Introduction

The current Labour administration has introduced a raft of policies that hinge upon public participation. While this is often limited to consultation exercises (for example, the Best Value and Crime and Disorder legislation), some policies have gone much further. One of the best examples of a highly participatory policy is the New Deal for Communities (NDC) initiative, which forms a substantial part of the government's neighbourhood renewal agenda. It stipulates that local people must be integrally and meaningfully engaged in all aspects of programme development and delivery. A further feature of the current government's approach is its sharp focus on evidence-based policy making, thus we have seen a large investment in evaluative activities. For the first time, participatory evaluation can be explored on a large scale. This chapter argues that evaluation itself can be used as a means of public engagement, but to do so it may be necessary to look outside traditional methodologies and consider more creative approaches. This chapter introduces a range of creative methods that can be used to encourage the participation of all sectors of the community.

Policy background

The NDC was launched in 1998 as part of the government's ‘National Strategy for Neighbourhood Renewal’ (DETR, 1998). This is now widely touted as the government's ‘flagship’ regeneration programme, which is costing almost £2 billion and is implemented nationally by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM). Its aim is to reduce the gap between the least and most prosperous areas in the country so that in ten years’ time, no one should be seriously disadvantaged by where they live (DETR, 1998). In total, 39 geographically small urban areas, exhibiting extreme levels of multiple deprivation, were selected to become NDC partnerships. There were 17 ‘Pathfinder’ NDCs announced in 1998 and a further 22 partnerships were launched the following year.

The NDC programme is a ‘comprehensive’ regeneration programme, which encompasses employment, crime, education, health and housing. While each partnership must include these five themes in its programme, local circumstances may influence the inclusion of others.

Aside from the thematic focus, there are a number of key features of the NDC programme which distinguish it from previous regeneration initiatives. First, partnerships should be led by local people. This is usually through representation on partnership boards and involvement in funding decisions.