Locating and explaining area-based initiatives: new deal for communities in England

It is now more than thirty years since the first area-based initiative (ABI) was launched in England. New Deal for Communities announced in 1998 is one of the most ambitious of English ABIs in that it aims over a period of ten years to close gaps between these thirty-nine areas and national standards in five outcome areas of crime, education, health, worklessness, and housing. Evidence gleaned from the national evaluation of 2002/03 helps illuminate trends and tensions within three themes which have proved central to the wider urban debate: community engagement, partnership working, and the complexity of ABIs. On the broad canvas, evidence from the evaluation suggests that institutional factors continue to impinge strongly on the programme, that the original assumption that partnerships should be given a strong degree of local flexibility and freedoms has been steadily eroded, and that the initiative as a whole sits within that raft of essentially reformist policy interventions effected by the Labour government since 1997.