Introduction

One of the key themes of contemporary urban policy in England is that supplementary urban regeneration programmes such as the National Strategy for Neighbourhood Renewal (NSNR) cannot on their own tackle deeply ingrained and complex problems of area-based disadvantage. Disadvantage and exclusion must rather be addressed through existing ‘core’ (mainstream) expenditure on the public services that are already present in these neighbourhoods. From this perspective, mainstreaming, for contemporary policy makers, is a multifaceted transformation process that goes beyond merely spending more money in disadvantaged areas.

Key public services such as the police, education authorities and health trusts hold important resources of revenue, capital (such as buildings, property and vehicles) and the technical expertise embodied in their staff. During the financial year 2005/06 some £61 billion of extra public spending was being channelled into public services (over and above the previous year's spending) and the aim was to get some of this additional funding directed at disadvantaged areas (ODPM, 2004, p 3). By contrast, the Neighbourhood Renewal Fund directed only £400 million at disadvantaged neighbourhoods in the most deprived local authority areas. The transformation of existing public services in disadvantaged neighbourhoods becomes more urgent when it is argued that the poor quality of many of these services is linked to the spiral of neighbourhood decline (see SEU, 1998, or Johnson and Osborne, 2003). However, the idea of mainstream agencies responding more effectively to local issues and conditions sits more generally within the government's agenda of improving public services through the residents in neighbourhoods becoming ‘more involved in the democratic life of their community’ (ODPM/HO, 2005, p 3). This is an idea that applies to all neighbourhoods, not just the most disadvantaged.

In this chapter we will explore three questions:

• • How do professionals and residents working in and around neighbourhood renewal make sense of ‘mainstreaming’ as a process of transformation in public services?

• • Can we identify evidence of mainstream agencies changing either what they do or what they talk about as a response to the neighbourhood renewal agenda (that is, is there evidence of mainstreaming)?

• • If so, what have been the conditions under which this mainstreaming has come about?

Neighbourhood partnerships need the resources held by core spending agencies but it is only through an examination of the evidence from neighbourhood renewal programmes that one can understand the limitations on neighbourhood partnerships to mobilise these resources.