Grassroots Government

Last week the residents of Queen's Park ward in Westminster won a two year campaign to establish a Community Council, the first such local elected authority in London since parish councils were abolished in the capital in 1963. In a referendum made possible following a change in the law introduced in 2007, 64% voted in favour of a precept which will add between £39 to £44 a year to typical council tax bills and provide the new body with a budget of £100,000.

The area has a long history of community activism. Its current most visible manifestation is Queen's Park Neighbourhood Forum, a residents' organisation set up with the help of Paddington Development Trust. The forum began the campaign for the new council after its funding was cut by the coalition government. Although situated in one of the wealthiest boroughs in the country, the ward is one of the 10% most deprived - in marked contrast to the 'other' Queen's Park, the upmarket area across the tracks in Brent.

Elections for the new council will take place in 2014. More pictures here

Last days

Hillwood, one of Age Concern Camden's three Resource Centres, will close at the end of June, an early victim of the coalition government's spending cuts. Some regular users of the Euston day centre who are eligible for specialist transport will be able move elsewhere, but many others will no longer have a local place to meet, get support and advice, have lunch, and engage in activities.

“We’re all in this together”, Cameron, Osborne and Clegg said. But it seems that some are more in it than others. More pictures here.

Destined for the chop

The after-school club at The Winch, a voluntary sector youth project in Swiss Cottage, London, is one of many services for children and young people threatened with closure as a result of the government spending cuts. The primary age children are collected from school and cared for until 6.00pm. Cutting the club will not only impact on the children and play workers, but also on parents who rely on it for the care of their children while they are at work. A strange way to go about boosting the economy. More pictures here.

A Rock and a Hard Place

When Camden Council leader Nasim Ali spoke to the Bengali Workers’ Association at the Surma Centre, up the road from Euston station, a couple of weeks ago, he was among friends and family. He grew up round the corner and first visited the centre when he was 14.

Labour took control of the council in May 2010, ending the four-year rule of a Conservative/Lib-Dem coalition, and now Ali finds himself in the unenviable position of having to implement radical spending cuts imposed by a similarly constituted national government. He clearly sympathises with the vociferous campaigns being waged by Camden residents in defence of local services - as is obvious from his addresses to protestors both on their home ground (above) and outside the Town Hall last week (below) – but he is caught between the wishes of the residents who voted for him, and the council's legal obligation to pass a budget within constraints set down by George Osborne and Eric Pickles. Not a good place to be.

More pictures here, and here.

On the Front Line

Rosie (above) is 91, and a regular visitor at Age Concern Camden's Great Croft Resource Centre in King's Cross, which is threatened with closure following cuts to the organisation's funding by Camden Council. Despite the government’s promises that frontline services would not be hit by its controversial deficit reduction programme, the knock-on effects on services delivered by both local authorities and the voluntary organisations they fund are becoming all too apparent. More pictures here.

Two other Age Concern centres in the borough, Henderson Court and Hillwood, are also scheduled for closure, but the elderly users of all three have mounted a vigorous defence campaign. The council will vote on the closures later this month.

The Big Society Ha Ha Ha

Today’s Town Hall protest against the proposed closure of Age Concern Camden’s three resource centres marks only the beginning of the dismantling of services provided by the voluntary sector in the borough - and elsewhere. As the government’s spending cuts feed through to local councils and on to the Third Sector organisations they fund, it’s hard to see anything that might resemble a “Big Society” surviving.

The three day centres - Great Croft, Hillwood and Henderson Court - provide a lifeline for their elderly users which will be impossible to replace. Once they have gone, Age Concern’s Good Neighbour schemes are also destined for the chop. If the Orwellian “Big Society” phrase had any real meaning, these schemes would surely exemplify its essence. For the price of one part-time coordinator’s salary, 50 carefully matched and dedicated volunteers make weekly visits to the housebound and isolated elderly in their neighbourhood.

If anyone had doubts that Prime Minister David Cameron’s catchphrase was nothing more than a content-free PR soundbite, cuts to services such as these should put them straight.

More pictures here.

Over the Hill?

Over the Hill?, a video, print and web project by the Hereford-based Rural Media Company, documents eight exemplary schemes around the country that support older people living in rural areas.

Pictured above is 89 year-old Les Spicer, who lives alone in an isolated, book-lined cottage on the outskirts of Norwich. Under a ‘Money Matters’ programme, run by Age UK Norfolk, volunteer adviser Marion Billham visits each week to help deal with bills and other mail.

The Lincolnshire County Council CallConnect bus (below), is part of an extraordinary on-demand service that makes use of specialist software to draw up routes that vary day-to-day, in response to phoned-in requests. CallConnect allows people of all ages to book a bus from their village into town and back, at a time that suits them, and has proved to be of particular benefit to the elderly.

Both local government and the voluntary sector will be hard hit by the coalition’s public spending cuts. It would be a great shame if lifeline services such as these were to suffer as a result.

Over the Hill? is scheduled for release in early 2011. More pictures here.

Big Society: early casualties

This month’s Queen’s Park Summer Festival may have been the last. The hugely popular annual event is organised by Queen’s Park Forum, an elected body of residents that has played a unique role in improving the quality of life for local people.

The Forum was created in 2003 by the Paddington Development Trust (PDT), whose activities I have photographed since it started in 1997. But despite all the talk of the ‘Big Society’ from David Cameron, funding for the trust and the organisations it supports is being drastically cut back. The fact that grassroots projects are under threat suggests that the new government is rather more interested in the ‘rolling back the state’ element of its ‘Big Society’ big idea than in the valuable work being done by the voluntary sector. Not a great surprise, but still disappointing.

I’ve been photographing Paddington for more than thirty years. It has been a privilege and a pleasure, allowing me to experience and record in great detail the impact of community initiatives in a constantly evolving area of inner London, and I don’t intend to stop any time soon – whatever the new regime has in store.

There’s more about the early days of community photography, and the context in which it (and PDT) developed in North Paddington from the 1970s onwards, in a recent article I wrote for the British Journal of Photography.

Community Action 1975-2008

North Paddington 1975-2008 - Images by Philip Wolmuth

My book, That was Then, This is Now, Community Action in North Paddington 1975-2008 charts how collective action by the area's residents has helped transform an impoverished corner of the City of Westminster, one of the wealthiest boroughs in the country, and how the nature of community action has been shaped by the changing political environment over the last 40 years. Copies of the 80 page book (10GBP + p&p) can be ordered from Blurb, who printed it, or directly from me.