IHBC Yearboox 2018

R E V I E W A N D A N A L Y S I S 25 significant sustainable improvements in the conditions of local people, communities and places suffering from aspects of deprivation, often multiple in nature. Crucially, this perspective on regeneration is founded on public sector leadership providing a long- term strategic vision to construct conducive policy and other frameworks required to support programmes of local community-led economic development such as the CED. If appropriately resourced, the body that is best placed to sustain financial and other assistance over time is the local authority, as demonstrated by the critical involvement of local authorities in the majority of THI schemes since the late 1990s. Addressing the complex and varied socio-economic conditions faced by communities across the UK, including through heritage-led regeneration, will always be highly challenging, demanding partnership approaches and meaningful public involvement. However, the contextual issues are such that government must lead the way. Further Information Co-operatives UK, Community Economic Development: Lessons from Two Years’ Action Research , Manchester, 2017 A Forrest, We Need to Talk about Urban Regeneration , 2017 (http:// bc-url.com/urban_regen ) ME Leary and J McCarthy, ‘Introduction, urban regeneration, a global phenomenon’, in The Routledge Companion to Urban Regeneration , Routledge, London, 2013 A Reeve and R Shipley, Townscape Heritage Initiative Schemes Evaluation: Ten Year Review Report , Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, 2013 A Reeve and R Shipley, ‘Heritage- based regeneration in an age of austerity: Lessons from the Townscape Heritage Initiative’, Journal of Urban Regeneration and Renewal , Vol 7:2, 2014 Andrew McClelland is a postdoctoral researcher at Maynooth University. He is the chair of the Northern Ireland branch committee of the IHBC and co-organiser of the 2018 Belfast Annual School. with evidencing the ‘triple-lock’ of economic, environmental and social outcomes. The need to embed more inclusive concepts within wider economic strategies and statutory processes such as neighbourhood planning can also be problematic. It is significant that similar contextual concerns were echoed in the THI evaluation. Hence, the desirability of enabling communities to have greater control over reshaping the local economy through developing mechanisms to leverage the assets at their disposal, and of enabling better alignment between the objectives of the council and other powerful groups with the needs of the community. It may be unusual to conclude with a definition, but the challenging policy environment demands the kind of optimistic thinking underpinning the ‘aspirational regeneration’ proposed by Leary and McCarthy (see Further Information): [urban] regeneration is area-based intervention which is public sector initiated, funded, supported, or inspired, aimed at producing