In the UK, there is a political consensus that a multi-sectoral partnership approach is essential to achieve urban regeneration. As a term, however, 'partnership' is overused, ambiguous and politicised. The Conservative government has inscribed 'partnership' with a complex political agenda. It is not clear whether the politics of partnership are still dominated by a Thatcherite agenda of privatising and centralising urban policy or whether a new, more democratic era has been entered. The paper explores how the stakeholders in the central government-led Scottish Urban Partnerships conceive of the nature of their interrelationships within this political context. It also presents a conceptualisation of partnership processes which extends and refines the framework put forward by Mackintosh (1992). The paper concludes that the Urban Partnerships are essentially limited applications of the potential of the partnership approach.

The scale of the cuts to local government finance, coupled with increasing demand for services, has led to unprecedented 'budget gaps' in council budgets. Arguably, two competing narratives of the trajectory of local government have emerged in which contrasting futures are imagined for the sector-a positive story of adaptation and survival and more negative one of residualisation and marginalisation. Drawing on case study evidence from three English local authorities, the paper distinguishes and provides examples of three strategic approaches to managing austerityefficiency, retrenchment and investment. It demonstrates how and why the balance of these strategies has shifted between the early and later phases of austerity and considers the extent to which the evidence of the case studies provide support for either the survival or marginalisation narrative. The paper concludes by arguing that a third narrative-responsibilisation-captures more fully the trajectory of local government in England.

Austerity urbanism in England: the 'regressive redistribution' of local government services and the impact on the poor and marginalised. Environment and Planning A, (doi:10.1177/0308518X17714797).There may be differences between this version and the published version. You are advised to consult the publisher's version if you wish to cite from it.http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/141300/ 2 AbstractThat contemporary austerity is being realised to a large extent in and through cities is a growing theme in urban scholarship. Similarly, the concern that the economicallymarginalised are disproportionately impacted as 'austerity urbanism' takes hold drives a significant body of research. While it is clear that substantial austerity cuts are being downloaded onto cities and their governments, however, the evidence on whether it is the most disadvantaged fractions of the urban population which suffer as a consequence remains thin. Moreover the mechanisms by which the downloading to the poor occurs are unclear. This paper identifies how austerity cuts are transmitted to the poor and marginalised in the context of severe cuts to the spending power of English local government. It identifies three transmission mechanisms and shows how these operate and with what outcomes, drawing on empirical evidence at the English national and local city levels. The paper provides robust evidence from national data sources and from in-depth, mixed-methods case studies to show that the effects of austerity urbanism are borne most heavily by those who are already disadvantaged. It also demonstrates the importance of identifying the specific mechanisms by which downloading on to the poor occurs in particular national contexts, and how this contributes to understanding, and potentially resisting, the regressive logic of austerity urbanism.

Across the public sector there is concern that service uptake is inequitably distributed by socioeconomic circumstances and that public provision exacerbates the existence of inequalities either because services are not allocated by need or because of differential patterns of uptake between the most and least affluent groups. A concept that offers potential to understand access and utilization is 'candidacy' which has been used to explain access to, and utilization of, healthcare. The concept suggests that an individual's identification of his or her 'candidacy' for health services is structurally, culturally, organizationally and professionally constructed, and helps to explain why those in deprived circumstances make less use of services than the more affluent. In this article we assess the fit of candidacy to other public services using a Critical Interpretive Synthesis of three case studies literatures relating to: domestic abuse, higher education and environmental services. We find high levels of congruence between 'candidacy' and the sampled literatures on access/ utilization of services. We find, however, that the concept needs to be refined. In particular, we distinguish between micro, meso and macro factors that play into the identification, sustaining and resolution of candidacy, and demonstrate the plural nature of candidacies. We argue that this refined model of candidacy should be tested empirically beyond and within health. More specifically, in the current economic context, we suggest that it becomes imperative to better understand how access to public services is influenced by multiple factors including changing discourses of deservedness and fairness, and by stringent reductions in the public purse. levels of service uptake are inequitably distributed by socio-economic circumstances -the 'sharp elbowed middle classes' (or at least the relatively more advantaged) appear able to benefit disproportionately from provision across a range of public services including health, education, housing, leisure and cultural services (Le Grand 1982;Gal 1998). Indeed, across a range of services there is evidence that universal public provision, which often paradoxically operates with explicit goals to reduce inequalities, can exacerbate the existence and experience of such inequalities through a range of implicit mechanisms that advantage the most privileged. These mechanisms include those associated with both supply and demand factors.Supply factors include the extent to which services are sufficiently resourced to target need, the degree to which systems work to overcome barriers of accessibility and the ways in which individual workers practice inclusiveness (Meier and Stewart 1991;Gal 1998;Rummery and Glendinning 2000;Priestley et al. 2010). On the demand side, explanations focus on the different perceived relevance of services and differential capacity of the wealthiest and poorest groups in society to make the best use of services. This in turn can lead to a stigmatizing discourse about those who do not eng...

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Su m m ary. The aim of th is p aper is to assess power relation s betw een the particip ants involved in a newly form ed , m ulti-secto ral, u rban regen eration p artn ersh ip. The pap er exam ines the exten t of`tran sform ation ' du ring the progress of the partn ersh ip; focu sing on identifyin g ch anges in partn ers' theories of the cau ses of the local regen eration`prob lem '. It d raw s u pon the theoretica l fram ework and analytical tools provid ed by critical discou rse analysis in ord er to exp lore how a focu s on langu age use can con trib ute to identifyin g ch anges in assu m ption s and valu es. The overall purpose of the p aper is to con sider the practical usefu lness of discou rse theory and analysis in identifyin g instan ces of the exercise of power. It con clu des that discou rse analysis can help to detect ways in w hich pow er is being exercised which m ay not be apparen t to or ack now ledged by those involved in partn ersh ip s and can therefore be m ade to play a usefu l role in assessin g p ow er in partn ersh ip work ing.

English Neighbourhood regeneration initiatives in stigmatised estates have tended not to address the problem of stigma directly, but have largely assumed that an estate’s reputation will improve as material conditions on the estate improve. This article demonstrates the tenacity of stigma even in estates where large-scale regeneration initiatives are underway. It then accounts for the persistence of stigma by providing evidence of how a problem image creates barriers to the spread of knowledge of change. The article concludes by exploring how area-based initiatives could build on this insight in order to develop effective approaches to challenging stigma, thus contributing to sustainable regeneration.

There is an emerging interest within social and policy studies in the potential connections between linguistic practices and broader social processes. It is, however, difficult to find examples of research which take a fully discursive approach to policy analysis. Such a discursive approach might focus on how the use of language in the policy process is involved with social practices, such as the legitimisation of social relations or the construction of ‘knowledge’ of social reality. The article begins by exploring theoretical and methodological issues in relation to connecting micro aspects of language use, such as grammar and lexis, with the social construction of knowledge. It then uses discourse analysis to explore how the linguistic resources of a key British urban policy document, New Life for Urban Scotland, are involved with reproducing and sustaining a particular ‘knowledge’ or discourse about the causes of urban decline.