Fresh Horizons - a case of local empathy

Men in black: Fresh Horizons makes a point of employing locals

Allowing local social enterprise Fresh Horizons to run the Chestnut Centre has been a crucial factor in changing Deighton and Brackenhall for the better.

Not everybody was happy with the idea in the early days. There was an assumption that public services would and should be delivered directly by Kirklees Council.

DBI chief officer Andi Briggs remembers the challenge of changing people’s opinions. ‘At the time it was very difficult to get the wider political approval because it was seen as a big risk,’ he says. ‘There were also some issues with unions and others – it was seen as the slippery slope to undermining public sector jobs.’

The fact that European money was being used to fund the centre’s construction gave DBI some leverage and when it opened in 2005 Fresh Horizons took on the management of the facility. Fresh Horizons has a wide remit but its key role is to provide sustainable employment, mainly through contracts to deliver public services. It achieves this by working in partnership with Kirklees Council and other voluntary and private sector organisations.

Andi Briggs believes this commitment to giving responsibility to local people is crucial to the long term success of a regeneration initiative. ‘There has to be real engagement and investment in local people,’ he says. ‘You have to give them real, proper assets and buildings to manage that are of significant value and status so they’re not the fringe things – they are real empowerment.

‘At the same time you have to support them in such a way that they stand or fall independently of us. In that sense they are not part of the programme directly because otherwise the risk is they go when the programme ends.’

When it was launched in 2002, Fresh Horizons had just two employees. The credibility it has gained through successfully running the Chestnut Centre has enabled it to expand to the point where it employs almost 70 local people and last year had a turnover of £1.3m.

One of Fresh Horizons’ first ventures, which still continues today, was to recruit and train local people to deliver research projects for the public sector. The approach has been cited by Ofsted as an example of best practice in using adult education to boost community renewal.

Fresh Horizons also runs a building maintenance company, covering all aspects of the building trade, from repairs to refurbishment, and is recognised by industry accreditation bodies to help experienced workers gain recognised qualifications in their trades.

It has won Ministry of Justice funding for a project to reduce the number of burglaries against vulnerable people, and is working with the police, Kirklees Council and Victim Support to fit security equipment to 1,000 houses and flats across the area each year.

In recent years Fresh Horizons has extended its work to focus on empty private properties, seeking to bring clusters of empty homes back into use to prevent areas falling into decline and turning problem properties into opportunities for housing, employment and training.

As Fresh Horizons managing director Mike McCusker says, though, this is more than just a series of projects.

‘If you take the library and information centre that’s a contracted service from the local authority. But if you look at the way we deliver it, it’s local people delivering a service to other local people. It’s about the empathy you get.’

A new approach: The Chestnut Centre

From carnivals to community centres, the range of benefits that have sprung from the community dividend and DBI’s work in attracting investment are impressive.

If anything could be said to embody those benefits, it is probably the Chestnut Centre. Built with capital grants from the European Union and the Government, it opened in 2005 on the site of the former Christchurch Woodhouse school and is home to a range of facilities whose benefits ripple out into the surrounding community.

The Chestnut Centre houses a library and information centre, a neighbourhood housing office, an IT centre, a credit union, a children’s centre, a nursery and a café. There are health clinics and training courses, meeting rooms to hire and secure, affordable units for new businesses to rent. Staff from different organisations work together under the same roof, so local people are no longer pushed from pillar to post to sort out problems.

These tangible features are vital, but perhaps even more important is the sense of ownership and trust that has built up around the centre. DBI chief officer Andi Briggs describes this as ‘the bedrock of the DBI achievements’.

Prior to the initiative, there was a strong sense of hostility and resentment towards public services in the area. Housing officers, for example, dealt with the public behind reinforced screens, making it obvious that local people were regarded with fear and suspicion.

Much of that has changed now. Darren Thomas, the Chestnut Centre’s senior customer information officer, says: ‘This building is seven years old and it still looks brand new. I’ve told the children in the library, if you’re smashing up the library you’re smashing up your library... They understand that and they look after the books and the library.’

Andi Briggs says the need to bring in services that were accessible and appropriate was identified very early on. The key factor was to make sure local people were engaged and involved at every level of provision.

For this reason, the building is managed not by the council but by the social enterprise Fresh Horizons, which makes a point of employing local people wherever possible. ‘This sent a very clear message,’ says Andi. ‘It said, we’re investing in local people. It wasn’t a shiny new council building where we bussed everyone in from the leafy suburbs to run it.’