How did Big Local partnerships bring residents together to make decisions?

In the Big Local programme, residents were responsible for deciding how funding was allocated in their area. Decision-making had to go beyond the Big Local partnership, which was generally a small group: partnership members were required to base their decisions on what the wider community prioritised and needed. 

Throughout the programme, Big Local partnerships involved their communities in different ways. This article explores the key mechanisms for bringing residents together to make funding decisions: the approaches used and how effective they were. 

Local Trust has explored the overarching practice of resident-led decision-making in Big Local (including the role of the programme design and relationships with wider stakeholders) in another article.

This article is divided into broad themes to aid readability; however, in reality, these overlapped. For example, partnerships were more likely to be inclusive if they strived to be visible in different parts of a geographical area. 

The core components of the programme were decided at the beginning and shaped how it was delivered throughout. The partnership model was hugely influential as the vehicle through which resident decision-making passed, with 99 per cent of areas using partnership meetings to make decisions in 2023 (Local Trust, 2023). Further, there were only a few Local Trust staff at the beginning of the programme. Some staff felt that as a result, there was less capacity to work closely with areas on issues such as youth engagement or equality and diversity in the early years of the programme. 

Local Trust has detailed the changes in structure and delivery throughout the programme in the Big Local Timeline.

To allocate funding based on the wider community’s needs and views, partnership members needed to know what that community prioritised. In many cases, being a visible, easy-to-reach Big Local partnership made it easier for people to give their views. Big Local workers also played a role in building visibility, especially if they were employed specifically to gather community input.

Spontaneous encounters in public spaces were one way to gather views and check in. In this hyperlocal programme, street corners and bus stops could be sites of consultation. In one area, a partnership member who ran a corner shop stayed connected to residents during the Covid-19 pandemic through socially distanced chats in the shop. Partnerships’ hubs also provided an easy way for residents to share their views.

Providing food and drink was an effective way to get residents through the door – something which made engagement during the Covid-19 lockdowns even more challenging (Lyon et al., 2021). 

Not all spaces were easy for everyone to get to. In one urban area, an empty shop was repurposed as a place for bringing people together and hosting activities, but residents living north of a dividing road found it hard to get to (Lewis et al., 2019). To make it simpler for residents to find them, some partnerships took a mobile approach. Brinnington put on a roadshow involving pop-up consultation in different locations. Winterton, a rural Big Local area, had found that one estate was not well represented on the partnership and overall engagement was low. So, they developed a base in a second-hand caravan in the estate, to increase engagement, host activities, and carry out consultation. 

Partnership members reported that providing activities and events was one of the most common ways to engage community members (Local Trust, 2024). Offering enjoyable activities at no cost to residents – such as festivals and trips to the coast – had inherent value but was also a practical way to gather views, especially early in the programme. Often partnership members hoped that these one-off events would lead to more substantial engagement, but some residents were happier participating in this ad-hoc way (Lewis et al., 2019). 

Social media platforms helped to get quick feedback – in one case, asking for opinions on where new activity equipment might best be sited (Lewis et al., 2019). However, many residents still wanted or needed to engage through non-digital methods (Lewis et al., 2019; Wilson et al., 2021) so leaflets and paper surveys were frequently used.

Despite efforts to increase visibility, it remained challenging, and different attempts weren’t always effective. For example, in one area, no residents (beyond the partnership) came to the annual general meeting, so they spent time in front of the venue trying to get at least a couple people to attend (McCabe et al., 2018a).

Prioritising depth of engagement rather than breadth was an alternative way to bring residents together to make decisions.

Working groups were one way to delegate decision-making from the partnership to smaller groups, formed mostly of partnership members and other volunteers (McCabe et al., 2018). They were often set up to address a specific project or a priority identified by the partnership (like improving public spaces or community engagement). Working in smaller groups helped volunteers to pursue projects that were important to them (McCabe et al., 2018a), and enabled residents to input into decisions without joining the partnership. In this way these groups supported the broader development of community leadership (McCabe et al., 2018a). 

Local Trust has described the full range of roles for those who didn’t join the partnership but still volunteered for Big Local in another article.

Between 2021 and 2023, the proportion of areas using working groups as a sub-group of partnership decision-making ranged from 57 to 68 per cent (Local Trust, 2023). For many of the other Big Local areas, the community was consulted but all decisions were made by the partnership and most of their focus was on recruiting and retaining partnership members (Terry, 2020; McCabe et al., 2018a).

The size of Big Local areas varied greatly, ranging from 0.1 to 64 square kilometres. Some Big Local areas took a micro-local approach to getting residents’ input: street-based representatives. Street champions, as they were often called, provided a voice for their immediate neighbours, rather than representing the whole Big Local area. They sometimes led neighbourhood-specific projects or activities. Their exact role varied from area to area, but they often worked in more informal ways than the partnership (McCabe et al., 2018a ; 2018b).

Cars Area Together Big Local (Cars) recruited two part-time street champions as employees. Their role was to spread the word of Big Local and gather resident input. Because of the small residential area, this approach worked well. The champions asked residents what they needed and then pointed them to Big Local and other services or activities in the area. Conversations were also a way of influencing wider decisions. For example, residents expressed concerns about community safety and wanted to improve street lighting. A Cars street champion helped residents photograph poorly lit areas and liaised with Solihull Council’s street-lighting team to address those areas. 

People’s Empowerment of Custom House (PEACH) took a similar approach to create collective and inclusive people power. Where Cars focused on consultation, PEACH recruited community organisers and residents (representative of the housing blocks in the estate), empowering them to take action around a shared need for adequate housing. By 2023, their collective influence successfully brought about housing safety improvements and rent reductions. This approach enabled residents outside of the partnership to lead decision-making processes and effect change by influencing local authorities.

Many Big Local partnerships believed young people should have a say in how funds were spent, however they generally found it difficult to engage young people in decision-making processes. Most focused on youth provision but there were some substantial efforts to involve young people – such as establishing youth forums (Lewis et al., 2019). Heart of Pitsea Big Local set up Youth YOUnique Generation, a forum of young people (aged 13 to 17), who could choose what activities and services to fund through their annual budget of £60,000. This resulted in first-aid training, a social club, and football coaching.

Schemes for small grants (up to £5,000) for community and grassroots organisations were a valuable way for Big Local partnerships to quickly respond to local need, while supporting capacity-building and community development (McCabe et al., 2018). Application processes differed across the areas – some were formal (with the partnership choosing recipients), while others were participatory (involving residents outside of the partnership in decisions). Grants were broadly issued to projects aligned with a partnership’s established priorities. 

In an example inspired by participatory budgeting (Involve, 2024), Rastrick Big Local created the Voice Your Choice grant-giving programme. Local individuals or groups were encouraged to pitch their idea, which residents would then vote for (online or in person). The £65,000 pot was split between first, second, and third place. This transferred power to residents to decide where Big Local funding was invested, leading to improved sports facilities and open spaces.

Many volunteers began their journey with Big Local by receiving an investment into their idea or project. Small grants helped devolve decision-making to residents, as grant recipients made decisions around spending the funding and some went on to join a partnership (Wood et al., 2022).

Local Trust explores small grants in an upcoming article.

To support inclusion, partnerships worked to make participation in decision-making accessible, workable, and welcoming for a variety of people. For example, people of different ethnicities and religions, different neighbourhoods within an area, disabled people, and those with caring responsibilities (Fancourt and Usher, 2019; Lewis et al., 2019). 

Some partnerships selected meeting places suited to different needs, supported their members to take breaks (for example when experiencing mental health challenges), or hosted coffee without an agenda, informally encouraging resident input. In at least one area, the partnership offered interpreters to people whose first language was not English (Lyon et al., 2021). Understanding what works for different residents should also include considering the timing of events and festivals in the year, month, week, or day. 

One area, Brookside, made some of their meetings more informal and child-friendly, making it easier for parents and carers to attend (Terry, 2020). However, this was generally uncommon across Big Local areas. Online meetings (more common from 2020) provided more flexibility. 

Partnership members often reported that they found it difficult to engage with the most marginalised members of their communities (Local Trust, 2024). For engagement to be effective and meaningful, techniques like one-off events and translation services needed to be accompanied by long-term relational approaches underpinned by values seeing all communities as equally resident (Fancourt and Usher, 2019).

Once residents were brought together, the journey towards a final decision varied between areas, however, there were some trends.

Researchers observed partnership meetings in several areas and found that the emphasis was often on a final vote. Partnerships perceived voting as a transparent way of making decisions (Lyon et al., 2021). However, on the way to a final vote, a series of smaller, less obvious decisions often shaped the path and destination. These decisions were sometimes made in formal or informal working groups, at times through digital channels (like WhatsApp groups) which not all partnership members could access (Lyon et al., 2021). In 2023, 81 per cent of partnerships used email, WhatsApp, or texts to make decisions, in addition to other spaces (Local Trust, 2023). Digital tools could be useful to help partnerships make decisions quickly when required – in the Covid-19 pandemic and beyond (Langdale et al., 2021). 

Social capital and persuasiveness also influenced decision-making. It was useful for people to have networks and skills to persuade others to get on board with their ideas.

Sometimes, particular voices dominated. In the 2018 partnership members’ survey, 38 per cent of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that it felt like a few individuals were dominating their partnership. At times this was tied up with class and stereotypes around who had the ​‘finesse’ to make their point well (Lyon et al., 2021). Again, this varied from place to place, but overall, partnership members had more formal education than the average England-wide population, which may have played a role in who was more likely to be heard. 

To be more collaborative, some partnerships created small spaces for checking-in along the way at meetings, asking if anyone wanted to add anything (Lyon et al., 2021). Some partnerships also tried open forms of discussion, such as meetings with no agenda, but the majority followed traditional committee-like structures. Being able to facilitate something different requires skill, experience and time to plan. Things like agendas, minutes, and voting were easier defaults to use. Pacing was also an issue – if deliberation took too long, or discussions were meandering, that could alienate some partnership members in the same way as a rushed meeting. 

Yet despite these barriers, many Big Local residents developed strong decision-making skills throughout the programme – including those who had not done something similar before.