Abstract
Residents and communities have long been interested in managing their local green spaces. As local authority budgets become increasingly restricted, communities are under pressure to take an active role in green space management in partnerships with the public, and where applicable, private sector. Support for such partnerships has been made manifest at the highest level of government through the UK's 2011 Localism Act. However, there is little research exploring the validity of expectations that community groups can take on such responsibility. This paper addresses this gap in knowledge by assessing to what extent groups have the capacity within cross-sector partnerships for sustained green space ‘place-keeping’, or long-term responsive management. This paper reports on data collected about nine cross-sector partnerships in Sheffield, Hackney, and Stockton-on-Tees. Taking a qualitative research approach, this paper applies a framework for partnership capacity based on interrelated factors, including capital, commitment, skill base, motivation, communication and political influence. The findings show that partnership capacity goes beyond these themes; it can be influenced by the political and historical legacy of a given place and the specific nature and context of place-keeping tasks. While findings show that partnerships work positively in practice, there are a number of barriers to community groups managing green spaces independently of local authorities, occurring at different scales including individual, group, partnership and the wider context. Without sustained resources and ongoing public sector support, the effectiveness of place-keeping partnerships is called into question.
Highlights
Over the last couple of decades, community involvement in green space provision, design, management and decision-making has risen up the political agenda
The findings are discussed according to capacity themes which go beyond those identified in the framework, to provide a picture of current place-keeping capacity of cross-sector partnerships in Sheffield, Hackney and Stockton-on-Tees
In Sheaf Valley Park (SVP) and Ropner Park (RP), the Friends Groups were established to secure funding, with green space managers (GSMs) making contacts with members of the community to engage them to form the Group through significant LA support provided in the early stages
Summary
Over the last couple of decades, community involvement in green space provision, design, management and decision-making has risen up the political agenda. As a non-statutory service, funding for parks and green spaces has long been adversely hit by budget cuts, and increasingly maintenance services are contracted out to nonpublic sector organisations in efforts to reduce costs Alongside this fragility of funding is a historically strong and active involvement of communities and non-state actors in green space management (Jones, 2002). The paper will apply this practical framework to a number of existing cross-sector partnerships in nine green spaces to examine the nature and extent of their capacity for place-keeping This will involve a qualitative exploration of the extent to which stakeholders within partnerships can withstand and undertake specific responsibilities and the ensuing challenges (after Macmillan & Townsend, 2006).
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