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Foreword by Rt. Hon Tony Blair MP.
"When we came into office, [1997] we inherited a country where hundreds of neighbourhoods were scarred by unemployment, educational failure and crime. They had become progressively more cut off from the prosperity and opportunities that most of us take for granted. Communities were breaking down. Public services were failing. People had started to lose hope. That's why I asked the Social Exclusion Unit to work on developing a new and integrated approach to reversing this decline.
The Action Plan sets out a new approach to renewing poor neighbourhoods. This approach is different for four reasons. First, the true scale of the problem is being addressed – not the tens but the hundreds of severely deprived neighbourhoods. Second, the focus is not just on housing and the physical fabric of neighbourhoods, but the fundamental problems of worklessness, crime and poor public services – poor schools, too few GPs and policing. Third, the Strategy harnesses the hundreds of billions of pounds spent by the key Government departments, rather than relying on one-off regeneration spending. Fourth, the Strategy puts in place new ideas including Neighbourhood Management and Local Strategic Partnerships for empowering residents and getting public, private and voluntary organisations to work in partnership."
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