Community Development Project

In 1963 the Labour government, led by Prime Minister Harold Wilson, created and administered a Community Development Project (CDP) department within the Home Office. This was the first national initiative to tackle poverty. The purpose was to facilitate relationships between local authorities, local university research teams and the Home Office to address urban deprivation.

The CDP operated in twelve areas across the UK. The first four projects, which were established as part of the initiative’s ‘first wave’ in 1970, covered Hillfields in Coventry, Glyncorrwg in West Glamorgan, Vauxhall in Liverpool and Southwark in London. Each of the twelve projects had an action team and a research team. This approach, which combined research and action, was experimental and inspired by the War on Poverty Programme in the United States. CDP researchers assessed the needs of local communities to aid the targeted activities of the action team, which largely consisted of community workers. Research teams would then analyse the efficacy of the action team’s interventions to support local and national government policies on poverty, unemployment and deprivation. There was also a central information and intelligence unit based in the Home Office, which distributed newsletters and promoted knowledge exchange across the projects.

Some CDPs operated in areas with large South Asian populations. The most notable was Glodwick in Oldham. According to a report by the Department of Environment in 1973, Oldham was suffering from large-scale neglect in housing, public amenities and places of work, which did not meet the needs and standards of local community members. Glodwick’s large Pakistani population necessitated the support of South Asian community workers. As a result, Mrs Qureshi was appointed by the Oldham CDP as an Asian Liaison Officer in August 1973, working full-time as part of the action team. Her activities included running English education classes, interpreting and offering guidance to Glodwick’s South Asians.

The last local CDP project ran until 1978. The change of government in 1970, when Edward Heath’s Conservative government came into power, diminished national support for the initiative. Moreover, economic crises across the 1970s meant the approach of the CDP, to tackle pockets of poverty in targeted areas, was no longer pressing, given the growing and widespread nature of deprivation because of economic inflation and rising rates of unemployment.