How effective are area-based regeneration initiatives in targeting socially excluded individuals?

Abstract

Since their inception in the 1960s, Area-based Initiatives (ABIs) have been inadequately evaluated. It has been argued that there has been too much emphasis on 'outputs' of regeneration programmes, and not enough attention given to 'outcomes', in terms of their impact on the members of the communities they were intended to target. As a result, there is no clear evidence of the effectiveness of ABIs in reducing social exclusion. This paper argues that one of the initial stages of evaluation should involve an estimation of how accurately the regeneration intervention was targeted at the most socially excluded individuals within a given area. It reports an empirical study that uses survey data to investigate the extent to which respondents at various levels of social exclusion had been targeted by regeneration programmes operating within the boundaries of nine local authorities in the North-West of England.