The small rural town of Winterton in North Lincolnshire, just north-east of Scunthorpe, is situated near the river Humber. The Big Local area covered the whole town, which in 2021 had a population of nearly 5,000 (ONS, 2022), and a mix of affluent and lower-income households (MHCLG, 2019). The west side of town, containing the Grangefield housing estate, was amongst the 20 per cent most deprived neighbourhoods in the country, with poorer health outcomes and significantly lower rates of income, employment and education compared to the rest of Winterton (MHCLG, 2019).
Amenities in the town centre included a supermarket, a church, and a pub. Partnership members reflected a lack of local job opportunities, with youth unemployment higher in Winterton than the rest of Yorkshire and Humber (DWP 2024a; 2024b). Consequently, most residents travelled to nearby Scunthorpe for work using the twice-hourly bus.
Winterton Big Local’s early consultation with residents revealed a strong sense of community pride and safety. However, residents felt the area lacked things to do, particularly for young people.
In response to feedback from residents, the partnership prioritised improving public spaces to increase local pride in the town; organising community activities to engage and connect residents from different parts of the area; and building connections between residents and local organisations. Winterton Big Local acted as a catalyst for community action by supporting and facilitating ideas that emerged through consultation with residents. Sub-groups of partnership members, residents and sometimes paid workers were responsible for delivering projects and reporting back to the main steering group.
To maintain consistent engagement with residents, the partnership purchased a second-hand touring caravan to use as a mobile unit and pop-up office. This supported promotional activities, community consultation, and activities that needed a temporary office base. The caravan was branded with the partnership’s logo and helped to raise the visibility of Big Local in the area and engage with residents.
The Grangefield estate was notably important in the area. The partnership included representatives from the estate, who helped inform decisions about how best to tackle deprivation and address needs there. In general, members found it challenging to generate interest in Big Local among estate residents. The partnership therefore set up the Grangefield Residents Association (GRA), allocating them a budget to run regular coffee mornings where they could gather resident feedback. Big Local money also enabled GRA to fund activities on the estate, such as bingo and craft sessions, and organise training and work experience for residents. Over time, more residents became involved.
Partnership members initially wanted to deliver projects themselves; however, over time they came to see value in bringing in external specialist support. They employed a community worker to coordinate projects and build relationships locally. They also worked with local organisations, freelancers, charities, and North Lincolnshire council to facilitate certain projects. This collaborative way of working was sometimes challenging, but ultimately important to the success of these projects.
The partnership set up a Community Interest Company, Winterton Futures, to deliver their plans for a community orchard. This became their legacy organisation, and as the Big Local programme came to an end, Winterton Futures CIC was planning to continue running resident-led work in the area.
Towards the end of the programme, the partnership had plans to purchase a disused building in the area to turn into a community hub and base for Winterton Futures. When this fell through, the partnership redirected funding towards the community orchard, and grants for local groups. They saw this as their main legacy in the area; developing shared communal spaces and supporting resident-led projects. Meanwhile, they worked with Groundwork Yorkshire to explore new plans for a hub at the community orchard.
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.
At a Big Local consultation, at the local street party set up and run by the partnership in 2015, 84 per cent of residents wanted the old town mural, located on the chip shop in the central square, to be refreshed. In response, the partnership ran a design competition. Residents chose from shortlisted designs, and two local artists were selected to paint a new mural. This helped raise Winterton Big Local’s profile early in the programme and built residents’ confidence in the partnership.
Working with local artists also informed future work. Local sculptors were asked to submit designs for a new public artwork in the cemetery, and a sycamore seed sculpture was chosen. The partnership ran art-related competitions throughout the programme as an effective way to engage young people to design logos, posters and cartoons, and develop photography skills.
Inspired by sculpture trails in other towns, Winterton Big Local commissioned the same artists who painted the mural to create 26 tractor sculptures. Over two years, they worked with local schoolchildren and community groups to design and paint each one. More than 600 local people got involved in creating the sculptures and trail.
The partnership employed a local resident to manage the PR for the trail, successfully attracting media attention and visitors from outside the town. 5000 trail maps were delivered to local households, tourist centres and public buildings. The sculptures were placed in residents’ gardens and in community buildings, which helped people explore Winterton and generated community spirit. The sculptures were then auctioned off, and money was donated to three charities voted for by Winterton residents.
Notable astronomer Wallace Sargent, who pioneered the detection of supermassive blackholes, grew up in Winterton in the 1930s. Towards the end of Big Local, in 2023, a local sculptor approached the partnership about creating a statue of Wallace to celebrate his life. Winterton Big Local backed the project, seeing it as a way to inspire future generations and build pride in Winterton’s history.
Creating the statue took longer than expected due to hidden costs, ownership issues, and finding a suitable site. However, the partnership showed resilience and saw the idea through to completion. The finished steel monument was placed at the front of Wallace’s old school, and the partnership brought in a media team to promote the unveiling. Wallace’s wife and fellow astronomer, Anneila Sargent, came from the USA to attend the event, which also brought together local residents, Wallace’s family, and organisations and schools in Scunthorpe.
Winterton Big Local ran a small-grants programme that supported new and existing groups, funding everything from youth club activities to licensing, training and equipment. The partnership also underwrote the insurance excess of £1000 for any local community group wanting to hire North Lincolnshire Council’s minibus. As part of this programme, in 2021, the partnership allocated seed funding to a lantern parade, which went on to become an independent annual event.
Two members of the Winterton Big Local partnership and a group of residents organised the inaugural parade to take place alongside the Christmas light switch-on, so that people who could not attend due to Covid-19 could see it go past their homes. Around 50 residents attended this first parade. Big Local workers and volunteers organised the event for another two years, after which the residents branched off and founded Light Up Winterton (LUW) as a CIC in 2023, towards the end of Big Local. In the third year, 300 people attended.
Winterton Big Local allocated funding to LUW to visit another lantern parade, buy lantern-making materials, complete first aid training and DBS checks, and learn how to make giant puppets for the events. The partnership also supported LUW to successfully apply for external funding. This allowed LUW to run independently and sustainably, expanding their reach in the community and hosting social sessions and lantern-making workshops with residents. LUW continued to deliver creative projects in Winterton beyond the end of the Big Local programme, expanding from the lantern parade to hosting discos, summer fun days, and craft activities for local children.
Community consultation indicated that a lack of training, skills and local opportunities were driving high levels of youth unemployment in the area. Winterton Big Local therefore invested in an apprenticeship scheme, in partnership with the housing provider on the Grangefield estate. The partnership incentivised local employers to take on apprentices by subsidising 50 per cent of their wage and contributing towards training costs with Big Local funding.
The partnership’s relationship with the housing provider was central to the apprenticeship scheme’s success, with one contact proving particularly proactive and responsive. Eventually, after a cost-efficiency review and a personnel change leading to a shift in the working relationship with the housing provider, the partnership discontinued the scheme in 2023, a few years before Big Local came to an end. During its lifetime, 19 young people were supported in apprenticeships, gaining valuable work experience and income.
A few years into the programme, in 2015, Winterton Big Local partnered with Hull and East Yorkshire Credit Union to offer financial services and support to Winterton residents, particularly those living on the Grangefield estate. The partnership facilitated loans, finance, and credit support from two credit union workers at the co-op, local infant school, and through one-to-one advice at the GRA coffee mornings and at a local cafe. £12,000 in loans were given out in 2019, and two out of six of those were prompted from a GRA coffee morning.
Children were also encouraged to save by opening a ‘Pennies to Pounds’ account with a school bank scheme launched by Big Local in 2015 and run in local schools, awarding certificates to reward saving milestones. Although uptake was initially slow, the scheme relaunched in 2019 with the credit union’s mascot, which prompted 33 junior accounts to be opened and four previous accounts reactivated. The scheme ended due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Although surrounded by countryside, the partnership felt that Winterton didn’t have many accessible green spaces. Consultation with residents revealed a strong interest in environmental projects for the town, so the partnership tried growing fruit, vegetables and herbs around town – inspired by the Incredible Edible urban gardening project in Todmorden.
Over time, the partnership realised their community, and town, was too different to Todmorden to apply the same scheme. Despite commitment, they found it challenging to engage residents and faced issues with licensing that prevented them growing produce on the Grangefield estate. They took a flexible and adaptive approach, and eventually the idea for a community orchard emerged, resolving the issue around licensing because they owned the land themselves.
Winterton Big Local allocated funding to purchase a five-acre field and create an accessible, biodiverse green space with nature walks, an orchard, and a pond. Alongside this, the partnership set up Winterton Futures CIC to take ownership of the land, giving them the freedom to develop the project in response to future community needs.
Winterton Big Local worked with The Conservation Volunteers Hull and Humber to deliver phase one of the project. This involved planting and nurturing 500 trees – including fruit trees – on the site. Humber Forest provided 75 per cent of the funding for the trees. Over 1,000 hedging plants and shrubs were also planted through a massive local volunteer effort, including from local primary and secondary schools. Residents were engaged in ongoing maintenance through ‘tree care days’, encouraging local people to get involved with caring for the space.
Near the end of the Big Local programme, the orchard project was taken on by Winterton Futures and Groundwork Yorkshire. After the initial volunteer support with planting, the two organisations developed new plans which focused on improving infrastructure and ensuring the sustainability of the area. This included a small car park, new pathways, a wetland area, and a central community hub housed within a converted shipping container. The orchard became a key legacy for the partnership, their ambition being to create a space that residents could enjoy for generations to come.
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 Winterton Big Local told Local Trust they used their Big Local funding.
Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) (2024a) ‘Universal credit: Employment status by age’. Available at: gov.uk/government/statistics/dwp-benefits-statistics-august-2024 (Accessed 10 January 2025)
Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) (2024b) ‘Jobseekers allowance by age’. Available at: gov.uk/government/statistics/dwp-benefits-statistics-august-2024 (Accessed 10 January 2025)
Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government (MHCLG) (2019) ‘English indices of deprivation 2019’. Available at: gov.uk/government/statistics/english-indices-of-deprivation-2019 (Accessed 10 January 2025)
Office for National Statistics (ONS) (2022) ‘UK Census 2021: All persons’. Available at: ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates/datasets/populationandhouseholdestimatesenglandandwalescensus2021 (Accessed 10 January 2025)
