Big Local was designed to be different from conventional funding: it was long-term, flexible, and community-led, rather than top-down and project-based. It provided funding over 10 to 15 years, which residents could spend at their own pace, in line with their own plans and priorities. This approach empowered communities to decide what was best for their area.
Big Local Trust was established through a time-limited endowment (a legal funding agreement with a predetermined end date) from the National Lottery Community Fund in 2012. The Trust Deed committed Local Trust to ensuring that each Big Local area received at least £1m to distribute locally. The remaining funds were used to manage the grants process, support the 150 areas, and share knowledge and insight about the programme with stakeholders.
Access to appropriate support is essential for building the capabilities needed for resident-led change and action. This article examines the cost of delivering the Big Local programme, including both the administration of grants and the support provided to those delivering the programme locally. An important principle in establishing Big Local Trust was that the overall budget for programme delivery allowed for significant resources to be devoted to supporting residents throughout the programme, over and above funding allocated and guaranteed to areas. This article focuses only on the cost of delivering the programme, and not on costs relating to wider learning and dissemination or running Local Trust as an organisation.
Local Trust has explored the support provided to Big Local partnerships and how Local Trust managed the endowment in other articles.
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.
Between 2012 and 2027, the total cost of supporting the delivery of the Big Local programme was £36m. This figure includes the direct costs of partner organisations, reps/advisors, training, learning, and networking events. This figure excludes the costs of Local Trust staff involved in programme management, grant management, and the contract management of support partners. It also excludes the costs of area coordinators, introduced in 2020 to provide direct support to Big Local partnerships and Locally Trusted Organisations (LTOs).
Local Trust has explored how in-area support changed over time in another article.
Between 2012 and 2027, total staff costs to administer and support the programme were £5m. In the first four years staff costs were less than £1m, these increased incrementally between 2016 and 2021 to just under £2.5m, and then decreased to £1.5m for the final phase of Big Local. This is discussed in detail below.
Alongside the (just over) £1m provided to each Big Local – the total cost of administering, delivering, and supporting the programme was £41m. This equates to £274,000 per area to deliver and support the programme, less than £28,000 per area per year.
Local Trust has explored how partnerships used the funding provided directly to each Big Local area in another article.
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.
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.
Big Local had three phases: Getting Started (2012 to 2016); Delivery (2016 to 2021); and Closure (2021 to 2026).
Local Trust has explored the timeline and phases of Big Local in another page.
In each phase of the programme, the types of support remained broadly consistent: in-area support; peer networking; technical support; and central support (mainly staff costs, not included in financial analysis). These are explored in turn below.
| Category | Getting started | Delivery | Closure | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| In-area | £5,894,559.32 | £6,239,815.79 | £4,767,933.14 | £16,902,308.25 |
| Peer networking | £1,023,635.74 | £2,005,521.19 | £1,719,480.59 | £4,748,637.52 |
| Technical | £4,798,614.71 | £3,892,113.02 | £3,060,011.99 | £11,750,739.72 |
| Total | £11,716,809.77 | £12,137,450.00 | £9,547,425.72 | £33,401,685.49 |
Throughout their journey, Big Local partnerships had an ongoing and flexible relationship with a dedicated, experienced community development or regeneration professional. These professionals were known as Big Local reps, advisors and – in the latter stages – area coordinators directly employed by Local Trust. They offered direct, tailored support to each area and shared updates, successes, and challenges with Local Trust.
This approach to providing guidance and advice was initially coordinated by an external agency, but was later brought in-house and refined several times as the Big Local programme developed.
Local Trust has explored the refinement of in-area support in another article.
| Per annum costs | Getting started | Delivery | Closure | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| In-area | £1,473,639.83 | £1,247,963.16 | £1,191,983.29 | £16,902,308.25 |
There are two reasons that the per annum of cost providing this in-area support decreased over time:
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.
Since 2012, partnership members could engage in various peer learning and networking opportunities. These included learning clusters on specific topics, regional clusters, workshops, site visits, action learning sets, training, the Community Leadership Academy, and an annual residential conference bringing together all Big Local areas.
Local Trust has explored peer networking in greater depth in another article.
Within the budget, two items accounted for a large proportion of spend and spanned both the delivery and closure phases.
| Per annum costs | Getting started | Delivery | Closure | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Peer networking | £255,908.94 | £401,104.24 | £343,896.12 | £4,748,637.52 |
This support was available through external partners, contracted to engage with Big Local areas on specific topics and issues, such as managing community assets, social investment and developing social entrepreneurs, environment and climate change, communications, and measuring change. The range of external partners and the nature of contractual arrangements varied over time. Initially, Local Trust and its partners agreed to broader contracts with volume targets. As it became apparent that demand for – and take-up of – specific offers could vary and take time to develop, the approach shifted to contracts specific to each Big Local area. This enabled support partners to better plan and allocate their time.
The majority of the technical support budget during the Getting Started phase was for Star People, a programme for social entrepreneurs delivered by UnLtd.
From 2016, the partners receiving funding to support peak delivery and closure expanded to include StreetGames, Media Trust, NHS Confed, National Association for Voluntary and Community Action (NAVCA), Stir to Action, Peas in a Pod, Koreo Locality, the Behavioural Insights Team, New Economics Foundation, and Shared Assets. Local Trust also contracted with individuals and local or sub-regional organisations to deliver specific support.
| Per annum costs | Getting started | Delivery | Closure | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Technical | £1,199,653.68 | £778,422.60 | £612,002.40 | £11,750,739.72 |
Local Trust, as the corporate trustee of Big Local Trust, was an integral part of the day-to-day delivery of Big Local. Throughout the lifetime of Big Local, Local Trust staff were responsible for the grant management, administration, and accounting of Big Local funding with the Locally Trusted Organisations (LTOs). Local Trust was also responsible for identifying needs and designing support for Big Local areas, and managing contracts and grants to third party organisations who were providing support to Big Local partnerships.
This central support from Local Trust also included creating practical guides, toolkits, and other how-to resources, along with sample documents, templates, blogs, and case studies. These resources were developed and delivered by staff across the organisation.
While some of the roles in Local Trust exclusively focussed on the day-to-day delivery of the Big Local programme, others were split. For example, the Director of Programmes and Resources spent about half their time on Big Local and the other half on Local Trust internal operations; the research team led the Measuring Change support and provided feedback on partnership plan reviews; the communications team created toolkits, supported with guidance, and promoted the learning and training offer.
The structure of the team also changed over time to reflect the needs of the programme. In the Getting Started phase, much of the work was delivered through partner organisations, while Local Trust monitored small amounts of funding (relative to later stages). During this period, four members of staff (in a team of 11 to 13) were working exclusively on the day-to-day delivery of Big Local.
The number of staff increased incrementally from 2018 (two years into peak delivery) in response to increased funding going to LTOs (as plans were being delivered), increased support for partnerships to deliver their plans, and changes in how support was delivered. The first change in delivering support was to bring some functions in-house, including the learning and networking programme, as well as rep management. The second change was delivering more support direct to areas (both in addition to and instead of reps/advisors). During this period, at the height of delivery there were 35 Local Trust staff members working exclusively on the day to day delivery of Big Local.
During the closure phase, the number of staff working on delivery reduced to 23 as there were fewer active areas that needed support. The team focussed on closing out the grants, while spending more time on areas where there were intense and high-spend delivery plans in the final two years. This reflected the increased risk that the team were managing of areas not spending their full allocation, and that the money was spent appropriately and in line with the values of the programme.
