Before the general election, David Cameron pledged to provide ‘neighbourhood grants’ for the poorest areas to develop their community organisations and engage in building the Big Society. It is clear that money from unclaimed assets will provide funding for a Big Society Bank, but ensuring that community organisers are present in deprived communities to utilise this money and grow genuine community-led organisations will be a great challenge. There will need to be innovative solutions to how limited investment can effectively build capacity and develop leaders in these communities. Addressing these challenges will be central to establishing how the Big Society could help tackle social inequality.
This article from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation argues that public money is needed to build the Big Society – that is, to develop and sustain the work of voluntary and community organisations, particularly in deprived communities.
As Madeleine Bunting points out in the guardian there are limits to what the third sector can provide. Voluntary and community organisations will never be able to replace a strong welfare policy in tackling nationwide inequalities. Furthermore she points out that building the kinds of local organisations through which this widespread civic engagement and decentralisation can be achieved requires a strong small business sector which has been run down in the UK and unable to support such development.
Here the David Cameron outlines his vision for how the Big Society can fight poverty through engendering social solidarity and responsibility as an antidote for the irresponsibility which has been encouraged by an overly bureaucratic and meddling government. Ideas of neighbourhood empowerment and increased equality of opportunity are posed as practical ways of enabling such responsibility for everyone in society although the actual detail of how to practically reach these aims is still up for debate.
Far from the notion of tackling inequality Anna Coote criticises the concept of Big Society for omitting principles of fair play and equal opportunity in this article. She also suggests developing the co-production of public goods and a shorter working week as ways of promoting genuine community involvement in reducing inequality.
