.
Churches, Chapels, Mosques, Temples - if they're lucky, there'll be more to their domains than just a building. It'll be a forecourt, a parking area, a garden, and in the case of Christian communities perhaps even a cemetery. In some cases graveyards around churches are managed by the City Council, as subjects of long standing formal agreements, though not always.
Any religious building with a modicum of open space around it will at some time or another, if not constantly, suffer from the problem of casual litter dropping, sometimes even dumping of larger kinds of rubbish - chairs, sofas, old bikes, and so on. This is inevitable when, for the most part, caretakers no longer live on site. Rather than take stuff to the tip or ring the Council to come and take unwanted things away, the prevailing anti-social habit is to leave them in the nearest unattended open space, public or private.
When a religious building is adjacent to a pub, or in the case of the city centre, set in the very heart of party-land, the amount of rubbish discarded daily, can be huge - packaging, bottles, cans, fast food wrappers (and uneaten food), publicity flyers, plastic bags, condoms, discarded clothing, shoes, syringes are all commonplace items needing to be picked up, especially after Friday-Saturday nights, and after Big Match days.
It's clear that the consumers are responsible for the mess, fuelled by the lack of expectation on the part of vendors that they have a responsibility to manage the rubbish their trade generates outside their premesis. However, it's those responsible for religious buildings that have the task and pay for the cost of clearing up other people's mess.
Sometimes, the sheer good will and pride of local council bin men and street sweepers leads to a rubbish strewn area around a religious building being cleared unofficially. If the amount of rubbish cleared and put out in bin bags by community members exceeds what officials presume and expect, charges can be imposed. The rubbish is often very mixed, and there have been occasions when fines have been threatened for not sorting waste material in the prescribed manner. Volunteers are bearing responsibility for clearing up mess which is a direct result of the city's social and economic development policy, and bearing costs which are nothing to do with the activities of their membership.
But when the Council's Cleansing department is approached at senior management level, the dogma is simple and fundamental. 'The Council is responsible for cleansing the public realm. If an area is not in the public realm, it's in the private realm and cleaning it up is the responsibility of its owners. Therefore, your problem is not our problem.'
A large corporation working in the city with economic muscle is able to negotiate and get the results it desires. If it doesn't get what it wants, it has the resources to sue the Council for having policies, which compromise the corporate bodies' domain. But religious communities, even large denominations, don't have that kind of resource, or at least are not prepared to use it in that way. The source of the problem lies in the depths of the philosophy on which city governance rests.
According to the dogma, there is the public realm which the City Council manages, everything else is private. Religious communities, great and small are neither private bodies, nor are they businesses. The vast majority are registered charities. They are governed and managed for the most part by volunteers, and their paid workers are supported by voluntary subscription. Their realm of operation is the public domain, and they are subject to legislation regarding health and safety, fire, insurance, child protection for public bodies, just like businesses. However, they are not 'owned' by shareholders and directors who benefit from an economic activity. They are sui generis.
Ownership of religious organisations passes from one set of elected trustees to another. They are responsible for the properties belonging to them which are located in the public realm, and are open to the public. Religious organisation trustees are not-for-profit office holders in bodies collectively 'owned' by volunteers in a way that distinguishes them from private households and commercial enterprises. But this fact is not recognised by city government or its administration as being significant, despite the large contribution made by religious bodies to the social weath and welfare of the city.
The major exception is where religious bodies own and run schools -around 28% of those run by Cardiff LEA have Church Aided status, and there is a well run working partnership between religious and local government officers which manages these. There is a Council for Voluntary Action which has recognition and partnership agreements with the local authority which operate in other specific areas, like community safety, sport and leisure, health education and youth work. Indeed, particular religious community projects participate and benefit from this arrangement like others. But, when it comes to public religious buildings, owned and used for sacred, cultural and social purposes by voluntary led communities, there is a serious policy blind-spot. Not only in the area of cleansing. Also in the realm of public accessibility.
Many religious buildings are rendered increasingly difficult to access due to traffic controls and parking regulations. Issues of crowd management in the city centre on weekend Big Match days and other leisure and sporting events can bring major disruption to ordinary citizens attending worship, or weddings, or just socialising. Rights of access are not infrequently suspended, with sketchy and sometimes disparate public information available, and there is no proper discussion of principle or practice. Only those who are skilled and experienced at negotiating access to religious places are able to arrive at their destination easily.
Good will is rarely lacking on the part of the people on the ground following orders, but leadership and management is often fragmented and hard to communicate with for anyone who is an 'outsider' to those in control. This generates feelings of frustration and resentment, as many in religious communities feel the Council did not consult them, or advise them properly, or if they did, found their wishes ignored.
Local government officers close to the situation are often not unsympathetic to the problems. It's at the level of executive leadership (elected and employed), that decisions are made which lead to a sense of alienation from public life on the part of some religious communities. Even if City leadership is sympathetic, when the matter is passed down the chain of command to be dealt with, implementation proves to be inadequate, as service managers are accountable for budgets and year-end balance sheets. This is used as an alibi for refusing to re-visit plans and priorities.
Secularisation is a widespread process in which religious life and institutions disappear from the public domain and are regarded as only belonging in the private realm. In some critical aspects, Cardiff City Government's world-view enforces this by a policy that has crept in without public consent. It is not an issue on which political campaigns are yet fought in Britain today, although Welsh church disestablishment in the early decades of the 20th century was indicative of things to come, and open hostility to 'faith schooling' on the part of militant Humanists increases in its vehemence. Whilst independence of church and state is mutually beneficial, the weakening of religious community participation in public life has come about as many established religious communities have defaulted upon their civic responsibilities, being preoccupied with their own decline. As a result, the City does not benefit as much as it could from the kind of creative moral and spiritual input that can enhance public life.
Meanwhile the welfare of the City is not well served by the crude public-private dichotomy which holds sway in the Local Government official's mind-set. Anti-discrimination and social inclusion legislation won't make much difference. It will just extend the playing field upon which major issues can remain avoided. A change of philosophy is needed that will result in a change of culture amonst those who are paid to serve the needs of the whole community of communities that is the Capital City.
Churches, Chapels, Mosques, Temples - if they're lucky, there'll be more to their domains than just a building. It'll be a forecourt, a parking area, a garden, and in the case of Christian communities perhaps even a cemetery. In some cases graveyards around churches are managed by the City Council, as subjects of long standing formal agreements, though not always.
Any religious building with a modicum of open space around it will at some time or another, if not constantly, suffer from the problem of casual litter dropping, sometimes even dumping of larger kinds of rubbish - chairs, sofas, old bikes, and so on. This is inevitable when, for the most part, caretakers no longer live on site. Rather than take stuff to the tip or ring the Council to come and take unwanted things away, the prevailing anti-social habit is to leave them in the nearest unattended open space, public or private.
When a religious building is adjacent to a pub, or in the case of the city centre, set in the very heart of party-land, the amount of rubbish discarded daily, can be huge - packaging, bottles, cans, fast food wrappers (and uneaten food), publicity flyers, plastic bags, condoms, discarded clothing, shoes, syringes are all commonplace items needing to be picked up, especially after Friday-Saturday nights, and after Big Match days.
It's clear that the consumers are responsible for the mess, fuelled by the lack of expectation on the part of vendors that they have a responsibility to manage the rubbish their trade generates outside their premesis. However, it's those responsible for religious buildings that have the task and pay for the cost of clearing up other people's mess.
Sometimes, the sheer good will and pride of local council bin men and street sweepers leads to a rubbish strewn area around a religious building being cleared unofficially. If the amount of rubbish cleared and put out in bin bags by community members exceeds what officials presume and expect, charges can be imposed. The rubbish is often very mixed, and there have been occasions when fines have been threatened for not sorting waste material in the prescribed manner. Volunteers are bearing responsibility for clearing up mess which is a direct result of the city's social and economic development policy, and bearing costs which are nothing to do with the activities of their membership.
But when the Council's Cleansing department is approached at senior management level, the dogma is simple and fundamental. 'The Council is responsible for cleansing the public realm. If an area is not in the public realm, it's in the private realm and cleaning it up is the responsibility of its owners. Therefore, your problem is not our problem.'
A large corporation working in the city with economic muscle is able to negotiate and get the results it desires. If it doesn't get what it wants, it has the resources to sue the Council for having policies, which compromise the corporate bodies' domain. But religious communities, even large denominations, don't have that kind of resource, or at least are not prepared to use it in that way. The source of the problem lies in the depths of the philosophy on which city governance rests.
According to the dogma, there is the public realm which the City Council manages, everything else is private. Religious communities, great and small are neither private bodies, nor are they businesses. The vast majority are registered charities. They are governed and managed for the most part by volunteers, and their paid workers are supported by voluntary subscription. Their realm of operation is the public domain, and they are subject to legislation regarding health and safety, fire, insurance, child protection for public bodies, just like businesses. However, they are not 'owned' by shareholders and directors who benefit from an economic activity. They are sui generis.
Ownership of religious organisations passes from one set of elected trustees to another. They are responsible for the properties belonging to them which are located in the public realm, and are open to the public. Religious organisation trustees are not-for-profit office holders in bodies collectively 'owned' by volunteers in a way that distinguishes them from private households and commercial enterprises. But this fact is not recognised by city government or its administration as being significant, despite the large contribution made by religious bodies to the social weath and welfare of the city.
The major exception is where religious bodies own and run schools -around 28% of those run by Cardiff LEA have Church Aided status, and there is a well run working partnership between religious and local government officers which manages these. There is a Council for Voluntary Action which has recognition and partnership agreements with the local authority which operate in other specific areas, like community safety, sport and leisure, health education and youth work. Indeed, particular religious community projects participate and benefit from this arrangement like others. But, when it comes to public religious buildings, owned and used for sacred, cultural and social purposes by voluntary led communities, there is a serious policy blind-spot. Not only in the area of cleansing. Also in the realm of public accessibility.
Many religious buildings are rendered increasingly difficult to access due to traffic controls and parking regulations. Issues of crowd management in the city centre on weekend Big Match days and other leisure and sporting events can bring major disruption to ordinary citizens attending worship, or weddings, or just socialising. Rights of access are not infrequently suspended, with sketchy and sometimes disparate public information available, and there is no proper discussion of principle or practice. Only those who are skilled and experienced at negotiating access to religious places are able to arrive at their destination easily.
Good will is rarely lacking on the part of the people on the ground following orders, but leadership and management is often fragmented and hard to communicate with for anyone who is an 'outsider' to those in control. This generates feelings of frustration and resentment, as many in religious communities feel the Council did not consult them, or advise them properly, or if they did, found their wishes ignored.
Local government officers close to the situation are often not unsympathetic to the problems. It's at the level of executive leadership (elected and employed), that decisions are made which lead to a sense of alienation from public life on the part of some religious communities. Even if City leadership is sympathetic, when the matter is passed down the chain of command to be dealt with, implementation proves to be inadequate, as service managers are accountable for budgets and year-end balance sheets. This is used as an alibi for refusing to re-visit plans and priorities.
Secularisation is a widespread process in which religious life and institutions disappear from the public domain and are regarded as only belonging in the private realm. In some critical aspects, Cardiff City Government's world-view enforces this by a policy that has crept in without public consent. It is not an issue on which political campaigns are yet fought in Britain today, although Welsh church disestablishment in the early decades of the 20th century was indicative of things to come, and open hostility to 'faith schooling' on the part of militant Humanists increases in its vehemence. Whilst independence of church and state is mutually beneficial, the weakening of religious community participation in public life has come about as many established religious communities have defaulted upon their civic responsibilities, being preoccupied with their own decline. As a result, the City does not benefit as much as it could from the kind of creative moral and spiritual input that can enhance public life.
Meanwhile the welfare of the City is not well served by the crude public-private dichotomy which holds sway in the Local Government official's mind-set. Anti-discrimination and social inclusion legislation won't make much difference. It will just extend the playing field upon which major issues can remain avoided. A change of philosophy is needed that will result in a change of culture amonst those who are paid to serve the needs of the whole community of communities that is the Capital City.
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