| Making it work
II Funding and resourcing: a local
government perspective on supporting local inter faith structures
Mahebub Ladha
Head of Corporate Equalities, Chief Executive’s Office Leicester
City Council
My name is Mahebub Ladha and I am Head of Equalities at
Leicester City Council. I am one of those hybrids who have learnt about
faith issues as I have been in this country: I am a practising Muslim,
married to an Anglican (and not only is she an Anglican, but she is a
church warden) and if anybody can beat those credentials I would be
interested to know!
Leicester is not exactly your average British city. We
are the 10th largest, and that includes places like London. Our
population includes around 70,000 Indians, including up to 20,000 Indian
Muslims; about 8,000 African-Caribbeans; and many of other
backgrounds. As I said, we are not exactly your average British city. All
those populations which I have just mentioned are increasing. One is not -
the number of in the white community is in fact declining. So we are in
fact developing some very interesting perspectives in Leicester. For
example, the Asian population is about 30% of Leicester’s overall
population and the Director of Education’s customer base (we are all ‘customers’
nowadays!) is now 52% non-white. That is how dynamically Leicester is
beginning to change.
We have a commitment to funding faith communities. We
believe that faith communities are a substantial part of the population
and that they have a superb record of not only bringing about a lot
of good work but good voluntary work. I personally believe that
that is central to the work of faith communities – and people who belong
to the faith communities are not a bad bunch of people, either! We
have shown this commitment by funding the Leicester Council of Faiths for
the last four years and we have done this at a time of local government
facing shrinkage on the financial front. Leicester City Council itself
certainly has felt the effects of this because, at a time when we are
funding the Council of Faiths, we have in fact lost just over £20m from
our budgets.
When we talk about any volunteer organisation in the
City Council, particularly in terms of the budget that I support, there
are in fact a number of issues we need to look at. Let me put this to you
in question and answer form.
Question 1: Should a local government authority
fund a council of faiths? The answer, as you would guess from somebody
whose council is already doing so, is: Yes, we should, because they are an
important part of the community. A council of faiths has a good deal to
say to local government and we want to be as inclusive as possible - there
are voices to be heard. I hear that more people go to church than go to
football matches, and I dare say in the non-Christian faiths there are
proportionately about 10 times more people who go to mosques and gurdwaras
and temples than go to football matches. That’s a lot of people. So it
is important that we listen to the communities and the faith communities,
because consultation is an important ingredient in improving services, and
local authorities are saying to themselves that they need to improve
these, as well as being told this.
Question 2: Are there any alternatives to a
council of faiths? Yes, of course there are alternatives. We are in fact
also funding some of those. We have certain community groups that we fund
such as the Pakistan Youth and Community Association, the Irish community,
and the Gujarat Hindu Association. We also support the Federation of
Muslim Organisations and the Federation of Sikh Organisations. There are a
lot of alternatives and I think that it is increasingly important for
councils of faiths to understand that there are alternatives that local
government keep in mind in funding contexts. There is not a threat in any
of this. It is simply important to bear this in mind and to be aware of
questions such as: what is the value for money, and does our council of
faiths give adequate add-on value?
The question of what counts as good value depends on a
number of factors. What local authorities and what even friends such as me
- I like to believe that I’m a friend of the faith communities - are
increasingly looking at is the worth of organisations seeking funding.
What do these community organisations do?
We have something coming through now which is both a
dragon and a friend. It is called ‘Best Value’. Under this, every
service that local authorities provide has to go through a Best Value
process, where you look at it in terms of questions such as: Should you be
doing this at all? Should we be funding this? How do you compare this to
alternatives? What is the competition like? Increasingly services such as
mine will come under scrutiny and so will the activities that we fund. And
I have to say that, if councils of faiths or any of the volunteer
organisations do not ask themselves these very difficult questions, they
will, as far as local authorities are concerned, fail the Best Value
process, and with the failure of that will go the funding.
‘Value for Money’ and ‘Add-on Value’ are no
longer nebulous concepts. They are an important ingredient of the way that
we as local authorities have to judge, at a time of decreasing resources,
to whom we give our funds. Local authorities are coming increasingly under
pressure to fund other community organisations. We are increasingly coming
under pressure to make the best of what we have and some of these
alternatives could be, but need not be, other faith communities as I have
said.
A council of faiths needs to be all inclusive. This is
not easy. But I believe that local councils of faiths will need to
demonstrate that they are including all sectors of the population even
where these are not very aware of religious issues. My daughter is one of
those who sometimes goes to the mosque, but regularly to church. I
remember that I was at her school assembly and the head teacher said:
"Does anybody remember what was so special about two Sundays
ago?" That Sunday just happened to be Easter Sunday and half the
children – this is a school assembly we are talking about – half of
the children had no idea. When somebody did in fact raise their hand to
make a guess they got it wrong, and when they were asked who had been to
church, my daughter’s hand was the only one that went up. Nevertheless
we are asking the Leicester Council of Faiths to be all-inclusive and
include young people in its work because I think it is important that we
fund organisations that give us a cross-section of the community. It is
not easy, but those who control the purse strings need to make demands
which I hope are not unreasonable.
We need to be aware that there are tensions in the
faith communities, whether you are talking about the Sudan, whether you
are talking about Northern Ireland, whether you are talking about what
happened about Ayodhya. I know of some Christians who refuse to work with
other Christian denominations, and I know of some Muslims who refuse to be
part of the Council of Faiths in Leicester because they feel that the
churches do not have a particularly good record when it comes to
allocation of schools and services to non-Christians. But nevertheless,
councils of faiths - in order to get funding and support from their local
authorities -will have to show that they are doing more than just being
there. They need to make themselves even more relevant and to rise above
other voluntary organisations. They need not only to work in
informal structures but also formal partnership.
What does this kind of working in partnership mean? It
means working together and it means working hand in hand. It means local
government needs to be sensitive and not act like Big Brother in taking
over the activities that a council of faiths is so very good at promoting.
It also means that a council of faiths needs to be willing, as the one in
Leicester has been, to go beyond purely faith issues and to work on issues
such as anti-racism and working for refugees and asylum seekers.
Faith organisations need to understand the enormous
pressures that we in local government are under and I hope that we for our
part will also be sensitive to the needs of the faith communities. As I
said, increasingly what we need to do is to compare, to contrast,
basically to say: Is this the only organisation that can provide such a
service? This is because we have to. The cake that is available to local
government is diminishing.
To summarise, I think there are five issues that a
local council of faiths needs to bear in mind when thinking about local
government support:
- What is our value and what is our worth?
- Is our track record a sound one?
- Are we all-inclusive?
- What are the alternatives to us?
- What difference have we made?
If those five questions can be answered positively, I
am absolutely convinced that a local council of faiths will have a
tremendously good future, and a funded future with local government. Thank
you.
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