Timetable for Change New Start , 25 May 2001

Time banks are surprising local authorities in providing support networks and cost-effect solutions to public service problems, reports David Boyle

Officials at North Yorkshire County Council are among those who have taken the risk of actually asking their social service clients what they want.

Its not such a radical idea in itself - though radical enough compared with the great tradition of local authority social services in days gone by.

And as so often happens on such occasions, the result was a bit of a surprise.

Generally speaking, clients didn't really want the traditional panoply of services, from residential homes to lunch clubs. What they wanted was support networks in the community, just as there were - or so we imagine - in generations gone by.

The result: North Yorkshire is among the local authorities looking to invest resources into developing community time banks, the social capital-building tool where people swap their time by helping out in their local neighbourhood.

Time banks have only been in the UK for just over two years, though mere are many more in the USA, Japan and China. They started as a method of accessing community support to keep older people safe and healthy in their own homes for longer.

But now that the umbrella organisation Time Banks UK is one year old, thanks to funding from the Home Offices active community unit, the idea seems to be taking off - in an unexpected number of directions.

There are about 20 time banks up and running, with a similar number about to launch. The government has also discounted 'time credits' - the electronic currency that measures and rewards people�s efforts - for tax and benefit purposes, and has promised to help make sure there are at least 125 schemes in place by 2003.

Employment minister Tessa Jowell has also proposed that time banks could be a key part of the government�s strategy to help people upgrade skills and ease their way into employment.

What is fascinating is how time banks are being adopted in very different sectors, and to achieve very different things. It isn't just about the elderly any more.

The Rushey Green time bank, based in a doctor's surgery in Lewisham, is being used to broaden neighbourhood development so that it keeps people healthy, and is now into its second year thanks to support from the Kings Fund.

Doctors are increasingly referring patients to the time bank - often with long-term depression - because they find that plugging them into community networks of mutual support improves their condition.

The South London and Maudsley NHS Trust covers the same area specialising in mental health, and has watched this process at work. It now plans to roll out time banks across its institutions too.

In a twist to the idea, the Lloyds-TSB Foundation is funding an experimental DIY scheme at Rushey Green, so that participants can get small and vital home repairs done by other participants paid for in time credits, and organised through the surgery.

Then there's community development, starting with the network of rime banks across rural Gloucestershire run by Fair Shares - which opened the first time bank in the UK in Stonehouse in December 1999.

The Gorbals Initiative has also launched the first rime bank in Glasgow as an innovative method of community regeneration, using a time currency they call 'liptons' after one of the area's most famous natives, teabag pioneer Sir Thomas Lipton.

Single regeneration budget projects in Elephant & Castle, south London, Sheffield's Norfolk Community Park and the Rhondda Valley are also turning to time banks as a way of making sure the community develops rather than being driven underground by the weight of new concrete.

Then there's education. Skill Swap projects are being set up in Leicester and Rutland with the help of the New Economics Foundation, this time swapping skills and know-how rather than time.

Three schools in Tower Hamlets, east London, plan to set up time banks, funded by the new educational trust Shine. They will pay pupils in time credits for their efforts as peer tutors, and let them cash them in for a recycled computer.

There are time banks run by local authorities emerging in Watford and Derby, run by community groups in Newcastle and Dumfries, and even run by the chamber of commerce in St Helens. It's a rapidly broadening church.

'The point is that time banks are not just rebuilding community, local trust and the sense of self-worth among those taking part,' says Sarah Burns of Time Banks UK- 'They are also revitalising their host institutions - be they schools or health centres - by involving clients as equal partners in the business of regeneration.'

David Boyle is an associate of the New Economics Foundation.