The report evaluates the extent to which LA21 is unique as a tool for implementing sustainable development and if the move towards community strategies enhances or undermines sustainable delivery.

It presents the experiences of local authority officers, external partners, frontline workers and local communities involved in the development and delivery of LA21 programmes over the last ten years and their counterparts involved in community planning, and neighbourhood renewal initiatives.

It focuses on their perceptions of the processes that have led to successful community engagement on sustainable development issues and policy implementation and the barriers to such success.

Since 1998, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) has funded a programme of research under the ‘Reconciling environmental and social concerns’ banner, with the explicit aim of exploring tensions between environmental and social policies in a UK context.

This study addresses this theme through a qualitative examination of LA21, a policy tool for implementing local sustainable development, and its attempts both to join up environmental, social and economic action and to promote community involvement, to improve well-being within deprived communities.

In depth analysis of eight case study areas in the UK. The case studies were chosen to provide a good geographical spread across England (five) and to include one study each in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The selection also aimed to represent a mix of rural and urban communities in areas that are recognised as suffering from high levels of deprivation. Most importantly, the selected local authorities demonstrated a commitment to developing and implementing LA21-related activities in deprived community settings over a number of years.

The report brings together key messages that will help to provide lessons for future initiatives that aim to engage communities in developing strategies and action plans that secure joined-up environmental, economic and social benefits within deprived areas.

The main findings of the research are organised around six areas:

Joseph Rowntree Foundation
publications@jrf.org.uk

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//2003

Karen Lucas, Andrew Ross and Sara Fuller

research

Urban Policy

Social inclusion & integration, Urban environment