| AdminHistory | Organisations involved: Barrow and Geraldine S. Cadbury Trust, Paul S. Cadbury Trust, Barrow Cadbury Fund Ltd.
Previous titles and/or title variations: policy development and local services; community and local service; housing and community service; housing, neighbourhood development and services; housing, community development and services; housing, land and planning; housing, land and community planning; housing and planning; housing, town and country planning; housing and town planning.
Related grant categories: social service; employment; community organising.
Dates of use: 1969/1970 to 1993/1994.
Cadbury Trusts grant subject filing reference number(s): 7.
Paul S. Cadbury had a lifelong interest in town planning, neighbourhood development and housing affairs. During the Second World War he chaired the Birmingham Research Committee on post-war planning and development and he was subsequently appointed honorary secretary of the West Midland Group on Post-War Reconstruction. In 1952 Cadbury authored 'Birmingham 50 Years On' setting out his vision of post-war development in the city. Unsurprisingly, his expertise in this field was reflected in the charitable activities of his own trust and, later, in the allied work of the Barrow and Geraldine S. Cadbury Trust.
The neighbourhood development category has undergone more title variations than any other grant category utilised by the Cadbury Trusts. These variations, though superficially puzzling, reflect minor changes in grant making criteria and emphasis within an otherwise consistent category. In articulating the bounds of the subject Trustees cited urban housing, town planning, green belt policies, social planning and research, disaster technology, overseas development and problems associated with urban development as key category interests making for a particularly varied field of work.
The first formal reference to a neighbourhood development category appears in the 1969/1970 to 1970/1971 draft annual report of the Barrow and Geraldine S. Cadbury Trust and the Barrow Cadbury Fund Ltd. under the heading 'housing and town planning'. For that year prominent Trust grants were made to the Shelter Housing Aid Centre and for the purchase of Windmill and Waseley Hills parkland for the Worgan Trust. A limited number of housing and town planning grants were made during the early 1970s by both trusts. Total organisational expenditure in his area for 1972/1973 amounted to £10,142 for the Barrow and Geraldine S. Cadbury Trust and £8,563 for the Paul S. Cadbury Trust. These figures were distributed to seventeen separate recipients and together represented a modest percentage of total Cadbury Trusts expenditure.
Neighbourhood development grant files first appear in early 1970s and were subsequently assigned the number seven as a category filing reference in accordance with Anthony Wilson's classification scheme for grant subjects. The preponderance of neighbourhood development grants were administered by Eric Adams though Paul Cadbury also took a very active interest in grants made by his trust. A representative grant file label for the 1970s-1980s might read 'EA/7/10' to denote Eric Adams/neighbourhood development/the tenth grantee added to the neighbourhood development category, in this case the Youth and Community Fund. As with other grant headings a considerable degree of variation can be found amongst neighbourhood development grant filing references.
The assignment of grant applications to the neighbourhood development category was not always simple. As Trustees pointed out, there was often a considerable degree of overlap between neighbourhood development and social service projects. Similarly, during the 1970s overseas neighbourhood development grants were closely linked to the peace and international relations portfolio. Prior to the introduction of the employment category in 1982/1983 many employment related grants were included under the neighbourhood development or race relations umbrella. Grants transferred to the new employment category often retained their original file references. The annual reports of the Cadbury Trusts provide a handy reference to grant categories and frequently include a list recipients assigned to each classification.
Cadbury Trusts' commitments to neighbourhood development projects increased from the mid-1970s onwards from a combined spending total of £75,004 in 1976/1977 to £146,173 in 1981/1982 and £182,102 in 1986/1987. Regular recipients of support during this period include Birmingham University Centre for Urban and Regional Studies, Coventry Resource and Information Service, West Indian Federation Association, St. Josephs and St. Saviours Youth and Community Association, Birmingham Friendship Housing Association, the Worgan Trust, the Association for Neighbourhood Councils and the Ashram Community Service Project.
In 1978 the Paul S. Cadbury Trust created a Youth and Community Fund under the direction of Eric Adams to make small grants for projects benefitting young people in the West Midlands. A second scheme along similar lines was introduced in 1985. The Neighbourhood Development Fund was setup to make small grants of up to £1,000 to local community groups. This budget was later complimented by the Training Advisory Service offering grants at a similar scale to support capacity building for neighbourhood groups. These budgets were designed to allow for maximum grant making flexibility. Expenditure could be approved by trust' staff without convening trustees to formally sanction decisions.
Though both trusts were actively involved in neighbourhood development work until the mid-1980s the majority of grants by expenditure were made by the Barrow and Geraldine S. Cadbury Trust. Following the death of Paul Cadbury in 1984 it was agreed to concentrate the work of the Paul S. Cadbury Trust on neighbourhood development, and later, community projects in Northern Ireland. This decision led to a general exchange of grants that saw Barrow and Geraldine S. Cadbury Trust neighbourhood development grants reassigned to the Paul S. Cadbury Trust while Paul S. Cadbury Trust grants made in other categories were transferred to the Barrow and Geraldine S. Cadbury Trust.
The administrative reorganisation of grant portfolios allowed the Paul S. Cadbury Trust to focus more closely on neighbourhood development work locally and in Northern Ireland. However, the Barrow and Geraldine S. Cadbury Trust still retained a small number of grants in this area, though under the new heading 'housing and community services'. Prior to the merger of the Paul S. Cadbury Trust and the Barrow and Geraldine S. Cadbury Trust this category was renamed, 'community and local service' and then 'policy development and local services'. These parallel grant categories continued to work in the same sphere though policy development and local services increasingly became used as a catchall category from 1991/1992 to 1992/1993. Given the functional similarities and interrelated nature of these two categories they have been included under the same grant heading 'neighbourhood development' in this catalogue.
From the mid-1980s onwards neighbourhood development grants made by the Paul S. Cadbury Trust focused on support for a small number of national support organisations and on development projects in the West Midlands, particularly in outer-ring estates. Specific priorities included training and development programmes for neighbourhood groups, local resource agencies, local support organisations and neighbourhood development experiments. Grants made under the Barrow and Geraldine S. Cadbury Trusts' housing and community services category broadly aimed to support work which enables local groups to play a part in developing their communities, specifically through the provision of housing and other voluntary-based local amenities.
The neighbourhood development and policy development and local services categories were eliminated as part of a general reorganisation of grant classifications during the merger of the Paul S. Cadbury Trust with the Barrow and Geraldine S. Cadbury Trust in 1994. Policy development and local services last appears as a separate category in the 1992/1993 annual report of the Barrow and Geraldine S. Cadbury Trust and the Barrow Cadbury Fund Ltd. Neighbourhood development and Northern Ireland remained separate Paul S. Cadbury Trust categories until 1993/1994 when they too were eliminated. During their last year of operation neighbourhood development expenditure reached £312,068 with policy development and local services grants amounting to £108,496. Following the merger all remaining grants from both categories were transferred to new programme groups, primarily community organising. Other grants were moved to the Reconciliation, Racial Justice and Civil Rights programmes. |