Big Local was a resident-led funding programme providing 150 hyper-local areas in England with over £1m each and a suite of support to draw on between 2011 and 2026. The aim was to enable residents to create lasting change in their neighbourhoods.
Our Bigger Story was a longitudinal evaluation – it was done alongside Big Local from 2015 to 2025. It collected qualitative (non-numerical) data through a multi-media approach to collecting stories of change in 15 Big Local areas (10 per cent sample) to learn about the programme. The research was commissioned by Local Trust to record areas’ journeys through resident-led change. The evaluation focussed on depth rather than breadth, going into more detail with fewer areas (you can read more about the methodology on the Our Bigger Story website).
All areas were invited to participate, with criteria (like ensuring a diverse geographical and demographic mix) informing which areas were selected. As a multi-media process, data collection included individual interviews, residents’ diaries, facilitated workshops (with partnership members and other stakeholders), and films (created by residents and the research team). OBS published 12 reports alongside report summaries, blogs, and graphics. Filming was an important form of data collection and reporting – the OBS team made 160 films which can be accessed on the OBS website and a Vimeo channel. Photos and films created by residents were uploaded to their area page on the OBS website.
This article summarises a report that drew from the OBS reports and films to synthesise the OBS team’s learning about resident-led change from the last ten years.
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.
Funding and support were central to building capability for resident-led change. In areas with limited experience of local decision-making, being given control over funding, strategy, and planning, alongside support to do so, built skills, capabilities, trust, and legitimacy, which strengthened community leadership.
The funding (over £1m per area) was noteworthy, and made more significant as it was controlled by residents to use ‘as and when’ over a decade or more, for local priorities. This was different to other community programmes that were shorter-term and more prescriptive. But funding alone was not enough – support was crucial for building local abilities to bring about resident-led change.
Different types of support were offered by different sources throughout the Big Local programme. Support could be accessed centrally (through the Local Trust programme team), locally (through workers, Big Local reps, and Locally Trusted Organisations – LTOs), through learning from residents in other areas, and from external providers (selected by Local Trust to provide technical and specialist support). The nature of support evolved over time, becoming more targeted to specific needs, based on learning during the Big Local programme.
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.
Reps were individuals appointed by Local Trust to offer tailored support to Big Local areas, and share successes, challenges and news with the organisation. These roles ended in 2022, replaced by Big Local Area Advisors. Advisors were a specialist pool of people contracted to Local Trust, who delivered specialist and technical assignments to support the partnerships.
A locally trusted organisation (LTO) was the organisation chosen by people in a Big Local area or the partnership to administer and account for funding, and/or deliver activities or services on behalf of a partnership. Areas might have worked with more than one locally trusted organisation depending on the plan and the skills and resources required.
Our Bigger Story (OBS) identified eight practices as particularly important for resident-led change. Each practice was underpinned by, and contributed to developing, skills and capabilities. The practices are:
These practices were developed in all 15 partnerships participating in OBS, through the lifetime of Big Local. Some of the skills and capabilities needed for these practices were already present in some areas, while in others they had to be learnt and developed. Big Local workers often played a significant role in helping residents do these practices well. The design of Big Local meant people had time and opportunity to develop the necessary skills.
Progress towards outcomes varied across the areas over the long programme timeline, with some areas making greater progress than others. When communities could access certain local resources (alongside programme funding and support), they were more able to achieve resident-led change. The supply of these resources varied from place to place, and while they could be developed through the practices of resident-led change, they could also be depleted without appropriate support.
These nine resources included: increased capabilities; active residents; capacity for shared decision-making; community leadership; community identity; community connections and collaboration; access to community spaces; legitimacy and trust; and emotional capacity.
Skills and capabilities for resident-led change were not evenly distributed or built through the programme. The most successful areas tended to have a network of skilled individuals actively involved in the community, at the start of the programme or developed through it. The practices for resident-led change (outlined above) provided residents with opportunities to get involved and build their knowledge, skills and confidence.
There were often low levels of community engagement in Big Local areas at the start of the programme. However, the programme model (providing money, support, and the creation of flexible structures on the ground), contributed to increasing levels of community involvement, with more active residents.
The programme’s requirement for areas to have partnerships with at least 51 per cent residents helped establish governance structures that facilitated community decision-making. It wasn’t always easy. At times, some areas were controlled by too few residents, partnership members came and went, and effective decision-making could be disrupted by conflict between residents on the partnership or with the wider community. Most of the partnerships taking part in OBS, however, had effective governance through most of the Big Local programme, and in some areas the structures created long-lasting shared agency through building skills, capabilities, and wider resources.
Building community leadership often started with participation in community activities rather than formal meetings. When asked what helped, partnership members taking part in OBS talked about appealing to people’s self-interest, finding fun ways of bringing people together, and creating a culture of patience and persistence to stick with planned actions over a long timescale. Leadership took different forms – from being held centrally in a partnership that took all the decisions, to being more distributed through devolved decision-making structures (like working groups with a wider group of residents).
Feelings of belonging and community pride tended to be strongest where the Big Local area boundaries fitted with residents’ understanding of what formed their community. The partnerships taking part in OBS that achieved the most, felt they had a strong shared identity in the designated Big Local area. Many partnerships discussed how to create more community pride in their area, how to ensure benefit for people across the whole Big Local area, and how to bring residents together. Community events helped promote community cohesion – bringing together diverse geographical and identity-based communities, and helping people feel better about, and take pride in, where they lived.
In many of the areas in OBS, Big Local partnerships built foundations for ongoing collaboration, both at community level and with external bodies (like local authorities). Big Local funding helped build residents’ confidence that they had something to offer and a consequent sense of power to make things happen. Some partnerships were strategic in starting and embedding long-lasting relationships, and over time other organisations realised that there could be a strategic fit between their agendas and Big Local plans.
Partnerships that appeared most successful in achieving the four Big Local outcomes tended to have strong relationships with other organisations, including local authorities, voluntary organisations, and local businesses.
Access to community buildings, parks, and green spaces were priority objectives in most partnerships taking part in OBS. Without access to community spaces, it was harder for residents to meet, develop shared decision-making, organise events, and ultimately to achieve the wider programme outcomes. However, it was not only a question of spaces being available, but also whether residents had some control over them. Residents aimed to have a greater say in how spaces were run, the purpose they served, whose needs they meet and how, and their financial sustainability.
Residents came to be seen as legitimate partners in creating change and Local Trust came to be trusted as a funder. Partnership members built a sense of self-legitimacy and other residents and organisations came to see Big Local partnerships as credible and legitimate resident-led structures.
Getting involved in Big Local was often an emotional commitment, and sometimes an emotional drain, particularly for partnership members who carried a lot of responsibility around acting on community needs and using the money wisely. Feeling accountable to fellow residents could at times be overwhelming. LTOs, Big Local reps, and workers played important roles in providing emotional support and increasing emotional capacity, especially when areas were experiencing conflict. This was essential for sustaining active participation over the long-term.
Big Local funding and support helped build both the practices of, and resources for, resident-led change. This contributed to all partnerships in OBS achieving the four high level Big Local programme outcomes to some extent. It should be noted however, that seven (out of the 150) Big Local areas moved away from the Big Local model in the last two to three years of the programme. One such area was an Our Bigger Story (OBS) case study and whilst the partnership ceased to function, a local organisation ensured that the final years of delivery continued to reflect priorities identified by residents in previous years.
Assessing local needs was a requirement for all partnerships at the start of the Big Local programme. This was not always easy, and some partnerships questioned whether what they were learning through community consultations represented actual needs or just what people thought the needs were. Through developing the practices of resident-led change, however, most partnerships became more skilled in this area. When partnerships felt they got this right, it was a real confidence boost. Some partnerships refined their approaches as time went on.
Partnerships had to be both operational and strategic (through working with others) to act on the identified needs.
Big Local developed skills, capabilities, and confidence in all the partnerships taking part in OBS, creating a legacy beyond the programme.
These capabilities were taken forward into other decision-making structures. Some partnership members, for example, took up positions of responsibility in Big Local legacy organisations (designed to continue community decision-making beyond the programme). Others took on roles in other organisations, like becoming trustees of local charities or members of local authorities.
There were five main clusters of needs prioritised by partnerships taking part in OBS: the environment; health and wellbeing; building a sense of community; supporting children and young people; and stimulating new activities to meet other local needs. Early plans were ambitious. In some areas, priorities were re-evaluated and became more focused over time, as Big Local partnerships became more capable of assessing needs, more knowledgeable about what was achievable, and more strategic in their approach.
All Big Local partnerships made some difference to the needs that the community prioritised. For example, more useable green spaces, new play parks, health and wellbeing activities, support for job clubs, youth work projects, holiday clubs, and other activities for children and young people. A sense of community togetherness and pride was built through, for example, community galas and fun days, while the development of community hubs provided a home for community activities.
A Big Local Plan set out what changes the partnership planned to make, how they planned to deliver on this and how funds were to be allocated. It was written for themselves, their community and Local Trust, as a guide and action plan.
In a few places, significant showcase developments were achieved through building physical structures, which helped residents realise the power they have to get things done. For most areas though, residents’ lives were made better through being engaged in the day-to-day activities involved ‘doing’ resident-led change, which together made their communities better places to live. Partnerships taking part in OBS felt that relationships between people in their communities had gotten stronger, as had relationships between communities and external organisations. They felt more capable and confident. There was a stronger sense of identity and place. These outcomes might appear modest, and are not as visibly evident, but they are still significant.
Some partnerships wanted their legacy to be about more than the provision of facilities and services: “to be about aspirations and how people feel, about themselves and their community”. And in most areas, there was evidence that this was achieved. People talked about intangible cultural change – a new belief that things could, and would, happen in their areas. ‘Bringing back community spirit’ was a familiar phrase.
The pathway towards change was not linear, and national and local contexts shaped the activity and success of the 15 partnerships taking part in Our Bigger Story (OBS). Progress towards the Big Local outcomes was balanced against the effects of national trends of deepening deprivation, continued government austerity, and the lasting impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. Some Big Local partnerships acknowledged that rather than making a place even better, they focused on making sure things did not get worse.
The context for Big Local at the area level was enormously varied. Big local areas had different starting points, for example:
Assessing success in Big Local required appreciation of these different starting points as, along with other factors, they affected the journey of change for each area.
Case study areas that appeared to have the greatest chance of maintaining resident-led change had:
Developing resident-led change is a highly iterative and contingent process, in which a set of complex factors interact. There is no single way to ensure the successful development of resident-led change. And change is fragile.
As the Big Local programme came to an end, significant change had happened, but the forward journey for areas is uncertain. The external context is challenging, and it is not clear how sustainable change will be without external support. Despite these challenges, Big Local gave residents a new sense of optimism and pride about just how resourceful they can be and how much they can achieve when provided with the right funding and support.
