A view from Due North

Here’s an interesting blog post – a critique of a recent North of England analysis on how best to tackle health inequalities. The original report acknowledges that “the most disadvantaged members of society lack influence over how public resources are used” and recommends that their influence needs to be increased through “shared power over resources”. Nothing to complain about there, but the author is unconvinced that anything will actually change on the ground…”The credibility of any proposal to shift power from Westminster or to redress inequality rests on our ability to demonstrate that we can deliver these powerful relationships with citizens. We have to recognise that we need to put our own house in order, a culture change is required at local level too. And we need to avoid leaping in to our usual behaviour of renewing neighbourhood committees, laying on a bit of community capacity building, providing some better information and then saying job done.”