Funding withdrawn from ‘Communities Against Drugs’ project
Oxford City Council confirmed on Thursday that it would not be providing funding for the Blackbird Leys Community Action
Development project (formerly Communities Against Drugs)
The CAD project was launched three years ago—weeks after the election of IWCA councillor Stuart Craft on an anti-drugs
platform and following New Labour assertions that the Leys did not have a drugs problem.
Now its three-year cycle of government money, totalling £60,000, is due to run out in September.
The IWCA first voiced concerns about the funding and long term viability of Blackbird Leys Communities Against Drugs in
the early stages of the project (see earlier articles:
Communities against drugs … with or without the community,
Too little, too late, As end draws near for SRB funding will Blackbird Leys be left
high and dry?)
Our arguments that short term funding schemes such as the Single Regeneration Budget are no way to sustain
authentic long-term community self help projects fell on deaf ears in the face of university academics and ‘experts’ who lauded
the approach while research funding was available but are scarcely to be seen now it has dried up.
Some of these have gone on to better things while local community activists are left to flounder. Given our argument that
to achieve anything tangible there must be genuine community ownership, it is ironic that just as this is being achieved
the rug is being pulled from under them.
30 July 20005
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