Introduction

This chapter aims to set out how a developed understanding of social cohesion provides a broader moral and long-term context for decisions about community leadership and public service delivery in local government. It argues the importance of grounding broad philosophical concepts and policies of community/social cohesion in the reality of understanding and addressing local inequality and disadvantage, and the importance not just of local measurement, but also of local authorities’ qualitative knowledge of the communities in which they work.

The chapter acknowledges the stark economic reality currently faced by both national and local government, and the challenges this presents in terms of striking a balance between equality and aspiration; rights and responsibilities. We argue that there will always be a moral dimension to local service delivery, and that efficiency and morality are not mutually exclusive but, in fact, both necessary considerations in designing and delivering services that meet the needs of local communities, enable councils and communities to cope with change, and strengthen social cohesion.

Community cohesion

As the community cohesion discourse has developed, so has the role of local public service delivery within it. As noted in other chapters, the term ‘community cohesion’ is strongly associated with the report of the Independent Review Team, chaired by Ted Cantle (Cantle, 2001), which followed the disturbances in towns in Northern England in 2001, and the 2007 report from the Labour government's Commission on Integration and Cohesion Our shared future (COIC, 2007), arguably precipitated by the London bombings in July 2005 and the impacts of the sharp, and unforeseen, rise in European Union (EU) accession migration after 2004. It is inevitable, given this genesis, that the terminology is perceived as having a basis in issues of race, religion and conflict, with a focus on poor White and Muslim communities in particular.

The Cantle Report, in fact, makes numerous references to the need to address underlying and systemic inequality – the role of socioeconomic disadvantage, poor educational attainment and the impact of housing policy all make an appearance in its recommendations. Although explicitly rooted in the particular demography of Oldham, Burnley and Bradford, what many took away from it, and the Home Office in particular which commissioned the report, was the emphasis on the need for all local authorities to actively promote ‘contact and understanding’ between people from different racial or religious backgrounds.