Repository
A curated and searchable collection of community-related research reports, case studies and publications
Total place: a whole area approach to public services
Published: 2010
This report, which was published just before the 2010 General Election that swept New Labour from power, set out the government’s ambition for “a new direction for local public services, based on extensive work over the last year by central government, local authorities and their partners.” The measures set out in this document built on the com…
The Grandmother Project: Towards a New Partnership between Family & State
Published: 2004
The basic argument in this report is that the postwar welfare state in Britain set out to build public support around stable, lifelong marriage and the nuclear family. But the state itself then helped to undermine marriage by its own increasing emphasis on motherhood, including supports for single parents. Public policy also ignored the ex…
Exploring Ethnic Tensions Through Locality
Published: 2003
In preparation for research into the relationship between people and place in London, Belinda Brown explores some of the issues she hopes to illuminate through it. Her starting point is that prejudice and discrimination, which feed racism, are not deviant traits in inherently ‘bad’ individuals. Rather they are a by-product of a hu…
Growing the European Urban System
Published: 2003
In this paper Sir Peter Hall suggests that there are two alternative ways of looking at cities and city systems, both valid, which need to be combined. He looks at the performance of the European urban system in the last quarter century. From this, starting from the European Spatial Development Perspective, he suggests some lines of p…
White Immigrants: A Portrait of the Polish Community in London
Published: 2003
In the process of preparing research on Polish migrants to London, Belinda Brown explores the problems confronted by the Polish community in London – expected to become larger with the accession of Poland to the EU – and the overlap with problems experienced by black migrants. She identifies a number of difficulties with con…
A Quiet Crisis: Local Government Spending on Disadvantage
Published:
Research conducted by New Policy Institute (NPI) reveals that councils in the fifth most deprived areas of England and Wales have been hardest hit with cuts for services addressing disadvantage. Despite having higher numbers of people in need, these councils have been forced to make difficult spending decisions.
The research highlights that to…
Start Somewhere
Published:
The Institute for Voluntary Action Research (IVAR) worked with the Centre for Acceleration of Social Technology (CAST) to explore the extent to which small voluntary organisations are able or willing to consider how technology might have a positive role to play in their work.
They found that although many organisations are keen to engage with …
Community Ownership: A better form of business 2023
Published:
‘A Better Form of Business’ is a series of research reports on community-owned businesses that have been completed annually by the Plunkett Foundation since 2011. The reports offer evidence on the needs and health of the community business sector, trends in growth and services, and the important social, economic and environmental impact tha…