth Divide. Photo: BBC World Service

Updated: 06/02/2012

Last week I had the good fortune to stumble across a great little two-part radio documentary on the BBC World Service called The Wealth Gap: The View from London. The programme vividly brought to life how our lives are shaped by inequality. It also succeeded in conveying the complex nature of inequality and the challenge it presents to policy-makers wishing to take steps to reduce it. 

2012: a year defined by inequality?

Inequality and the widening gap between the richest and the poorest in our society has hardly been out headlines of late. Wherever you look, from the recent political jockeying over the size of Stephen Hester’s bonus to the ongoing high-profile protests organisers by the likes of Occupy movement and UK Uncut, it seems, at a rhetorical level at least, everyone is agreed that ‘something has to be done’ about inequality.

Throw in some added economic gloom for good measure and the timing of The Wealth Gap’s broadcast starts to look like an inspired move on the part of the BBC World Service (itself a victim of deep reductions in public funding).

The Wealth Gap: Economics with a Human Face

The Wealth Gap’s chief strength is that it succeeds in turning what could easily be a very dry discussion about economics and statistics into a gripping human interest drama with a satisfyingly complete three-act narrative arc. Well, not quite, but the producers of The Wealth Gap should be commended for bringing out the human impact of widening inequality without sacrificing the underlying substance.

The programme focuses on inequality through the lives of people living in London, one of the most-international cities and a magnet for many of the wealthiest people. At the start of the first episode we’re told that rising inequality is a global phenomenon, with statistics in both developed and emerging economies showing an increasing share of income and wealth is held by an ever-narrower elite. After that, however, we’re given the chance to focus on the lives of different people living in the capital and how they relate to inequality.

 

Home is where the heartache is 

The focus of the first episode is London’s over-heated housing market. We hear from a range of voices: an an estate agent who has witnessed first-hand the rise of ‘super-prime’ £5 million+ properties; a low income family with  young children experience over-crowding and a senior teacher who cannot afford to buy a property within commuting distance of her school. These voices bring to life what it feels like to live in a city where housing has become ever more expensive as people at the top end of the income distribution, whose earnings have outstripped those of the population as a whole over the past thirty years or so, continue to exert upward pressure on housing prices. 

Sufficed to say, after the first episode my moral indignation at rising levels of inequality was turned up to 11. What’s new, you might say? Luckily, episode two of The Wealth Gap came along an shook me out of my comfort zone by suggesting that inequality can also bring with it certain benefits and, gulp, maybe we should in fact show a little more gratitude for the super-rich and the jobs they support. 

Let’s hear it for the 1 per cent 

Making the case for inequality, we hear from management and shop-floor staff from a company that produces luxury £80,000 beds fit and another company that arranges bespoke experiences for super-rich clients. As unpopular as they may with the public at large, are the world’s super-rich an important source of jobs in London. Similarly, despite everything we know (and even more we don’t) about the consequences of tax avoidance and tax evasion. Paul Johnson, Director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, tells us that the top 1 per cent of earners now contribute to around 28 per cent of all income tax paid in the UK, an increase from 11 per cent in the late 1970s. While Paul is quick to point out that this change reflects the extent to which incomes of the super rich have grown, it also shows the extent to which current levels of public spending are dependent on high levels of income inequality. 

Living with complexity 

Given the recent brouhaha over bankers’ bonuses and executive pay, there was something refreshing and daring about The Wealth Gap being prepared to make the case for the super-rich. While I remain unconvinced that the growing inequality we are experiencing in London is neither inevitable nor is it a price worth paying for the tax base and jobs the super-rich support, I feel I have a better appreciation of just how complex the issue is. As someone who is keen to see a progressive future I would have liked to have seen more attention given to the practical steps we as a society and through our individual actions can take action to manage and ultimately reduce levels of inequality but this is a huge subject in of itself.

If you hurry you should still be able to find both episodes of The Wealth Gap on BBC iPlayer. and as a podcast download.

What did you think of the programme? Do you think rising levels of inequality are a fact of life? Would we be better off spending our time focusing on other matters? Feel free to get in touch and share your thoughts and experiences of inequality.

What London’s B&B bill tells us about the housing market

Sign of the times:  Councils’ use of Bed & Breakfasts as temporary accommodation remains high. Image: TripAdvisor.com

Yesterday I found myself working for thinkpublic on a research project exploring people’s experiences of homelessness. It’s still early days for the project so I can’t say too much about the fine-detail of the project. I can however share with you my thoughts on a an interesting (by Policy standards, anyway) fact I learned.

Fact of the day

I learned that one London local authority spent approximately £300,000 last year on nightly paid or ‘Bed & Breakfast’ temporary accommodation for homeless people. If this sounds like a lot of money that’s because it is. And yet compared to neighbouring boroughs, this authority is actually pretty good at placing its homeless residents in more appropriate and more cost effective forms of temporary accommodation.

High times living in the city

The high figure for Bed & Breakfast payments is, in large part, an expression of the pressures the London housing market is under. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that demand for housing in London vastly outstrips supply. This means private landlords can nearly always find people with jobs ready to snap up their rental properties. Local authorities are finding it increasingly difficult to persuade private landlords to lease their properties on a long-term basis for use as temporary accommodation. Consequently, local authorities are finding that the feel there is no other option available to them other than to rely on more expensive, short term Bed & Breakfast accommodation.

Re-framing the problem: a nation of Bed & Breakfast guests?

At this point  in a post the optimist in me would normally swing into gear and begin to talk about the opportunities which undoubtedly exist for local authorities to improve the way they purchase and manage temporary accommodation to both reduce costs and improve outcomes for individuals and families (Bed & Breakfast accommodation has long been recognised as being a less than ideal option for families, due to the disruption it causes and often the lack of adequate space/facilities for children and, indeed, the previous Labour Government introduced a target to end the placement of families in this this form of accommodation.. While it is very important we take action in this area, I’d like instead to leave you with some thoughts on what I feel the £300,0000 Bed & Breakfast figure says about our housing market as a whole and the need for radical change.

1. Although the £300,000 figure for Bed & Breakfast is attention-grabbing, it is largely a predictable, market-forces driven response to the chronic over-demand/under-supply of housing rather than an operational issue. The same is true of the eye-watering amounts spent on Housing Benefit. These figures show that the failure of the housing market exacts a cost on us all, whether or not we are in direct housing need.

2. The Coalition’s policies are, in my view, primarily focusing on attacking the symptoms rather than the underlying causes of the housing crisis. Putting aside ethical concerns over the impact on families and communities, in the long term measures such as reducing the amount paid in Housing Benefit and plans for a cap on the total amount of benefits any one family can receive may begin to exert some downward pressure on costs. They will not, however, address the fundamental problem of a lack of supply.

3. Instead of responding to the figure of £300, 000 for Bed & Breakfast by demanding immediate cost costing, we should be spurred on to think radically about how we meet people’s housing needs in future. Particularly in London, we cannot simply build our way out of the problem. Even if there was political and public consensus on the substantial investment required, we would quickly run up against physical limits on building more houses. Recognising the limits of traditional approaches, we can begin to explore new ways of living that reflect the realities of our society. I’m not going to pretend that this will be easy but, in the same way that there have been pubic conversations over retirement and social care, I think we need to have a more open discussion on housing and ‘the art of the possible’.

Overcoming the online echo chamber

I read the other day an interesting article on Slate which explored the belief that the Internet can create an online echo chamber, with us increasingly only hearing the views of people similar to us. In the interests of avoiding this, I’d be keen to hear your thoughts on housing, particularly in London.
 
Do we need to re-think our housing expectations? In response to the pressures on housing is it time to think radically about how we design and allocate housing? Or maybe you think we’d all be better off if we embraced B&B accommodation?

You can comment below or get in touch by email: clarke.francisg@gmail or on Twitter: @francisclarke