What were the support needs of Big Local areas, and how were they identified?

Resident-led decision-making often requires and benefits from wider support from the funder, particularly in communities with little history of community development or under-developed community infrastructure (Wilson et al, 2023). Local Trust intended for its direct support to help enable resident-led decision-making, in turn ensuring that all Big Local areas could build leadership and capacity, create strong long-term partnerships, deliver their plans, spend effectively, and create lasting change in their communities. In this article, we look at the various support needs of different Big Local areas, and at how Local Trust approached the task of identifying those evolving needs for the 150 areas.

There were some common support needs particular to the programme timeline. In the getting-started phase, these included understanding how the programme was intended to work. This was important because the resident-led approach was often unfamiliar to residents and local agencies alike, as was the Big Local focus on community-wide outcomes rather than project-based outputs. Early-intervention support like this also included more help around skills to enable delivery of projects and drawing down Big Local funding. Examples of this support included how to set up a decision-making partnership, how to build a community profile, how to create a community vision, and how to design a Big Local plan. Research has also shown that access to demographic data at the hyper-local level helps residents better understand inequalities and support partnerships in their inclusion work (Brap, 2022).

As partnerships moved into the delivery phase, new support needs were identified around increasing community engagement and community leadership development. In addition, new technical support needs arose around setting up small grant schemes, commissioning services and managing assets, and how to assess progress and adapt or refresh plans as needed. 

In the final years of the programme, as partnerships focused on the effective delivery of their plans and aimed to spend out, continuing support was required around community involvement and maintaining momentum, and new support needs emerged around legacy-planning and the creation of financially sustainable legal bodies. 

These different phases show that a useful distinction can be made between relationship-based and technical support needs. The former cropped up throughout the programme; partnerships regularly sought help with managing tensions and conflict, sometimes for issues within the group, within the support structures of Big Local, and sometimes with external people. As the programme went on, emphasis tended to shift towards peer networking and community leadership development, including the skills required to build effective relationships within the community as well as with external organisations.

Technical support needs, arising throughout the programme, were often specific to different Big local areas. Partnerships occasionally required support that was not readily available at the local level, such as specialist knowledge and expertise to help with the delivery of ambitious plans, or to overcome stumbling blocks.

At the very start of the programme, Local Trust knew little about the 150 different areas, or about the residents within them who took up the challenge of forming Big Local partnerships. Equally, residents were unfamiliar with the programme’s expectations and what would be required of them. 

In a bid to build relationships and knowledge, two key methods were employed to identify the support needs of each Big Local area. 

Firstly, all areas were provided with in-area support from a community development specialist, who aimed to build a trusting and supportive relationship with residents. These specialist contractors also served as people on the ground in these areas for Local Trust (then run by a very small team of programme staff), helping identify the kinds of support each area required. A partnership chair pointed out the impossibility of offering support ​“when we don’t know what we don’t know,” noting that ​“there was a lot of this at the beginning.”

Secondly, Local Trust hosted regional events and area visits, through which some early support needs became apparent. Additionally, telephone enquiries from Big Local residents helped Local Trust staff develop a broad picture of both the common and distinctive support needs of different areas. 

The process of discovering these different support needs was not systematic. As the programme progressed and evidence of partnerships’ different circumstances trickled in, Local Trust recognised that a range of approaches were needed, and began to more intentionally gather information about the needs and preferences of Big Local partnerships and developed different ways of meeting them. Evidence-gathering methods included: 

• surveys and interviews
• participation data from support activities
• piloting of support offers
• reviews and evaluations.

Local Trust’s support offers were designed to meet an array of changing needs. These can be grouped into six categories (Diagram 1): technical expertise, skills development, additional capacity, guidance and information sharing, relationship building, and peer support.

Local Trust responded to the support needs with a range of learning opportunities, from online learning networks through to face-to-face events and gatherings, one-to-one mentoring sessions, specialist advice, and partnership facilitation. How support was delivered in Big Local is explored in detail in another article. There were three broad phases of support during the programme, each reflecting ongoing learning about what was needed, and how universal or targeted support offers should be. Local Trust also learned that it needed a coherent package of support, and a common format for describing its aspects and benefits – that is, who it was aimed at, and how it could help.

There was the potential for tension between the strategic support agenda of Local Trust, a national funder, and the more pragmatic interests of its on-the-ground recipients. For example, while Local Trust tended to prioritise long-term capacity-building, partnerships often identified shorter-term needs, such as immediate plan delivery. Residents themselves often sought support that was of a practical, hands-on nature, and therefore often skills-based or otherwise related to technical knowledge. 

Support needs also varied over time as Big Local partnerships moved through different phases of this long-term programme, from setup to spend-out and beyond. In addition, there were some support needs that cropped up throughout the programme – particularly around broadening community engagement and building leadership.

At the start of the programme, identification of support needs was primarily outsourced to in-area consultants, effectively acting as a connection between Big Local areas and Local Trust. As Local Trust grew and increased its research capacity, it became more knowledgeable about areas’ requirements. In the final years of the programme, the organisation forged more direct relationships both with Big Local partnerships and with support providers, maximising its understanding of what was required and thus the effectiveness of appropriately targeted support.

Partnership members who felt supported reported feeling more confident in decision-making and successfully delivering their plans. However, each area started the programme from different places, bringing unique strengths and issues to the table. It was an ongoing challenge for Local Trust to offer bespoke support to each area alongside delivering a support programme that was relevant to all 150 Big Local areas. Towards the end of the programme, diagnostic tools were designed to help balance these priorities and provide a support plan which was developed by residents and could be delivered by the national body. 

Local Trust learned that its support function required a whole-organisation effort, rather than being any single team’s responsibility. Increasing understanding of specific local contexts and community dynamics, as well as relationship-building with partnership members and Big Local workers, improved the relevance of support from Local Trust and external support providers. As a result, the organisation became more responsive to the support needs of Big Local areas as time went on.