What Makes Us Different?

No organisation is unique, but at SRC we like to think we're different and stand out from the crowd. We are community and neighbourhood specialists. Most of our long and broad collective experience is focused on this vital area of urban and national policy.

Over the past few years, we have undertaken a wide variety of commissions for local authorities and their partners in Gateshead, Newcastle, Sunderland, Peterlee, Middlesbrough, Stockton, Easington, Redcar and Cleveland, Tynedale, Northumberland, Burnley, Leeds, Bradford, York, Huddersfield, Nottingham, Manchester, Sefton, Wirral, Nelson and Leicestershire.

Our work in Scotland has included community planning projects in Drumchapel, Possil Park, Ruchill and Easterhouse in Glasgow; a Community Forestry project in Central Scotland; and community empowerment case study research for the Scottish Government from the Isle of Gigha to the Orkney Islands and many, more urban, points in between.

Increasingly we are working on Planning-related commissions, usually linked to the preparation of Area Action Plans and Local Development Frameworks, but also on urban extension proposals.

As well as community engagement linked to planning and masterplanning, we also carry out a wide variety of other work such as social research, evaluation, partnership development and training.

Not all our projects are large-scale, with long timescales. We also carry out a range of smaller projects too. We are always looking for opportunities to broaden our range of work to complement our community-based projects, which can be pretty demanding and labour intensive (as well as immensely rewarding).

In the past few years we have developed an expertise in working with black and minority ethnic communities as well as with other ‘rarely heard groups' such as young people, older people and asylum seekers. We have used associates to help us with this and it is an area we would like to develop further.

We particularly enjoy working with community-led organisations. We have spent a lot of time with New Deal for Communities programmes in Hartlepool, Newcastle and Middlesbrough and Neighbourhood Management projects in Stockton and Newcastle. Our background in social housing means we have many well-established contacts with community-based housing associations and the housing co-operative movement in England and Scotland.

We carry out social research and feasibility studies, in the past year focused mainly on community asset transfers, worklessness, development trusts and community buildings. We have also carried out a feasibility study into the potential for an alcohol detox facility in the North East, for Norcare, working closely with St Anne's Community Services in Leeds.

We have also developed an expertise in the evaluation of community-based projects and programmes. In Hartlepool our work for the New Deal for Communities Programme has involved evaluations of educational attainment, a black and minority ethnic initiative, neighbourhood management and the organisation's exit strategy.

We also write about the work we do. CLG, Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the National Housing Federation, the Chartered Institute of Housing and the Housing Corporation have all taken us on to research and write good practice guides on a variety of neighbourhood and community regeneration topics. It often makes a pleasant change from some of the more intensive work.

We work on our own, but often with others. We have well-established relationships with some of the country's leading urban regeneration consultancies, including EDAW, GVA Grimley, DTZ Pieda, HTA Architects, NLP Planning, Taylor Young, and Price Waterhouse Cooper. We have also worked in partnership with Bellway Homes and Grainger Trust plc. We provide the community engagement skills and experience that all these organisations need - we are the community voice in these teams and we always make sure it's heard!