Cleaning Up Neighbourhoods

There is growing concern that poor neighbourhoods have poor or inadequate public services. This report explores the challenges faced by local environmental services in delivering the government's liveability agenda in deprived and less deprived residential areas. It is one of the few reports to examine the interplay between public service provision and neighbourhood decline. "Cleaning up Neighbourhoods" explores environmental problems in a range of neighbourhoods in four local authorities across the UK. Drawing on evidence from residents, and from front-line and senior council staff, it catalogues a significant gap in environmental amenity between deprived and less deprived neighbourhoods. The main focus of the report is on explaining this gap.
It: identifies local characteristics which make some neighbourhoods particularly prone to environmental problems; shows how gaps in environmental amenity may reflect unintentional biases against deprived neighbourhoods; explores how local authorities attempt to balance the competing needs of deprived and non-deprived neighbourhoods in different ways; and suggests how policy and practice can help narrow the environmental gap between poor neighbourhoods and more affluent ones. This report will be of key interest to practitioners and policy makers wrestling with how local public services can be used effectively in narrowing the gap between deprived and less deprived neighbourhoods. It will also be of interest to students and researchers of urban policy, public policy and local government.