Evidence on neighbourhood effects and neighbourhood policy in the UK: Are they connected and should they be?

Rebecca Tunstall


The UK has a long and varied history of neighbourhood policy targeted at deprived areas and those with high unemployment, poor health, high crime, and poor education. Schemes have involved restructuring of housing markets, additional expenditure on housing, infrastructure and services (including employment support and training, education, health and community safety), as well as innovation in service provision, for example through decentralization or public participation. This neighbourhood policy has been partly linked to hypotheses about the existence and operation of neighbourhood effects on outcomes such as employment, heath, crime and education. However, the UK's history of research and evidence on neighbourhood effects is much more recent and limited. For much of its history, neighbourhood policy cannot have been based on this evidence and even in recent years the evidence on neighbourhood effects has been limited and partial. This should not be a problem for neighbourhood policy or at least not a unique one: there are multiple rationales for neighbourhood policies, and numerous policies are necessarily pursued in the absence of clear, conclusive evidence for the hypotheses underlying them or for costs and benefits. However, the very concept of neighbourhood effects itself appears to have raised expectations amongst policymakers, for clarity and conclusiveness in evidence on neighbourhood processes and programme impact. This may have contributed to some disillusion with neighbourhood policy under the outgoing UK government. Ironically, just at the time when the information base is the strongest it has ever been, with some clear signals for policy design, the incoming government is showing little interest in a national framework for neighbourhood policy or even in giving advice to local actors.