The government has launched its Pride in Place strategy, which sees significant investment in disadvantaged communities across the country. It is also, says the newly minted housing, communities and local government secretary, Steve Reed, “putting working families in control of their lives and their neighbourhood”. This follows the English Devolution and Community Empowerment bill, which ploughs a similar furrow, legislating for, among other things, communities’ right to buy and ensuring sports venues are automatically listed as assets of community value.
The strategy is being broadly understood as Labour’s answer to Boris Johnson’s much-touted “levelling up”. The investment, Keir Starmer has said, will “get rid of the boarded-up shops, shuttered youth clubs and crumbling parks that have become symbols of a system that stopped listening”. Neighbourhoods and high streets are the place where the “change” promised by Labour’s winning manifesto must first manifest. It’s not all about the fastest-growing GDP in the G7: the strategy starts by asserting that the government’s “measures of success cannot just be shifts in national statistics but must include change that people see and feel in their local community”.
