took on another employee.
Source: Meg Vickers
Therefore, the first positive achievement was a significant improvement in the small business offer in Glendale – particularly for start-ups. Currently, more than 20 people are employed, either full-time or part-time, in the various businesses and activities based in the Cheviot Centre. In parallel with this refurbishment, the facilities of a community room were improved, raising the roof to provide for a Wi-Fi-connected sound system, which has not only allowed for film shows, but also provided a useful seminar space for business and community use.
At the same time, and after more than a decade of trying, the county agreed to move Wooler Library into the Cheviot Centre. By 2012, Northumberland County Council was beginning to suffer the cuts that have since further eroded their capacity for service delivery. This forced officers to seek new ways to deliver services. Meanwhile, by this time, the GGT had established a reputation as a capable local agency. The second achievement in this period was to bring Wooler Library and the Tourist Information Centre together with a single front desk. Sharing Northumberland County Council and GGT staff makes both services much cheaper to run and therefore more viable. The former library building just off the high street was transferred to GGT for £1 and was converted into two attractive affordable homes for the over 55s. The old library had been open for just two half days a week; the new library is now open six days a week, with a very evident uptake in usage. The Tourist Information Centre moved from their upstairs office to the reception area, thus creating a far more visible presence in the town. There is now a single reception desk for all activities in the Cheviot Centre, staffed by one person. As far as Northumberland County Council is concerned, these two services are now being operated efficiently as a much improved service is being provided at a very much reduced cost – so much so that the county have used the Glendale model as a template elsewhere.
A couple of years after this major redevelopment, another opportunity arose. The Police Authority for Northumbria decided to close a number of stand-alone police offices, including Wooler. The authority looked around the town for suitable, smaller premises to move into, and also considered moving out of Wooler altogether. At that stage, the GGT was very concerned to retain a police presence in the town. The individual police officers themselves were none too keen to lose their historic ‘police station’, but moving into the Cheviot Centre meant much reduced running costs – and it was preferable to a move out of town. The GGT did not want the whole character of the Cheviot Centre to change, with uniformed officers walking in and out of the front door all day, so the building was rapidly adapted to provide a degree of self-containment. This provided another ‘anchor tenant’, paying a significant rent on a long-term basis.
This brings us to the third achievement: the trust now runs a popular and successful community centre that actually makes a surplus. In other words, it is sustainable, as is the GGT as a whole. The small staff team (two full-time and two part-time, including the accountant) works collaboratively and flexibly, and the GGT continues to take new initiatives. When Active Northumberland pulled out of the marketing operation for tourist information centres across the county in 2018, the GGT decided to take it over and do it itself. The reception staff probably know better than outsiders what will sell to the visitors and locally, and it can be done without upsetting local traders on the high street too much (see Figure 4.3) – and staff enjoy trying out new lines.
Figure 4.3: The reception area
Source: Rachel Sinton
The Cheviot Centre now exists as a thriving operation, realising the ambition to combine community and business activities, encouraging the cross-fertilisation of ideas. The Cheviot Centre is also the office base of the GGT, which has come to manage a varied portfolio of assets: 18 affordable housing units; commercial properties on the high street; and the Youth Hostel, now leased to a locally based operator. In 2019, the GGT has taken on another major conversion project. In addition, it has come to act as a platform for generating initiatives that, in time, become self-supporting, from the Wooler Youth Drop-In, to the Wooler Wheel cycle events that now run twice a year, and a small grant fund, created in partnership with Northumberland County Council’s promotion of health and well-being. All those who interact with the GGT, from tenants to representatives of national and local government, experience it as a friendly face in the midst of the flow of multiple activities.
To achieve all this, the GGT has had to act in an innovative and imaginative way, trying out new ways of doing things and demonstrating what a community-sensitive service delivery culture can look like. It has always been infused by the idea of ‘partnership’, both among proactive people in Glendale and in relations with external agencies. In this way, the GGT has become valued by formal government agencies forced into finding ways to ‘co-produce’ public goods and services with market and civil society agencies. Throughout, it has been important to maintain a strong vision, along with a commitment to finding new, more entrepreneurial and more approachable ways of providing community services, challenging traditional public agency practices but also helping them to change. But what has been its role in relation to agendas of ‘social renewal’ and ‘social justice’?
Social renewal and social justice in a ‘remote rural’ context
It would be difficult to deny that the activities of the GGT have made a difference to the quality of life and opportunities available in Wooler and Glendale. It has: created a multifaceted community hub; provided 18 affordable housing units for rent through conversions, targeted at young people starting out and the needs of older residents; helped to enhance the vitality of the local high street and sustain the visitor economy; become a ‘go-to’ place with a face for many looking for information and advice; and acted as a platform from which to draw down resources from elsewhere and present a voice in larger arenas relevant to the area. In this way, it has created significant value for the ‘public’ of Glendale. This value has been material, in terms of drawing down resources for investment and producing both capital assets and services. However, it has also been institutional, both in creating a presence locally and more widely, and in demonstrating a proactive and entrepreneurial way of working. Along with other initiatives locally – by landowners, farmers, a few firms and the lively array of community groups in Glendale – it is working to help create a sustainable future to replace that based on the traditional labour-intensive agricultural economy.
The GGT can thus be understood as a vigorous agent for social renewal in the area. In this situation, social renewal must be understood in terms of structural adjustment from one economic geography to another. The experience has been of continual existential threats and opportunities. How far will it be possible to retain some of the old sense of a lively working and living community, centred around connections with the land and landscape, while adjusting to the changes in possibilities available to those who live and create a living in Glendale? Is the future, as some fear, to become a ‘retirement’ locale or a haven for those seeking to escape from the stress of an urban world? Does an Internet-based economy offer real potential for attracting a wider range of economic activities into Glendale, or will its impact be to reinforce the closure of shops and services, and the replacement of face-to-face interaction with live-chat, YouTube and email? Will there be enough variety of economic opportunity to support
