Coastal towns they forgot to close down

As I finished work early today I thought I'd write a long rambling blog about how lives can be improved through a jobs guarantee scheme.

Sarah O'Connor from the Financial Times wrote an excellent article today on Blackpool. Although it was about Blackpool it could easily have been written about just about any of the non-posh towns in the UK and it got me thinking.

The article mentions a phrase "shit life syndrome" which isn't meant to be pejorative but to convey the bleak social, emotional and physical problems associated with the grind of poverty and hopelessness. It is something I saw a lot in my time in local government. Reading the case files was depressing enough, let alone having to live it.

These poor towns get trapped in a cycle of doom when the young and healthy move out and the poor and unhealthy move in - attracted by affordable rent. Boredom leads to problems with drink and drugs and the downward spiral continues.

It is a familiar tale and anyone who has visited places like Margate, Skegness,  Great Yarmouth or Hastings will know it isn't something limited to a few geographic areas.

But what can we do about it?

Education - there is a growing movement in education to make it even more competitive, even higher stakes and even more demanding. Argue against this and you will quickly be labelled as having low expectations and of being patronising. As I said in a recent blog my problem with this is that it isn't a two way street. Proponents of this ultra academic approach seem to regard themselves like missionaries did when visiting remote tribes. There is a single truth (academic excellence), here in it lies your salvation (ending up like us).  Tell people there is nothing of value in their culture (pop culture that has gone round the world mostly ignored in favour of the canon) or that jobs that there parents do are worst case scenarios ("if you don't work harder you'll end up sweeping the streets") and see people turned off by the whole thing. Add in ranked exams (norm referenced like GCSE and A-levels) and sometimes even the very best efforts from low achieving pupils aren't enough to get a "pass" which cuts of access to further education.
In short we have designed a system that tells people they have been to school for a minimum of 14 years and they are able to leave believing they have nothing of value to offer.
Solution: A more varied school curriculum including a mix of academic and vocational for all. Change to criterion referenced exams so that all get a sense of achievement. Yes the "brighter" kids may get a general certificate in functional numeracy at 7, and others at 17, but so what?

Jobs - mass low skilled employment is not coming back - repeat, mass low skilled employment is not coming back. Most of this work can be done by machines or outsourced to the third world. This leaves us with a problem. We have a 9-5, 5 day a week system backed up with relatively high taxation on employment and a minimum wage.
The right wing approach would be to slash taxes on employment and reduce the minimum wage. Suddenly a £12 an hour cost to employ someone (min wage + employers NI + admin costs) becomes £7 an hour. Instead of having to generate £20 of value per employee you have to generate £13 which may make getting a few extra employees in. But at a huge cost to the public finances and defeating the object of work in the first place and destroying productivity.

My solution would be some form of guaranteed municipal employment scheme. The aim of these jobs would be simple, to make the place you live better. This could involve cleaning, planting, renovating public and disused buildings, community projects, running events, providing care for the young, old and disabled, health walks/runs. Basically anything that makes the town better and doesn't force a viable job provider (public or private) out of business. Ideas would be sourced locally and then voted on and schemes put in place to use local people to complete the work.

For this to work we'd need compromise on the left and right. Left wing types like me would have to accept that some work is worth less than the minimum wage. If having a beautiful street planted with flowers, a regenerated town centre with freshly pained shops and a community band playing was worth number of hours x minimum wage it would already be being paid. Would we be undermining local pay and conditions?

Right wing types would need to accept that the public sector is the best way to deliver this. We've thrown hundreds of millions at private companies to try and get people off benefits and into work. The number of viable jobs simply do not exist for low skilled people.

So how would this be funded and who would pay for it?

Well first we'd need to establish a base cost. We have thousands of people who are unemployed, suffering ill health (mental and physical), using disproportionate amounts of public resources (police, ambulance etc). The cost of a year in a low security prison is approximately £22,000 a year. The cost of foster care between £30k and £60k a year, as for residential care in a specialist facility it can be over £200k a year. One night in an NHS hospital is £400, a mental health intervention might easily reach £5000 in costs between the ambulance, police and NHS.

Then we have gains from the work done - if the places were made better there would presumably be some economic gain, even if it weren't enough to pay minimum wage x number of hours worked.

And what would the success criteria be?

If 10,000 lives improved and the cost was an additional £50m (£5000 a year for 10,000 people in addition to current levels of benefits being paid) would this be good value for money?

Say of these 10,000 vulnerable people who participate, 500 fewer years are spent in low security prison then that saves £10m in direct costs, if it reduces hospital stays by 1 night per year per person that is another £4m. 1000 fewer mental health interventions at £5000 each is another £5m. 200 fewer years in foster care for their children saves £9m and 20 fewer years in specialist care saves another £4m. 1000 of these people move into full time paid work and come off benefits altogether and suddenly you have recouped the whole public investment.

And this completely ignores the multiplier effect of directly putting an additional £50m of spending cash into the pockets of people. That money will be spent locally creating demand and generating jobs, which pay money, which will be spent locally, which will create jobs which pay money which will be spent locally. This is known as the virtuous circle.

Lives are better, neglected towns improve and everyone benefits.

What is not to like?