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Knowing where a public toilet is would usually be an easy answer for a group of council managers. Or it should be. We're standing outside the award-winning Peckham Library which has been a key part of regenerating one of the toughest parts of London. A symbol of how local government can transform communities, the library is part of a multimillion-pound redevelopment which involved sophisticated planning. The MJ is on a walking tour as part of a two-day brainstorming event jointly organised by Southwark LBC and the Leadership Centre for Local Government to understand place-shaping. Our tour leader, Adrian Newman, programme manager of the Queen's Road neighbourhood project, has just stumped us by asking us to point out the loos. A passing resident puts us out of our misery. ‘You from the council?' he asks. ‘Toilets are that wall over there.' The back of a disused warehouse next to the library has become a passing latrine for just about anyone, day or night. Mr Newman explains the cost of building a public toilet and maintaining it isn't in the budget. So, efforts to change a neighbourhood are falling flat. Welcome to place-shaping. Place-shaping has become the buzz-word of the moment and yet very few actually understand the agenda. What it is? What will we have to do? Is it about regeneration? Where's the money? The phrase came from Sir Michael Lyons as part of his report into the future of local government. It's a tough brief. Authorities must take control of their streets while, at the same time, empower the people who live and work in them. Our tour is only one part of the picture. The entire senior team at Southwark, plus partners from the PCT, police and other agencies are all investigating schools, hospitals, community projects, an art college and businesses across the borough and will report back their findings. The idea is to understand how communities develop, and whether public sector efforts to improve them have delivered. Chief executive of Southwark, Annie Shepperd (pictured) explains why she has got her team trudging around the streets. ‘We want people to think about what leadership of place might mean. People have selected areas where they were least familiar. We want to become a great authority and to get there, we are going to have to make some changes. ‘It's not going to be through doing more of the same,' she says. Place, it turns out, can mean the borough, a town within it, or a single street, such as Rye Lane. Here, more of the same will be a disaster. There are plenty of outlets offering to re-programme mobile phones. It's perfectly legal and the traders are helping keep part of the street going. But this is fuelling violent robbery of train passengers who pass through from wealthier areas such as nearby Dulwich. The muggers come into Rye Lane from a nearby station, and the re-programmed phones are then fenced in a pub or on the street to buy drugs. Another group on its tour came across a mob of British Transport Police officers who sheepishly admit the area is too rough for them to check tickets on their own. It throws up the reality of inter-agency working. The council is in dispute with the station owners over efforts to regenerate the area around the station and install ticket barriers. Jonathan Toy, Southwark's head of community safety, reveals it's been rumbling on for years. It's these tensions that go to the heart of what is part-policy, and part-philosophy. Stephen Taylor, chief executive of the Leadership Centre for Government, sets out the challenge. ‘It's an ambitious jump for authorities – moving from commissioning and providing services to acting as leaders for of an entire locality, leading partnerships and co-ordinating action across a range of agencies,' he says. Changing perceptions is also a critical part of the process. Take education, which in Southwark's case, has a problem which resulted from success. Exam results have improved and training initiatives have helped raise the skill base. Yet youngsters who have achieved against the odds are struggling to get the jobs they are more than qualified to do. Why? Because their CVs have addresses and postcodes which still have negative images of violence and drugs. The result is, they aren't even getting past the first stage. ‘Peckham is still in most people's minds about TV's Only Fools And Horses and murdered schoolboy Damilola Taylor. Everyone comes up against that,' says Mr Newman, later. Southwark is also struggling with the fall-out from planning solutions imposed on communities in the 1960s. But Ms Shepperd, is optimistic. She says: ‘We want to energise communities to be involved, so the mistakes of the past don't get repeated.' What is clear from the Southwark experience is the lack of a one-size-fits-all approach can't work. The team from the Leadership Centre for Government is providing support in getting decision-makers to think differently about issues. If place-shaping is about creating unique communities, then those hoping for a toolkit or guidance on how to do it will be disappointed.

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ECONOMIC GROWTH

Reclaiming the streets

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