The Church Hill Big Local area covered the largest estate in the New Town area of Redditch in the West Midlands. The estate was built in 1975 and was home to around 7,600 people (ONS, 2022a). Among these residents were a higher number of young people (under 16) and more lone-parent households compared with the rest of Redditch or the West Midlands (ONS, 2022b; 2024).
The estate included some main thoroughfares limited to pedestrian walkways or bus-only roads, alongside a network of cul-de-sacs. Within the Church Hill Big Local area boundary, there were a range of community buildings and green public spaces, including parks and woodland, with a greater proportion of tree coverage compared to Redditch, the West Midlands or the average of all other Big Local areas (Friends of the Earth, 2023).
The Church Hill Big Local partnership worked towards creating a community in which residents, organisations and businesses could work together so that people felt safe, happy and proud to be part of the area. The priority areas for Church Hill Big Local partnership were: improving the environment, raising community spirit, and developing opportunities for children and young people.
Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, the partnership delivered its work through dedicated subcommittees, while also working as a partnership for separate projects. This structure was effective in terms of providing clear working parameters: residents involved could focus on their own areas of interest, improving engagement in Big Local activity generally. It also afforded opportunities for people to be involved at varying levels, increasing skills, confidence and experience delivering community-focused projects in the area.
During the pandemic, some subcommittee volunteers wanted to reduce their time commitment, and others were unable to continue volunteering. The partnership therefore decided to move away from the subcommittee structure, and instead met as one group. Occasional task-focused subcommittees were used when a project’s scale required it.
Volunteer involvement was integral to the delivery of Church Hill Big Local partnership’s activities. The partnership delivered through grants, and by commissioning and funding local community organisations. They also worked closely with key local stakeholders, including YMCA Worcestershire, who ran the Willow Trees Community Centre. The partnership chose to invest in this well-used community space as a way to engage residents in Big Local and provide a base for a range of activities and events. The partnership chose a local accountancy firm as their Locally Trusted Organisation (LTO), bringing expertise, accountability and transparency to funding decisions, while maintaining their independence as a partnership to make funding decisions.
In 2020, the partnership registered Church Hill Big Local CIO to continue their work beyond the end of Big Local. They felt their community was a better place to live because of the programme and were keen to build on the resident interest and volunteer support they had developed over time. The volunteer-led group continued delivering seasonal events and promoted opportunities for residents to volunteer, come together as a community or access services and support.
A Big Local partnership was a group made up of at least eight people that guided the overall direction of delivery in a Big Local area.
A locally trusted organisation (LTO) was the organisation chosen by people in a Big Local area or the partnership to administer and account for funding, and/or deliver activities or services on behalf of a partnership. Areas might have worked with more than one locally trusted organisation depending on the plan and the skills and resources required.
Church Hill Big Local partnership used funding towards low-cost or free events, trips and activities for families, to bring people together through shared experiences.
A programme of events and trips aimed at families was developed over time, including Christmas, Easter and summer fetes. The partnership’s annual Christmas Fayre aimed to provide an opportunity for residents to take part in an affordable festive event. The 2023 Fayre saw record attendance of over 1,500 people, while the partnership’s £5 trips to the seaside became a popular summer staple, with over 200 people attending each time.
To maintain community spirit, efforts were made to ensure that events continued in some form throughout the Covid-19 pandemic. This included an Easter event where the partnership (alongside the Easter Bunny!) toured houses in the area distributing Easter Eggs to children at a distance. The partnership rearranged their plans at short notice with the onset of the national lockdowns, and felt the event was meaningful for residents at a difficult time.
Church Hill Big Local partnership felt their programme of events was one of their key achievements, helping them raise their profile in the area and to achieve a good reputation by helping residents build memories with their families and the wider community. After the Big Local programme came to an end, Church Hill Big Local CIO continued a range of popular seasonal events in the community, including themed annual Community Fun Days with games, animal encounters and food stalls.
Felt by the partnership to be their biggest project, this redevelopment involved funding a range of improvements to Bomford Hill Park, transforming an unused and relatively unknown green space into a valued community asset. These included: constructing a peace memorial with seating, a major planting and time capsule project involving local schoolchildren, installing boxes for bats and birds, and developing Wendy’s Way, a new path memorialising the partnership’s former chair. A toposcope was also created, which indicated distance and directions to notable features in the local landscape, while the partnership worked with a West Midlands orienteering group to develop a signposted nature trail through the park.
This work was completed in phases, and to specific council requirements. The peace memorial, for example, was delivered – from planning stages through to a remembrance event – within ten months. To do this, the partnership set up a steering group to co-ordinate the project that included volunteers, local councillors and a local historian. They also drew on strong existing relationships with local councillors, helping attain initial council support and ensuring it remained throughout the construction process.
Altogether, the redevelopments led to Bomford Hill Park becoming a feature of the Church Hill area. Where previously it was inaccessible and unknown to most of the community (despite being the biggest green space in the area), it became well used by the local community, including annual Remembrance Day services and events using the peace memorial.
Improving activities for children and young people was a priority for Church Hill Big Local partnership. One of their earliest projects was a new play park outside the Willow Trees Community Centre. The partnership developed this alongside Redditch Borough Council and the YMCA Worcestershire (who owned the land), and consulted with young people to understand what they would like to see in the new park.
Long term, the partnership also decided to invest in existing organisations’ expertise to holistically support local children, young people, and their parents. One example was providing funding for Youthy – a local group based in the Willow Trees Community Centre. Youthy provided a safe youth space, and was felt by local residents to have contributed to a reduction in anti-social behaviour in the area. Another example was parent-and-toddler football sessions, which helped provide activities for parents with young children who might not have had outside space in which to play. These sessions also provided an opportunity for parents to meet, helping create connections that might otherwise not have been made.
Volunteering played an important role in Church Hill Big Local. The partnership used Big Local funding to promote, expand and develop new opportunities for residents to support activities in their local area.
The partnership supported the Moon’s Moat Conservation Group to engage new volunteers in preserving and improving a local ancient monument and green space. The increase in volunteers was felt to breathe new life into the group while their involvement meant the green space benefited from reduced litter and new planting. Regular litter picks and summer ‘tidy ups’ of planters in Church Hill’s shopping parade were also organised and promoted by the partnership.
The partnership were able to deliver numerous events by bringing together residents to volunteer, including two significant back-to-back celebrations for the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. The first, in April 2022, was hosting a visit from the Band of Her Majesty’s Royal Marines Portsmouth, which was included in the BBC’s national coverage. Despite the significant work required to organise this, it was meaningful to the community to be selected by Buckingham Palace to host the march, and to take part.
This was followed with a community celebration on the Jubilee weekend, which took place in Bomford Hill Park. An increase in volunteers helped both these events succeed, due in part to the partnership being able to spread the workload, while the involvement of local schools was felt to be important in encouraging residents to attend.
Over time, the partnership felt they had learned a lot about how to engage volunteers locally. They recognised that while quick opportunities for short-term or one-off volunteering were valued most by residents, these roles required more input from the partnership. Playing to the strengths of volunteers was also felt to be an important way of maintaining their engagement over time. As the Big Local programme came to an end the partnership reflected that this learning would support the Church Hill Big Local CIO to continue involving residents in the future.
From the outset, Church Hill Big Local partnership was committed to ensuring that work was sustained beyond the programme. They supported the establishment of new local groups, empowering the community to continue delivering activities and projects in the future. This included Krafty Sew and Sew, a new group created when two existing craft groups merged, and Choirs Connected, a network of choirs supported by Church Hill Big Local partnership from their inception onwards. The group eventually expanded to run a range of choirs for many ages, including a family choir, and became a legally constituted organisation.
Both groups were supported by the partnership to network with other community stakeholders and set up formal organisations to fundraise and continue to be sustainable beyond Big Local funding. This allowed them to remain connected to a range of ongoing activity and continue to deliver projects in the area.
Through using their Big Local funding, the Church Hill Big Local partnership learned a lot about working together and with others to improve and support their community. It gave them opportunities to make valuable mistakes, develop trust in each other around decision-making, and grow their confidence around what they could achieve together.
Early projects, such as funding a compostable toilet at the Paper Mill Drive allotment, built the confidence of the partnership. The new toilet enabled the allotment to host community events and visits from local schools. This investment demonstrated to the partnership how a relatively small amount of funding could have a large impact by widening the possibilities of projects.
The success of the Church Hill Big Local partnership was recognised by others looking to achieve similar things in their own areas, with the partnership feeling they were increasingly viewed as specialists on both the needs of the community and how best to serve them.
Their resident-led response to the Covid-19 pandemic (helped by the structures and relationships they had built before the pandemic, which provided a strong foundation of support for them to shift delivery quickly) led to them being included in broader, Redditch-wide networks of voluntary organisations aimed at sharing learning and support.
Each Big Local area received approximately £1.2 million (ranging from £1.199 mil to 1.209 mil) to spend over 10–15 years, depending on how much additional funding they accessed from Local Trust to address specific needs. For example, to bring people together at the start of the programme or to access training and support. This has been categorised for areas and at the programme level based on reports received from areas.
Partnerships chose their own priorities and categories for reporting, and were encouraged to use broad categories so they could use the funding flexibly. All areas spent a significant amount of money on ‘Big Local delivery costs’ such as workers’ salaries, stationery and IT equipment. You can find out more about programme level spend in this article. This is how Church Hill Big Local told Local Trust they used their Big Local funding.
Friends of the Earth (2023) ‘Spreadsheet of tree cover by English neighbourhoods’. Available at: policy.friendsoftheearth.uk/download/spreadsheet-tree-cover-english-neighbourhoods (Accessed 8 October 2024)
Office for National Statistics (ONS) (2022a) ‘UK Census 2021: All persons’. Available at: ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates/datasets/populationandhouseholdestimatesenglandandwalescensus2021 (Accessed 8 October 2024)
Office for National Statistics (ONS) (2022b) ‘UK Census 2021: Age structure of the population: Population aged under 16’. Available at: ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates/datasets/populationandhouseholdestimatesenglandandwalescensus2021 (Accessed 9 October 2024)
Office for National Statistics (ONS) (2024) ‘UK Census 2021: Families and households: Lone parent households with dependent children’. Available at: ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/families/datasets/familiesandhouseholdsfamiliesandhouseholds/current (Accessed 17 October 2024)
