Empowered or over-powered? The real experiences of local participation in the UK's New Deal for Communities

The notion of ‘participation’ has growing currencyat many levels of social policy in the UK where the Labour governmentuses it to denote the engagement of ‘local people’in decision-making about the services and structures which affecttheir daily lives. In particular, local participation is givenas the distinctive feature of the UK government's flagship initiativefor neighbourhood renewal, the New Deal for Communities, butthere is little known about what this means in practice forthe ‘local’ people it affects.