Local Trust's approach to research

Local Trust’s approach to research was directly informed by the approach to the delivery of Big Local; an experimental approach to a large-scale funding programme, in which residents led decisions about how to use the funding they had been allocated (rather than decisions being made on their behalf). The programme provided 150 hyperlocal, disadvantaged areas in England with a significant amount of investment over an extended period of 10–15 years, with minimal administrative and reporting requirements. Crucially, each of the 150 Big Local partnerships decided how to use the funding provided, and how to keep track of and report on this. These flexible and light touch reporting requirements upheld the resident-led ethos of the programme.

The key implications for conducting research were that Local Trust did not have systematic data, a prescriptive model, or specific measurable outcomes to monitor. The broad outcomes for the programme to deliver were:

• communities will be better-able to identify local needs and take action in response to them
• people will have increased skills and confidence, allowing them to continue to identify and respond to needs in the future
• communities will make a difference to the needs they prioritise
• people will feel that their area is an even better place to live. 

From the outset, Local Trust prioritised supporting front-line activity and intentionally avoided placing bureaucratic burden on Big Local areas. Resources allocated to research therefore did not become substantial until some five years into the programme, meaning baseline data was not collected. Due to the experimental and resident-led nature of Big Local, Local Trust felt it would be inappropriate to develop a programme-level Theory of Change (a logical cause-and-effect framework linking actions to expected outcomes). Instead, six years into the programme, the organisation opted for a clear hypothesis which, along with the programme’s broad outcomes, served as a north star for the research team as they developed their lines of enquiry in response to programme and organisational development. The hypothesis was:

From this point on, more resource was allocated to research, and the research team gradually grew to a team of 10 in the final years of the programme.

Given the scale and nature of the programme, Local Trust did not have the data needed to conduct quantitative impact evaluation. Instead, research efforts were focused on:

• understanding what Big Local areas and Local Trust did and how things worked in practice during the programme, including in relation to specific elements of the model
• mapping out what ​‘resident led’ looks like in practice, and understanding the extent to which communities were able to take and maintain control
• learning about the effectiveness of Local Trust processes and support offered to Big Local areas to inform ongoing programme development
• exploring progress in the programme, and understanding what helped and hindered Big Local areas in terms of achieving their goals
• developing evidence of promise (a form of research that provides indicative evidence that the intervention being researched has value; it appears to achieve what it sets out to and is worth developing and researching further), including summaries for each area, and detailed reports and Q&A articles exploring what was achieved and learned across the programme as a whole.

Investigations into what works and what doesn’t when creating resident-led change were limited by a general lack of meaningful counterfactuals or business-as-usual baselines to work with. However, organisations with relevant expertise were commissioned or supported to generate quantitative data and model the potential impact of the Big Local investment in areas.

For example, Local Trust contributed funding and support to set up the Independent Commission on Neighbourhoods (ICON). As part of their work exploring the case for neighbourhood focused regeneration, they produced a report on the impact of Big Local.

Additionally, starting a few years into the programme, quantitative data was collected and analysed by the Local Trust research team in the form of the annual review of partnerships and a biennial survey of partnership members. The internal summary papers produced from these datasets captured the demographic make-up of partnerships, as well as reflections on the experiences of partnerships and their members during the Big Local programme.

Two external evaluations of Big Local were also delivered by university-led consortia, which researched the programme over several years. Our Bigger Story was commissioned by Local Trust and captured the change within 15 Big Local areas over 10 years using qualitative, multi-media methods. Communities in Control was funded by the National Institute for Health Research and looked at the relationship between community control and the social determinants of health using both qualitative and quantitative methods. It compared the health-related outcomes of Big Local areas to matched comparison areas between 2011–2019.

Meanwhile, the Local Trust research team’s efforts largely focused on understanding what happened as Big Local areas took the lead in delivery; implementation and process learnings; and a qualitative understanding of the potential impacts of the Big Local programme. This focus strove to develop a deep understanding of the contribution Big Local made in a complex social context, informing frontline work through ongoing internal learning and, eventually, the ​‘Learning from Big Local’ website.

Local Trust was set up and designed solely to deliver Big Local and then draw to a close. As a result, it was not possible to monitor longer-term impacts beyond the end of the programme. However, the content of Learning from Big Local and the work of Local Trust’s partners is intended to provide some basis for others to do so.

Local Trust commissioned a range of research projects over the years, to account for the scale of the programme. A large selection of these reports is included on the website. Alongside this, the research team and commissioned partners developed summaries for each of the 150 areas, as well as a series of Q&A articles and a retrospective Theory of Change. 

The area summaries were developed through traditional qualitative research approaches but written in a journalistic style in the hope that any audience – including the residents who made Big Local happen – could engage with them. The Q&A articles also drew on qualitative methods, as they synthesised learnings from research reports and involved interviewing staff, and served as a way for key members of staff involved in the programme to answer FAQ’s in lieu of being available to do so following Local Trust’s closure. 

Themes were developed with stakeholders as part of the website design at the outset of the Learning from Big Local project. As content came together, these themes were revised to better reflect the research that emerged, driven by the collective priorities of residents in Big Local areas.

Focuses for the Learning from Big Local articles were developed based on the experiences of senior staff at Local Trust i.e. the questions they were frequently asked by a range of stakeholders. They were intended to explore the most pertinent interests of our key audiences (policymakers, researchers, funders and community practitioners) and provide answers to questions in lieu of Local Trust staff being in place to answer them following organisational closure. Within each line of enquiry, the research team worked together to identify key questions, articulate the scope, identify sources, and reflect on key learnings. Articles often drew on research reports and internal knowledge across the organisation, utilising interviews or focus groups (usually with senior staff and/​or those working in the delivery team who supported residents on the ground), as well as internal documents. Key reading recommendations and references are provided with each article, including any research reports the articles were based on, which contain detailed methodologies.

Because articles were intended to reflect findings and learning from the whole programme, the research team and commissioned partners strove to explore lessons from across all Big Local areas relevant to the given topic. Responses from a biannual survey of partnership members – with an average response rate of 57 per cent – were sometimes used, providing useful insights at scale. However, these were limited to which Big Local areas (and who in those areas) chose to respond. 

Once the scope and sources for the articles were identified, and – if relevant – fieldwork was conducted, qualitative thematic analysis was conducted to succinctly report on key findings, with support from senior staff to refine interpretation and presentation. In some instances, just one report – considered complete as a standalone piece – was summarised; in others, many sources were brought together to synthesise learnings.

A summary was created for each Big Local area, striving to give a factual account of what each one did. These summaries provide an overview of how partnerships prioritised the use of Big Local funding and document each areas key activities and achievements over the lifetime of the programme. They are stand-alone outputs but also allowed Local Trust to look across the whole programme with more detailed and grounded knowledge, supporting the development of Q&A articles and other outputs.

Researchers (both within the Local Trust research team and commissioned partner organisations) began the process for each area by reviewing all key documents available, including Big Local plans and plan reviews provided by partnerships, programme and research reports, and other data where available. Given the flexibility and freedoms given to Big Local partnerships, there was great variation in the detail within these documents. Following this document review, researchers identified gaps in their knowledge and utilised this to inform the design of fieldwork.

Often, but not always, workshops or interviews were then conducted with partnership members and supporting staff to fill gaps and explore what they felt most important to capture. Again, there was variation in who was willing or able to speak to researchers, and the amount of time spent together, to inform this stage of the process. Crucially, only those involved in delivering Big Local in each area were engaged in research. Residents at a wider scale were not engaged (due to concerns around navigating fairness in who to engage and how, and internal capacity barriers).

To ensure anonymity when utilising direct quotes for the profiles, the following conventions were used for attributions:

• ‘Partnership member’ for all partnership members including the chair
  
• ‘Supporting staff’ for skilled workers hired by the partnership and within Locally Trusted Organisations, as well as reps and advisors from Local Trust 
• ‘Partner organisation staff’ for anyone working or volunteering within partner organisations, such as local schools, the local authority, or local charities
• ‘Resident’ for any resident within the area that doesn’t fall into the above groups, including volunteers working on Big Local funded projects
• ‘Local stakeholder’ for anyone working in an organisation that did not directly work on Big Local projects.

Following fieldwork, researchers conducted thematic analysis and prepared the summary, drawing on the wider research team to refine thinking through co-analysis sessions, and more formal reviewing processes throughout drafting. Area summary writing focused on drawing out the key activities and achievements of areas within a predetermined structure and word count, devised so that each summary remained digestible and accessible. Given the need for a systematic approach to developing summaries for 150 areas, alongside internal capacity limitations, they were not co-produced. The style of these summaries did not always align with residents’ wishes.

While writing area summaries, researchers focused on the achievements that came from years of hard work, rather than the challenges; challenges were explored in articles looking across the programme, and thereby better able to protect anonymity. The summaries were augmented by stories; a range of pieces produced on an ad-hoc basis by the communications team throughout the lifetime of the Big Local programme. Sometimes these stories provide more detail on an aspect of the research content, though sometimes they tell a story about something entirely different to what is featured in the area summary. This serves as a reminder of the scale of the programme, and the amount of work done in Big Local areas over a 10–15-year period.

Each summary provides data about the area and its population, drawing on a bespoke version of Local Insight (OCSI) which allowed Local Trust to draw on open data about Big Local areas. Each summary also details how the money was spent in the area, using the language and groupings on spend data that partnerships chose when labelling lines in their reports. There is more on spend data within the area pages, and within an article exploring how Big Local areas spent their funding across the programme.

Towards the end the programme, the research team worked with a learning partner to develop a Theory of Change for Big Local, using the knowledge gathered through Learning from Big Local as a basis for a synthesised view of the programme. Ahead of starting this work, the team built on their reflective practice and undertook some light reflexivity work, surfacing great variation in views about what success in Big Local meant and a sense that residents should be defining this. Whilst developing area summaries and Q&A articles, compromises were often reached between a few key members of staff regarding what should be shared as part of the legacy of this programme. The Theory of Change development process was designed to include many members of staff, stakeholders and Big Local residents to review the overarching story emerging from written evidence, and collectively refine this representation of Big Local. 

The Theory of Change is currently being developed and will be available mid-2026.

Reflexivity statement

As researchers, the team had some variation in terms of age, and their location and socioeconomic status in childhood, though were majority white and female. They acknowledged their shared privilege working in Local Trust, particularly compared to the residents volunteering their time to deliver Big Local.

Many things surfaced as influencers on individual views about the programme, including personal background, how long they’d been at the organisation, the research projects or Big Local areas they’d focused on, and who else in the organisation they were most exposed to. The researchers had different practices within the broadly qualitative and thematic approach of the work – for example, when working on area summaries, some looked for the pre-defined themes while others took a more bottom-up approach, then applied the themes later. Though, all agreed they aimed to cast a critical eye and draw out balanced learnings from our rich qualitative data, and valued each other’s support and input during analysis, and the development of the outputs on this website.