Community Based Economic Development: The British Experience

Abstract

In the 1980s in Britain a principal policy preoccupation of Central Government has been to increase the impact of market forces on the provision of goods and services. It has encouraged industrial and commercial restructuring, sold-off public-sector industry and utilities, and sought to transfer public services (including welfare services) into the commercial sector … or at least make it subject to commercial management approaches. Local Government has spent much of the last decade trying to defend services and the jobs of their employees; fighting for the concept of public service and municipal provision. A by-product of the Governments’ strategy has been a growing number of people who are unable to operate effectively in the labour market and therefore become reliant on welfare provision,¹ and a declining level and quality of welfare and public services which made it more difficult for them to escape from their dependency.