West Ham and Plaistow NDC

Below is a brief description of one of our current contracts;

West Ham and Plaistow NDC is a community based regeneration programme in the east end of London. They were awarded £54.6mn to bring about improvements to the local area in housing, education, community safety, housing, the environment and employment over a 10 year period to 2010.

Newmanfrancis staff have been involved in this project from its inception, and prior to setting up NewmanFrancis. Community engagement has been central to the programme’s delivery, underpinning and supporting the regeneration. Our staff devised the community engagement strategy and recruited a Community Involvement Team (CIT) to implement it.

Although a separate project, the Community Involvement Team has been well integrated into the NDC programme as a whole, and this has been a key factor in its success. An independent evaluation conducted by the Centre for Public Innovation concluded that:

In addition to the Community Involvement Team, there has been an important consultancy element to the services provided to the NDC. This has tapered over the life time of the programme as the emphasis has moved from project development through delivery to sustainability.

Our key achievements have been

• the development of a robust and flexible community engagement strategy that has been able to support the regeneration programme and ensure effective resident participation at all levels

• the development and delivery of the ETC (Essential Training for Communities) programme, which has developed individual and group skills and increased community capacity

• the development, delivery and evaluation of a small grants programme – the Community Initiatives Fund , which has provided an opportunity for local people to develop a range of local projects and hold community events

Jointly with ETC consultants we currently manage the community involvement workers, oversee the operation of the Community Initiatives Fund, provide training to residents and provide strategic advice on community engagement to the project team.