Pride, Belonging, and what it can mean for NHC members

Since we first became familiar with the term ‘Levelling Up’, debate has centred on how the Government’s flagship agenda would strike the balance between innovation and infrastructure, and the desire to shift attention to our smaller towns and rekindle community identity. So it was, with the publication of the Levelling Up White Paper, that the Government set out 12 defining missions focused on, yes, productivity and ‘globally competitive cities’, but also on improving local agency and restoring pride and belonging. What Andy Haldane, the White Paper’s central architect, described as Levelling Up’s core function to address both ‘low-growth’ and ‘low life satisfaction’.

Terms like ‘pride’ and ‘life satisfaction’ don’t necessarily fit well with the White Paper’s emphasis on data, monitoring, and evaluation. As much has already been admitted, Will Garton, the Director General for Levelling Up at DHLUC, described the missions covering wellbeing and pride as ‘deliberately exploratory’, and not the kind of metrics that can measured in the same way as broadband rollout. The Government is in listening mode to get this right.

Many are answering this call, the Levelling Up agenda has also developed a new network of academics and policy makers focussing on areas perceived as ‘left behind’ and grappling with issues like civic identity and an areas’ ambitions.

Last year UCL published their report Sacriston: towards a deeper understanding of place, an exploration of the perceived and actual needs and aspirations of those that make up the North East ex-mining village. The Universities of Southampton and Sheffield have directly looked to address Levelling Up’s pride problem with their project Feeling Towns: the role of place and identity in governance and local policy, an attempt to gain a greater understanding of civic pride and place attachment and the roles they play in regeneration strategies. Finally, We’re Right Here, a campaign supported by organisations including Power to Change, New Local, and the JRF, takes inspiration from the Mutual Aid support groups that sprung up during the Covid Pandemic to call for a Community Power Act based on good practice from neighbourhoods across the country working toward success on their own terms.

There is also an important role to play here for Northern Housing Consortium members. After all, it is within the mission to restore a sense of community that we find targets around improving home ownership and improving housing quality. As we’ll be underlining at our 14^th July Levelling Up Conference, housing providers have a central role to play in working collaboratively across areas and sectors to support thriving neighbourhoods, including empowering and working with communities directly. Whilst focussing on Net Zero, the Social Housing Tenants’ Climate Jury also showed the enthusiasm tenants have for their areas and how, given the chance, active stewardship of neighbourhoods could also be a shared stewardship between tenant, landlord, and other anchor institutions; harnessing new green industries to Level Up areas into more environmentally sustainable, happier, healthier places. This work also plays into the Social Housing White Paper agenda concerning access to, and quality of, green spaces.

In the coming months the NHC will be thinking more about how innovative engagement methodologies can be used to bring our communities into the heart of the discussion on what improving pride and belonging means for Levelling Up success: How can we better understand our resident’s perspective on pride in place at a neighbourhood level? What factors affect the pride they feel? And what influence do NHC members, as builders and custodians of neighbourhoods, have over improving this sense of belonging?

We’d love to carry on the conversation with you and hear about any plans you have in place or ambitions you hold for future work connected to this agenda. Over the course of the next year, we hope to work with a small number of NHC members to identify innovative methodologies that will allow us to truly listen to residents and understand what housing organisations can do at neighbourhood level to develop pride in place.

If you’d be interested in exploring this with us, or have learning you’d like to share, please contact Brian Robson at the NHC : brian.robson@northern-consortium.org.uk

Together we hope NHC members can develop a community of learning that can both centre the needs and ambitions of northern communities and ensure housing’s vital contribution to the Levelling Up is recognised and valued.