How did Big Local enable residents to lead decision-making?

The Big Local programme was designed to give residents from disadvantaged, hyper-local communities control over £1.15m of funding. Unlike other community-level funding programmes, in which funding was transferred to local authorities or organisations to make decisions on behalf of residents, money and decision-making power were transferred directly to residents, recognising that they were best-placed to make changes in their communities. Local Trust has drawn on internal reflections and research to provide a snapshot of factors and indicators that research suggests most impact resident-led decision-making.

To make decisions about how the funding should be spent, volunteers were required to come together as a group of at least eight. These groups were referred to as ​‘partnerships’, and each had to be made up primarily of residents. Equipping residents to take on this kind of decision-making control required a lot of time, patience and support. Local Trust offered a range of support to Big Local partnerships over the course of the programme, with its long-term nature – lasting up to 15 years in each area – enabling residents to build these valuable skills. This long-term support was especially important because many volunteers involved in Big Local (at least a quarter in 2022, according to a biennial survey) were new to making decisions about funding, and lacked confidence around controlling large amounts of money. 

It is important to recognise the kinds of decisions that residents had to take within the Big Local programme. To deliver on their vision for the area, partnerships needed to balance different priorities and ways of working, ranging from delivering long-term capital projects (such as developing community hubs), the day-to-day delivery of events and activities, and responding to urgent need (such as Covid-19) (McCabe et al., 2018). Partnerships also had to put time into raising awareness in their Big Local area, developing their own understanding of local needs, and building a good picture of the work already being done by existing local organisations and groups.

The non-prescriptive nature of Big Local meant that residents were able to make decisions that reflected the needs of their specific community, and their specific local context. The way Big Local partnerships decided to deliver on their plans evolved over time. 

One of several factors that contributed to resident partnership members’ developing their skills to lead on decision-making and deliver their Big Local plans was the employment of workers. Many partnerships recognised a need for dedicated paid roles to support the delivery of their plans, and as the programme went on, increasingly workers were employed. By 2018, there were at least 245 workers employed across all 150 areas, jumping to 265 workers in 2021. 

Increase in Big Local spend across areas over time is an indicator of increased capacity within partnerships. Big Local spend data highlighted how partnerships progressively spent more on bigger projects, such as community spaces. In 2013, average Big Local spend reached £150k across all areas, increasing to £2–4m a year across all areas between 2017–2021. This suggests that over time, partnerships sufficiently built internal capacity to make more long-term strategic decisions about their funding, or take the greater risks associated with higher-spend projects. Internal Local Trust reflections on this trend also suggest that the employment of workers played a crucial role in increasing delivery. 

Local Trust explores the role of paid workers in Big Local in another article. 

Over time, residents developed the skills and capacity to make and lead on decision-making. By the time the programme drew towards a close, some partnerships actively made the decision to continue building upon their legacy post-Big Local by setting up legal bodies or other resident-led groups to access further funding. In 2023, out of 142 areas surveyed by Local Trust, 57 per cent had or were planning to set up legal bodies to continue beyond Big Local.

Big Local programme guidance stated that partnership members should broadly reflect the range and diversity of people who lived in the area. However, Local Trust had no explicit requirements about this, and data on Big Local partnerships reveals a complex picture of participation in resident-led decision-making.

A 2024 survey of partnership members found that 75% of respondents agreed that the partnership was representative of the Big Local area, however the demographic data collected indicated that the majority of respondents were aged 45 and older, white, and female, with a post-secondary education and in paid employment or retirement. A 2022 survey of Big Local partnerships found that, while members were mostly working age, the percentage of those involved over the age of 65 was around 11 per cent higher than in the UK population (ONS, 2023). Almost two-thirds of partnership members identified as female. Moreover, the survey found that 85 per cent of partnership members were White, which was reflective of England’s population (ONS, 2022a) but five per cent higher than the overall Big Local population. Almost 60 per cent of partnership members reported having some form of post-18 education. This was significantly higher than the England average (33 per cent) (ONS, 2022b) and the Big Local population average (17 per cent). 

Big Local partnerships operated within communities facing complex systemic disadvantages, including high levels of deprivation, socioeconomic challenges, and poor social infrastructure. Together with intersecting inequalities (such as race, gender, and class), these disadvantages would often produce precarious conditions, leaving communities poor in both money and time. This created barriers to participation within Big Local spaces for decision-making; in other words, “…the reality that surviving poverty consumes people’s energy and limits their capacity to get involved in community activism” (Baker and Taylor, 2018; Local Trust, 2020). 

It is perhaps unsurprising, therefore, that partnership members were disproportionately white, older, and had had greater access to higher education – a trend that aligns with national volunteering trends, which show people that are female and between 65 and 74 as being most likely to volunteer (NCVO, 2023). The complex interaction of intersecting inequalities create conditions that can affect who is around the table, and whose voices are heard. However, recognising this to be an important focus in their work, some partnerships explored ways of making decision-making more open and inclusive. These included using creative techniques to encourage diverse participation (such as open-space events, citizens’ juries, and young people’s panels), rotating meeting chairs, supporting the development of agenda items, text and audio summaries of meeting documents, buddying schemes, paying for childcare, finding accessible meeting locations, and providing food for attendees (Local Trust, 2020; Lyon et al., 2021).

Although Big Local partnerships could decide how to structure themselves, Local Trust did require a key contact for each partnership. This evolved into the chair role, which was reflected across all partnerships. Chairing was approached differently by each area, with some opting for a shared co-chair approach, and others adopting a rotating chair model wherein different members took on the role for a set period. 

In terms of general structure, research suggests that a more conventional or formal decision-making approach was most common for Big Local partnerships (Local Trust, 2020). In the absence of alternative ideas or guidance, some partnerships may have turned towards taken-for-granted structures, commonly used in local authorities or other traditional decision-making bodies. While this formality may have helped bring credibility when working with local agencies, for example, it could have also excluded people less familiar with this approach. As stewards of the Big Local funding, embedding a more formal structure may have been favoured by some partnerships as a way of demonstrating their accountability to the community. 

Specific decision-making structures varied across partnerships. In 2019, during the programme’s peak, each partnership’s approach to leadership was categorised into one of three broad structures. The most common approach (adopted by 69 areas) was acting as an ​‘executive’ for the community, focusing on recruiting and retaining partnership members to work closely together, with tight control of the funding. The second most common (43 areas) was a ​‘distributed’ leadership approach, wherein partnerships developed working groups. Partnership members (and sometimes residents outside of the partnership) were encouraged to form or attend working groups around the issues they were interested in addressing. In some Big Local areas, decision-making was devolved to these working groups, whereas in others, working groups reported back to the partnership board to make decisions. The least common approach (34 areas) was an ​‘enabling’ leadership structure, in which partnerships enabled community capacity-building by focusing on linking up local activity and opportunities for small community group development (Local Trust, 2020). 

These approaches to leadership were broad rather than fixed. Partnerships may have moved between these three different approaches dependent on time and topic. In practice, they ranged from more conventional and formal to more creative and enabling structures, with many Big Local areas moving between and borrowing aspects from different structures over time.

Throughout the programme, Big Local areas worked with a range of partners, with roles ranging from advisory positions to delivery support. Whom each partnership chose to work with, and how these relationships influenced decisions, was a key aspect of the Big Local programme. 

While each specific external role was different, common attributes were experience in community development and relationship-building, and a strong understanding of community issues and how to help partnerships address them. External partners also tended to understand and value resident-led work, meaning they could support and enable Big Local partnerships to make decisions and build their capacity in-line with their vision. Additionally, they could provide support in more specialised areas, such as financial management or technical expertise, while working in a flexible and informal way that allowed residents to take the lead. These attributes helped Big Local areas and their external partners avoid dominant and gatekeeping behaviours that might inhibit residents from leading on decisions.

A closely related factor in enabling or hindering resident-led decision-making was partnership members’ own connections to and relationships with local powerholders. Research showed that where these relationships didn’t pre-exist or were weaker, this could be a barrier to influencing decisions locally (Lyon et al., 2021). On the other hand, positive working relationships with local powerholders often gave credibility to Big Local work, and enabled partnerships to better progress with their plans and benefit from a range of support.