PhD supervisor for Roz Fox

Roz's dissertation is available through the British Library's Ethos service.

Abstract

Community engagement in regeneration is an important way to ensure that residents in deprived neighbourhoods have a say in decisions that affect them. The aim of this research is to provide a critical examination of community engagement through the development of practice and strategy of a UK housing association to deliver neighbourhood regeneration in a deprived neighbourhood in North West England. An action research approach using interlinked inquiry streams was undertaken with residents, senior managers and practitioners. The findings were used to develop community engagement strategy, articulate a model of engagement practice and enable the residents’ lived experience and views on service providers to be heard. Most literature about community engagement in regeneration is critical about the limited involvement of residents in partnerships, meetings and consultations. However, little attention has been paid to the exploration of transformative engagement where the process and outcome of engagement seeks to empower and enable self-determination of residents. This research addresses this gap and also further explores informal and creative engagement methods, the skills required for engagement practice, the role of housing associations in neighbourhood management and considerations for housing associations undertaking community engagement to achieve a lasting impact for people and place. This thesis has contributed to knowledge in two ways. The first contribution is the adaptation of Andrews and Turner’s (2006) Consumerist and Participatory Framework for the analysis of community engagement in a housing association context. The adapted framework is valuable in identifying different types of engagement approach within organisations. This framework addresses the gap in knowledge about the development of community engagement strategy. The second contribution to knowledge is the creation of a model of transformative community engagement practice, based on an extended definition of neighbourhood sustainability, the literature review and research findings. The research discusses the implications for housing associations undertaking community engagement in the current context, which is of particular relevance given the impact of UK public sector cuts and welfare benefit changes to poorer communities. Findings can be transferred to other housing providers or agencies looking to engage residents to achieve sustainable outcomes that will improve their lives and local neighbourhoods.