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Creating successful community-led change

04 Nov 2024

The importance of improving mental health & well-being

One of the main positive outcomes of successful community-led change should be an improvement in peoples’ well-being, given they will feel more involved in their local area and in being able to influence change.

Well-being is something that is increasingly being reported on by organisations such as the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and recent data do not paint a particularly positive picture. Between 2022 and 2023, the ONS (Personal well-being in the UK: April 2022 to March 2023) report that:

Life satisfaction and general happiness amongst the UK population both declined.
Levels of anxiety increased.

In addition to the ONS data, the DCMS Community Life Survey indicates that the proportion of people who definitely agree or tend to agree that they can influence decisions affecting their local area remained broadly consistent at around 1 in 4 between 2016-17 and 2021-22.

The role of devolution

So what can be done to boost local-led change and improve peoples’ lives? I would say the role that devolution plays in shaping this agenda will become increasingly important. Since Greater Manchester agreed the first devolution deal with government in 2014, other areas have followed suit. Taking into account deals likely to come into effect in 2025, around 60% of England’s population will soon be covered by devolution, which is about 35 million people. Such a big number may not sound particularly ‘local’ but it is always worth bearing in mind that the UK has historically been a highly centralised state relative to other countries.

Depending on the type of agreement, devolution can include giving areas power on:

Transport.
Skills, education & jobs.
Housing & planning.
Health.
Police & crime.
Economic growth & investment.

As outlined in the King’s Speech 2024, the English Devolution Bill be introduced to give new powers to metro mayors and combined authorities. Significantly, it will include tools for local leaders to drive growth by:

“Empowering local communities with a strong new ‘right to buy’ for valued community assets, such as empty shops, pubs and community spaces. This will help to revamp high streets and end the blight of empty premises.”

If devolution ends up being the game-changer that many people think it will be in terms of supporting growth, you would like to think that people start to feel their views on what is needed to improve their area are taken into account far more than before. In theory, the knock-on effect of this should be that levels of well-being and general happiness start to improve as well.

Community-led change in planning

Moving on from devolution, at Pegasus Group we are increasingly getting involved in projects where the local population have a greater say in things. One recent example comes to mind in this respect, namely The Stainforth Neighbourhood Development Plan.

Stainforth is a small town located about 7.5 miles to the northeast of Doncaster. The town is a former mining community, and the neighbourhood area includes built heritage assets associated with the former Hatfield Main Colliery. The gradual winding down of the colliery and its eventual closure in July 2015 has brought about severe deprivation and led to generations of unemployment.

Neighbourhood Development Plans (NDPs) were introduced through the Localism Act 2011 to give local people a greater say in planning decisions that affect their area. NDPs are neighbourhood level planning policy documents with policies designed to reflect the needs and priorities of local communities.

The Stainforth NDP has six objectives to help create a vibrant and sustainable community and is due to be ‘made’ (adopted) by the end of 2024. The objectives are:

Protecting & enhancing local mining heritage.
Support a wider range & choice of housing.
Improving accessibility.
Supporting health & wellbeing.
Support new community & leisure development.
Supporting new development, including of abandoned sites.

To ensure the local community in Stainforth was able to influence the NDP objectives, they have been involved in its development since work began in 2017. This has included household questionnaires, face-to-face stakeholder events and public consultation events. At all stages of the NDP process, it was important for local residents to feel a sense of ownership.

Concluding points

Having worked in economic development for over 20 years, it is great to see the focus increasingly shifting towards local-led / community-led change. While devolution obviously gives far greater control to local leaders and projects such as the Stainforth NDP encourage more involvement from residents in shaping the local agenda, there are examples of going even further.

This includes the work done by the Local Trust, which was established in 2012 to deliver Big Local, a National Lottery Community Fund-funded programme which committed £1million each to 150 neighbourhoods across England. The difference with Big Local is that the community has complete control over how the money is allocated, essentially putting the power in the hands of local people.

I am really looking forward to hearing more about Big Local and the importance of creating successful community-led change, which we will be discussing at the IED Annual Conference on 6^th November.

Richard Cook is Senior Director – Economics at Pegasus Group. Pegasus is sponsoring the IED Annual Conference 2024, including a breakout session on Creating Successful Community-led Change with Rachel Rowney, Chief Operating Officer at Local Trust.