A Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) was introduced in the US in 1977 and has been through various changes since that time. The Clinton Administration in the 1990s extended the CRA to support community development finance institutions and Barak Obama has recently put forward proposals to extend the CRA further still. There is obviously a huge amount of learning to be gleaned from the experience of a CRA in the States and recent meetings with key players in the National Community Reinvestment Coalition (NCRC) have proved incredibly valuable. There are a number of people in the UK - particularly drawn from the community finance sector - who have been working closely with the NCRC for many years. One of them, Pat Conarty, provided some useful insight into the US experience:

"There were lots of teething and operational problems with the CRA in the 1980s that Ralph Nader's organisation, Essential Information, assisted in overcoming. Also CRA involves several other linked pieces of legislation, including the Civil Rights Act and the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA). The original 1977 CRA was modified several times as a result and new powers gave the law much more teeth in the early 1990s.

Also the problem in the 1980s until 1992 as with CRA over the past eight years was the strong opposition of Reagan, Bush Sr. and GW Bush. Also it is important to remember the huge finance crisis in the USA when the Savings and Loan industry collapsed. This regulatory failure in the USA in the late 1980s was huge (cost to taxpayers of more than the Vietnam War) and nothing similar to the smaller banking failures in the UK (eg. Johnson Matthey Bank and BCCI). Thus 1992 was a turning point with the Clinton election. NCRC was founded as the national advocacy body for CRA action locally. Also this was the year the CDFI Coalition was formed to unite community loan funds, community development credit unions, a few community development banks and the micro-credit organisations."

What's clear, from the small amount of contact Urban Forum has had with community reinvestment practitioners from the United States so far, is that we have a huge amount to learn from their experience.

Pat's comments (and those from a number other people) are a good reminder of the fact that Urban Forum is very new to the world of community reinvestment and that a lots of people and organisations have been working on this agenda for a long time. They bring a huge amount of experience and knowledge about the practicalities of introducing a CRA in the UK and the opaque world of finance.

A CRA was frequently discussed in 1996 as people anticipated Tony Blair's election victory and the omens, for a time, seemed promising. However the incoming Labour government were nervous about upsetting the City, after a long-fought battle to convince the public that they were capable of managing the economy. The calls for a CRA seemed to be lost amidst a whirlwind of new initiatives, a social exclusion unit, utility company windfall tax, the neighbourhood renewal strategy and significant investment in education and health. The moment passed and momentum was lost.

The situation today is very different - the banking crisis and the credit crunch have contributed to a global recession putting a tremendous squeeze on public spending and we've seen banks being nationalised and bailed out with public funds. The nervousness of doing anything to upset financial institutions who were contributing so much in tax-revenue to fuel the government's spending plans, has been replaced by a very different public mood. The furore over the bonuses paid to bank executives and Fred Godwin's pension highlight the public perception of banks pursuing profit at any cost....cost that is ultimately borne by the taxpayers who are now saddled with the burden of debt.

The media have already moved their attention away from the banks and on to MPs expenses and we need to move urgently to ensure the opportunity for change is not lost again for another generation.