Sheffield’s collaborative 2020 vision

Five or six years ago there was a rash of city strategy documents that collectively would have made an excellent spot the difference puzzle. Everyone had aspirations to create or grow a creative industries quarter. No strategy was complete without some guff about city living.

So one refreshing aspect of Sheffield’s newly launched strategy for 2010-2020, Why People Shape the Future, is it feels very much a product of the Steel City. Apparently based on a consultation exercise with local people, businesses and other organisations, it plays on anything unique about the city and is shaped around five ‘pillars’, as Lib Dem council leader Paul Scriven describes them.

Sheffielders want their city to be distinctive, successful, inclusive, vibrant and sustainable. There’s not a lot of detail about exactly how this is going to happen between now and 2020, but to be fair this is, as Sheffield Chamber of Commerce boss Richard Wright was quick to point out, just a strategy from which a blueprint can form.

But in the space of a few minutes the launch still managed to echo some of the core messages that are coming out of central government: there are less resources to go around; we just have to deal with the current situation; the private sector needs to take a far greater role; and the key to all this is collaboration.

It was even reflected in the document itself. Underneath Cllr Scriven’s introduction there are instructions on how to get involved via the community assembly and other voluntary routes. Big Society anyone?

Sheffield Council, currently in no overall control, is expected to be taken by Labour in May’s local elections. But that shouldn’t make any difference to the 2020 vision – after all, it’s a product of local people’s wishes. It’s also the product of an environment which isn’t likely to change anytime soon.

Maybe this is a turning point in the city’s fortunes. While Sheffield has been lauded for its recent physical transformation, particularly in the city centre, statistics tell another story – one of a city with huge and widening inequalities. It’s no surprise that ‘inclusive’ appears as one of the five aspirations.

Where grand schemes have failed to make inroads in the past, perhaps genuine collaboration between private, public and the voluntary and community sectors – albeit born out of austerity – will make the breakthrough.

The key word there is genuine. Grassroots groups are so often the route into reaching the most excluded, yet they are themselves more vulnerable than ever. Nick Warren, chief executive of Voluntary Action Sheffield, pulled no punches in his assessment of the task at hand, describing the sector as ‘severely challenged’ by public spending cuts. But he added: ‘Whilst the next year or so is likely to be characterised by firefighting to help sustain some of the most important and vulnerable organisations, it will no doubt provide the impetus for that innovation, especially trying to work more collaboratively, which a decade or more of sustained growth in the sector has perhaps stymied.’

Accounts of the third sector being a peripheral partner in key decision-making have been heard up and down the country, so one can only hope this renewed spirit of collaboration in Sheffield will give voluntary and community organisations a leading role.