Council leadership is about involving local people in major infrastructure projects Hazel Blears told the conference. She said too often poor neighbourhoods lived next to iconic new projects without any involvement and added: ‘Leadership is about involving local people and taking them with you. ‘It's all very well having new icons but local people also need the skills so that they don't just become cleaners in them.' She described the Lowry Centre in her own Salford constituency as an example of an iconic building which could easily have become elitist but instead ‘local people who never would have previously have been involved in the arts go there.' She also cast doubt on the impact of neighbourhood renewal funds on ‘workless areas', saying that JobCentres would have a legal duty to co-operate with partners under LAAs.
