L’intégration du partenariat dans l’organisation : l’exemple de Kirklees

L'exemple de Kirklees permet d'illustrer le scénario d'une organisation municipale qui contrôle l'ensemble des interventions sur les quartiers et les réordonne selon son propre cadre organisationnel.

Le principe d'organisation de ce partenariat repose sur un jeu de comités "miroirs" qui sont rattachés d'un côté au Voluntary action Network, réseau des associations locales et de l'autre aux services municipaux et organisations associées. C'est ainsi que les associations se réunissent pour les quatre grand thèmes (enfance, adultes et santé, rénovation urbaine, sécurité et communauté). Ces comités élisent des représentants qui participent au comité qui comprend les services de la ville. Des rencontres entre comités du même thème sont organisées. Il y aussi une instance centrale de coordination inter comités : equalities forum (forum des égalités).

Le contrôle de la ville sur le partenariat passe par plusieurs niveaux. Le rôle des associations est encadré. C'est ainsi que symboliquement la ville met son logo sur les productions du partenariat. Les associations éclatées sont canalisées par le voluntary action network qui à la fois leur offre des services et les prépare à rentrer dans le cadre de pensée global du partenariat "to look at the bigger picture" selon les termes du cadre de cet organisme dont l'emploi consiste à organiser la participation des associations aux comités. Par ailleurs les comités décisionnaires sont largement maîtrisés par les services de la ville. Dans certains cas même un groupe de pilotage restreint aux services municipaux en assure le pilotage de fait. Des sous groupes associant en particulier les services de la ville, la police, les services de santé, et les bailleurs sociaux sont aussi institués, ce qui permet de rassembler dans le même cadre global des partenariats opérationnels qui s'étaient développés en dehors du local strategic partnership à Sheffield.

Par ailleurs, le processus de mainstreaming se traduit par une réorganisation de l'action municipale qui digère plus qu'elle n'intègre les pratiques autrefois associées aux financements du gouvernement central et de l'Europe. En effet, Kirklees, qui était déjà dans la frange supérieure des villes aidées par le gouvernement, sort de ces catégories et voit actuellement ses crédits spécifiques progressivement réduits. Dans ce mouvement, en premier lieu, il ressort que l'essentiel des opérations maintenues sont celles qui étaient mises en œuvre par les services municipaux alors que celles portées par les associations ne sont pas renouvelées. Et, en second lieu, les services eux-mêmes se réorganisent de manière à reprendre de manière plus légère et plus diffuse les innovations associées à des programmes, comme l'illustre le cas du Neighbourhood management.

and April 2006 setting local priorities in the areas. And we did our bit first, we got all the information available about the area so mainly we kind of indexed multiple information. So we pulled together profiles of each area, took those into the areas, spent a long time working with a structures and people within the areas.

The program has worked in a two-year blocks because the funding was only ever announced in a two year blocks. But from one two year block to the next, we were never sure if we were actually going to get any more money. So we never planned for longer than two years. Some of the activities that we support, we have supported for five years but that’s because they’ve been the hardest ones to get mainstream core budgets. It comes to the end of two years, and still there’s no commitment from the service.

We have to spend money. If we don’t spend all the money that we receive from central govt, we’re then penalized in the future. They may lose confidence in our ability to spend money. So one of my main role is making sure that we do spend all the money. So in the last few weeks, there has been a lot of focus around that kind of work with existing projects to make sure they maximize spending. Also looking at other activities we could do, to maximize spending. It’s been quite a big issue.

Another main test for me is about evidence of the impact of the program and activities that we support. So we have a crossable process where we receive information from all projects, compile that information into reports for our board. So there’s a lot of work around there about working closely with the projects that we fund, making sure that they’re achieving their target, achieving to spend, …

But there’s also, we kind of maintain day to day or week to week contact with all the activities that we support. Because a lot of them are quite new and quite innovative, there are quite a lot of teething problems and not just in the start, you get problems right through the process really. So we work closely with them. So we challenge services to stick to their word. Where things aren’t working, we’ll work with them to look at new ways and different ways to get things to work.

Kirklees Neighbourhood

Cependant après 2008 les fonds nationaux vont être supprimés. Un processus de normalisation est alors engagé.

Well for 2006-2008, we had 9 million pounds. As of today, Neighborhood Renewal Fund doesn’t exist any more. It’s been replaced by Working Neighbors Fund. And Kirklees didn’t qualify for that. We did qualify for four million pounds in transitional funding so our funding has been cut by more than fifty %. The criteria for Working Neighbors was completely different to criteria from Neighborhood Renewal Fund. For Neighborhood Renewal we were in the 88 most deprived authorities. For Working Neighbors fund, they draw the line at the top fifty. And then they’ve applied other criteria on top of that. So most of the Working Neighbor funds area tend to be large cities and they’ve clung to the urban areas much as they’ve for Sheffield. Leeds didn’t get it.

Cette suppression des moyens externes produit des effets dans l'organisation. L'équipe de suivi est rattachée aux services municipaux et les personnels attachés à l'équipe partenariales sont réduits. Dans la mesure où dans le même temps le financement d'autres équipes est mis en cause cela conduit à des redistributions complexes des individus dans l'organisation municipale.

We are now part of the Safer and Stronger Community service. we’re doing the adults and community directorate. I think that there’s seven directorates. Up until this time last year, we were part of the Kirkles partnership. We sat in the local strategic partnership of Kirkles and last year teams moved over into Safer and Stronger service of the council. No we’re not actually any longer part of the Kirkles partnership team.

Well, the team is all fulltime. When we started in 2002, I think at that time it was referred to as a fixed term post but then the employment law changed and anyone who had been employed over a year had permanent employee rights. So then we were taken on a substantive basis and given permanent contracts. But that was always on the basis that they were limited to the funding period.

So the situation that we are in at the moment is that come September, we will be made redundant which is a bit of a tricky situation because council’s don’t normally make people redundant en masse. It’s not something that’s done and the council doesn’t have a redundancy policy, which is quite difficult when you’re trying to work out how much it costs to make someone redundant from our point of view. The idea is that three weeks before the contracts are up, we come up to something called redeployment where we are then considered for any post that may come up within the council that we may be sucked into with a bit of support and development.

This year has been quite a tough year because it’s not just our team. There’s obviously all the projects that we’ve funded have staff as well. So there’s a lot of people in the same boat as us not knowing what’s going to happen. And a lot of people have left. The decisions on the budgets to mainstream certain activities didn’t come until early march which is only a month before the end of a lot of people’s contracts. So quite a few people did jump ship before then.

3) La digestion municipale d'un programme national : le cas du programme Housing