Plans for a community forum in the City of London’s main residential area, featured in proposals for the Culture Mile Business Improvement District, have come down to two meetings a year. I suggest it’s now up to elected Members to consider what’s needed.
I have uploaded videos from the first community event organised by the Culture Mile Business Improvement District, with transcriptions. These make it easier to analyse what was offered on community engagement and the public realm strategy.
Community engagement
The presentation by Sarah Baker, Head of Partnerships and Engagement, gave a full explanation of the various ways in which the BID engages with the local community, including its £60,000 grants programme.
However, on the issue of a community forum, suggested in 2022 in the original BID proposals, copied below, Sarah confirmed that this will be limited to two meetings a year.
As I believe the transcript makes clear, the model being used by the BID is that of a company (the BID) engaging with its stakeholders (including residents) through a framework of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) objectives. From that perspective I can see the logic of two “forum” meetings as a method to engage with BID activities.
However, that corporate ESG approach is very different from one that would provide ways for residents to engage with each other over time, and develop collective views about the issues they face on the future of the area. The Neighbourhood Forum for Barbican and Golden Lane Estates – which the BID supported – offers that on planning issues. Earlier blog post here on the idea of a community forum, and BID accountability.
In practice, in the Culture Mile area, the large residential estates of Barbican and Golden Lane will have a means to comment on and influence development proposals, and generate their own plans, but residents in Smithfield (where I live) will not.
We are going to end up with a “forum” of two meetings to engage with the BID and it programmes, but no way collectively to engage with the BID, City Corporation and other interests on issues that affect the area as a whole.
Public realm
That’s particularly important in relation to the proposed public realm improvements that were the subject of another presentation at the community meeting by Placemaking Director Will Dyson. There were also six display boards about the study. I have pictured them here, and asked if they could be published.
The study looks like an impressive piece of work, and Will indicated that the team working on it would welcome input:
“I think we’re at the point now in our engagement where we have set some sort of priority locations within the area, and we really want to hear some suggestions from people about what might improve those priorities.
“So you see one of the boards has the map set out which I’ll show you shortly around the kind of priority locations that we’ve identified. We’d really love to hear your thoughts around what you feel the challenges are and also the opportunities, what might improve those areas”.
A forum would be one way to do that, and to reflect on the wider issues of accountability which I wrote about here. I didn’t hear how it will be possible otherwise.
The previous vision for the Culture Mile area was a £350,000 Look and Feel strategy developed in 2018 by the City Corporation, and consequently accountable to local residents and businesses through elected Members. Here’s how the Corporation’s Culture Mile became a BID.
The BID is governed by businesses, with Members only as observers.
This lack of direct accountability could be rebalanced by community engagement methods that provide residents with detailed information, ways to comment and contribute, and also to organise collective views.
We don’t have that.
Overall in the City the responsibility for resident engagement has been consolidated in the role of Policy Lead, occupied by councillor Jacqui Webster. As I wrote here, Jacqui has recently taken on responsibility both for the Residential Reset programme, and Destination City.
I’ll check in with Jacqui whether her role also extends to BID engagement practices.
I’m coming to the conclusion that it may be no bad thing for the BID to define its engagement strategy in the way that Sarah has now set out. It avoids ambiguity.
What’s needed for Culture Mile residents are ways to engage with the totality of issues and changes in the area, and I think that’s best done through methods developed with elected Members.
I’ll email a link to this blog post to the 40 some councillors in the Culture Mile area, and report any responses. Alternatively comments are open below. I’ll also invite comments and any comments or factual amendments from the BID team.
What we really need is an online forum.
Update: the BID has now published Will’s slides here, and I’ve posted Emerging vision for Culture Mile published by BID
- All blog posts about Culture Mile
- Initial post about the community event – includes news of awards
- New vision for City’s Culture Mile raises issues of accountability – about the public realm study, and previous Look and Feel strategy
- Culture Mile: what is it, where is significant, and who is accountable?
- Videos and transcripts from first community event
Original BID engagement proposals
The City Corporation’s Policy and Resources committee approved plans for the Culture Mile BID in October 2022. The committee paper said that “Concerns were raised in respect of resident engagement / involvement in respect of developing and delivering the BID proposals given the large concentration of residents that live within the footprint (Barbican and Golden Lane). Members were told:
“Whilst BIDs are a specific vehicle for business engagement and will be funded by business, the BID proposal makes it clear that there is a strong commitment from the Partnership and future BID to work collaboratively with the wider community.
“A specific reference to this commitment has been included in the Governance of the BID proposal, the wording is as follows:
“The Culture Mile BID wants to work collaboratively with its residential communities, recognising the valuable contribution the wider community makes to the vibrancy and identity of the area. We want to develop a framework for meaningful engagement, which enables residents to feed into the work, not simply be informed of its plans. This could take the form of a Community Forum, facilitated by the BID, resident involvement with steering groups and development of agreed channels of communication between residents and the BID. Together, we can build a stronger more resilient, more inclusive and welcoming Culture Mile to benefit residents, businesses and visitors”.