In 2021, the Grange Big Local area in East Finchley was home to 6,423 residents, who lived in a mix of owner-occupied, privately rented, and social housing (ONS, 2022; 2023a; 2023b; 2023c). Located in the London Borough of Barnet, the area included The Grange, Font Hills, Brownswell and Thomas More housing estates.
Residents described the area as friendly and leafy. However, it had less green space and higher levels of air pollution than the London average (OS, 2025; MHCLG, 2019a). An overground tube line split the area in two, and residents were reluctant to use the underpass beneath it due to safety concerns.
One in four residents were of African, Caribbean or Asian heritage (ONS, 2023d; 2023e) and just over half of residents experienced significantly higher levels of deprivation than the rest of the Big Local area (MHCLG, 2019b). However, partnership members reported that some of London’s most expensive properties stood minutes outside the area boundary.
Some community assets had closed down prior to 2013, when Grange Big Local began consultation, including a youth and community centre and an advice centre. However, the area benefited from good transport links, an older people’s centre, a Sure Start Children’s Centre and churches and schools within or bordering the area. A purpose-built community centre was opened at Tarling Road in 2018.
Grange Big Local consulted residents throughout the programme via conversations on doorsteps and at local fairs, public meetings and resident surveys. When they wanted to understand specific needs, they ran targeted sessions with younger or older residents or commissioned independent consultations.
Informed by these consultations, Grange Big Local focused efforts on supporting residents to flourish, enabling the local environment to blossom, and developing the local economy. The partnership averaged 10 members throughout the programme, including active and well-connected residents from across the area, and a local councillor as a non-voting member. Several members remained involved for the lifetime of Big Local.
Mid-way through the programme, in 2020, the partnership reduced their initial six themes to three. This enabled them to balance longer-term capital projects involving multiple stakeholders with initiatives like children’s summer activities or advice and training to maximise residents’ income. A lead partnership member drove each project forward and built relationships with key partners.
Big Local workers helped implement the partnership’s plans, while Grange Big Local drew in specialist expertise when needed and embraced innovative approaches. For instance, they conducted two years of community consultation around Universal Basic Income as part of an ambitious collaboration with Central Jarrow Big Local, a think tank and Northumbria University. In 2023, this resulted in a practical, actionable proposal to run a community-led basic income pilot in both Big Local areas. While the pilot did not proceed during the lifetime of Big Local, the proposal boosted efforts to secure funding for it, while prompting local and national conversations around poverty and inequality. The partnership consulted the community throughout Big Local via events, street stalls, and informal conversations. They reflected that taking a multiple-methods approach to consultation and offering free food to those who took part were effective ways of increasing community engagement.
Grange Big Local practised, as one partnership member described it, ‘distributed leadership’, which empowered residents to make their own ideas a reality. They did this through a community grants scheme, which awarded grants – of up to £500 for individuals and £10,000 for organisations – to applications that fitted within their three Big Local themes. The partnership reflected that small grants helped to unlock grassroots ideas and understand specific community needs. In 2024, Grange Big Local awarded £39,000 to eight applicants, including science projects for families, seed funding for Garden Girls FC and N2 Mums Speak (a local support group), and intergenerational forest activities. Alongside funding, the partnership offered one-to-one help with mapping local resources and contacts, and developing and drafting funding proposals.
Grange Big Local’s legacy was evident in transformed public spaces and strengthened community networks. Partnership members reflected that self-sustaining resident-led projects and major infrastructure improvements boosted residents’ belief that they had the power to effect change.
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.
Many Big Local partnerships funded workers to support the delivery of Big Local. They were paid individuals, as opposed to those who volunteered their time. They were different from Big Local reps and advisors, who were appointed and paid by Local Trust.
A Big Local Plan set out what changes the partnership planned to make, how they planned to deliver on this and how funds were to be allocated. It was written for themselves, their community and Local Trust, as a guide and action plan.
Resident consultations highlighted a number of unused pockets of green space where residents wanted to see change. When a group of residents, including partnership members, identified the wasted potential of a patch of local land that had been inaccessible for 20 years, Grange Big Local therefore supported them.
The group set up an independent charity, Barnwood N2, to bring the space into community use, and several partnership members became trustees. The project benefitted from the organisational skills partnership members brought to the group, and Grange Big Local arranged for the space to be adopted under Barnet Council’s ‘Adopt A Place’ scheme. The partnership contributed £6,000 seed funding alongside £12,000 from Barnet Council to renovate fences and paths.
The safe, friendly space opened as a community forest garden in 2019 and was available to the whole community every Friday, Saturday and Sunday. It quickly established itself as a vital resource where residents connected with one another and nature, especially for families without gardens. Volunteers increased biodiversity by planting and nurturing the garden. Young disabled people learned outdoor skills, and nursery children enjoyed the opportunity to be in nature. Special events like Holocaust Memorial Day, Science Week activities and Halloween celebrations were hosted in the garden. New groups, like N2 Mums Speak and Silver Birchers nature group, also met there.
Barnwood N2’s passionate and active trustees continued to fundraise and grow their skills, laying down solid roots to enable the forest garden to continue beyond Big Local.
After early consultations identified improvements to parks and play areas as a priority, in 2019 Grange Big Local supported a group of residents to transform Market Place Playground from a sparse concrete space into a green, playable landscape for the community. This involved building capacity and supporting governance and safeguarding processes. The Friends of Market Place Playground then took the lead in community organising, fundraising and the playground’s imaginative redesign.
Though the space sat just outside the Big Local area, the partnership noted that it was widely used by Grange Big Local residents. Following Grange Big Local’s initial support, Friends of Market Place Playground went on to raise more than £450,000 from a range of funders, including £50,000 from Grange Big Local. The transformed park opened in 2024 with improved play facilities for children of different ages, new benches, picnic areas and cycle racks. Natural surfaces like grass, planted beds and sand replaced the previous concrete paving.
From the start of the programme, residents consistently called for improvements to the Manor Park underpass beneath the Northern Line rail track. Residents reported that this vital pedestrian link between the Thomas More, Grange, and Font Hill communities was dark, littered and prone to flooding. Many felt unsafe walking through it on their own.
In response, Grange Big Local embarked on a lengthy campaign to renovate the underpass, working with Mills Power Architects to redesign the underpass based on community consultation, and with Barnet Council as project managers. They overcame numerous challenges in the process, from commissioning a feasibility study, interpreting building regulations and drafting designs, to building stakeholder relationships and making their case to decisionmakers. Recognising that they could benefit from external expertise, they appointed a local architect’s firm to act as project manager.
Residents were involved through community clean-ups, opportunities to influence renovation designs, and the co-creation of artwork and poetry to decorate the underpass. A turning point for the campaign was a 2022 petition organised by Grange Big Local to show support for the renovation project, which gained over 510 public signatures. This enabled partnership members to present the renovation project at a council planning meeting.
The partnership’s tenacity paid off when they convinced the council to invest £10,000 in an internal project lead. At the end of Big Local, in 2025, Grange Big Local finally gained planning permission for the renovations. After many years of work, and funding from both Grange Big Local and Barnet Council, structural repairs and improvements to visibility, drainage, lighting and accessibility began. At the same time, Grange Big Local commissioned an artist to work with schools and residents to create poetry and artwork for the underpass, resulting in an inviting community space connecting the two halves of the Big Local area. As the programme came to an end, Barnet Council were taking on responsibility for completing the structural improvements to the underpass, allowing for the mural commissioned by Grange Big Local to be painted.
Grange Big Local’s community grants scheme supported residents who wanted to launch their own community projects. For instance, in 2021, a £500 grant allowed the N2 Mums Speak group, set up by two mothers during the pandemic, to create a safe space in Barnwood N2 for mothers who felt isolated. Women shared motherhood journeys at their regular meetups, discussing topics such as mental health and navigating unwanted parenting advice. Participants spoke positively to group leaders about the group’s impact on their lives, sharing how they loved the sessions, made friends, and felt safe.
In a separate project, Grange Big Local offered seed funding to a mother who wanted girls to gain a sense of belonging and develop confidence through playing football. The 2019 grant went towards purchasing equipment and hiring suitable space. Lymore Gardens Girls Football Club grew from a dozen girls who had never played football before into a community of four teams, aged 8–16, who each competed in the Girls Super League. By 2023 the club’s founder was recognised for making an outstanding contribution to grassroots women’s sport in BBC Radio 4’s Women’s Hour Powerlist. In 2025, Grange Big Local provided a further grant, which enabled 100 girls to attend football training and wellbeing workshops. Through playing football, participating in workshops and getting involved in mentoring, club members built confidence and resilience to take into their future lives – both on and off the pitch.
Early on, in 2014, Grange Big Local partnership wanted to consult and engage with young people. They partnered with a local youth project, the charity Art Against Knives (AAK), and funded a consultation that reached 400 young people. Three years later, as part of their first delivery plan, Grange Big Local contributed £39,000 towards a three-year AAK programme to reduce youth violence.
AAK’s approach involved providing safe, creative and hopeful spaces for young people to meet, and using these to drive engagement. They achieved this through detached youth work, mentoring, and fun activities. For instance, at a pop-up nail bar, nail technicians were trained in safeguarding and support around mental health and youth violence. This helped them build trust while painting girls and young women’s nails, leading to young people opening up to them. This created opportunities for conversations about personal safety and on-the-spot crisis support. The technicians also developed young women’s skills by training them in nail technology. A similar approach was employed at a music studio and a martial arts gym.
In the programme’s first six months, 29 young people at risk of violence or exploitation were engaged. Most accessed specialist support and seven were supported into employment and training. AAK has since been recognised as a pioneering youth justice organisation, going on to be commissioned by Barnet Council, win awards, and shape policy.
Eager to bring residents together and create opportunities for community consultation, Grange Big Local organised a number of large-scale public events. In the early years they held annual festivals where hundreds of residents came together and enjoyed free activities and musical performances.
In 2017, they launched their first ‘Fun Palace’, a festival that showcased community members’ passions, talents and cultural traditions. Funded by £2,500 from Grange Big Local and £2,100 from Barnet Council, and supported by 120 volunteers, the launch event attracted 400 participants from diverse communities. Residents could try out activities like circus skills, tennis, football, storytelling, calligraphy in community languages, bagel-making, mehndi and ukelele playing. Feedback from children and older people was positive, with one older resident saying, “I loved it, loved it”. The success led Grange Big Local to run further Fun Palaces in subsequent years.
Alongside larger events, Grange Big Local created smaller scale opportunities for residents to connect. For example, beginning mid-way through the programme, they supported one of the two churches in the area to provide space for residents to meet weekly during the winter months.
Attendees aged 8 to 82 came to stay warm, enjoy hot drinks and make new friends. Highlights included impromptu poetry readings and celebrations of special occasions, complete with cakes. Run by volunteers, the space later moved to the Tarling Road Community Centre.
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 Grange Big Local told Local Trust they used their Big Local funding.
Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government (MHCLG) (2019a) ‘English indices of deprivation 2019: Living Environment Deprivation: Outdoors Sub-domain’. Available at: gov.uk/government/statistics/english-indices-of-deprivation-2019 (Accessed 9 October 2025)
Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government (MHCLG) (2019b) ‘English indices of deprivation 2019’. Available at: gov.uk/government/statistics/english-indices-of-deprivation-2019 (Accessed 9 October 2025)
Office for National Statistics (ONS) (2022) ‘UK Census 2021: All persons’. Available at: ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates/datasets/populationandhouseholdestimatesenglandandwalescensus2021 (Accessed 9 October 2025)
Office for National Statistics (ONS) (2023a) ‘UK Census 2021: Housing owned outright’. Available at: ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/housing/bulletins/housingenglandandwales/census2021 (Accessed 9 October 2025)
Office for National Statistics (ONS) (2023b) ‘UK Census 2021: Private rented housing: Private landlord or letting agency’. Available at: ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/housing/bulletins/housingenglandandwales/census2021 (Accessed 9 October 2025)
Office for National Statistics (ONS) (2023c) ‘UK Census 2021: Social rented housing’. Available at: ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/housing/bulletins/housingenglandandwales/census2021 (Accessed 9 October 2025)
Office for National Statistics (ONS) (2023d) ‘UK Census 2021: Ethnic group: Asian, Asian British or Asian Welsh’. Available at: ons.gov.uk/datasets/TS021/editions/2021/versions/3 (Accessed 9 October 2025)
Office for National Statistics (ONS) (2023e) ‘UK Census 2021: Ethnic group: Black, Black British, Black Welsh, Caribbean or African’. Available at: ons.gov.uk/datasets/TS021/editions/2021/versions/3 (Accessed 9 October 2025)
Ordnance Survey (OS) (2025) ‘Open Greenspace’. Available at: osdatahub.os.uk/downloads/open/OpenGreenspace (Accessed 2 June 2025)
