Q&A with Local Trust: long-term participatory funding to drive local change

Q: For those who are not familiar with Big Local, could you tell us a bit more about it and how participation was part of the programme? 

A: Involving communities was always integral to the design of Big Local. Big Local began in 2010 as a bold experiment – to put money directly into the hands of communities who had previously missed out on Lottery and other funding – and has seen residents transform their communities in many amazing ways over more than a decade. The National Lottery Community Fund (NLCF) committed £1m each to 150 neighbourhoods across England and set up Local Trust to deliver the programme. The £217m originally provided by NLCF was the largest single-purpose Lottery-funded endowment ever made, and the biggest ever investment by a non-state funder in place-based, resident-led change.

The 150 areas were selected because of significant levels of local deprivation, but also because they had missed out on their fair share of funding in the past. We know that places with low levels of social infrastructure typically access less funding per head compared to equally deprived areas, so rather than a traditional, top-down funding approach, residents were put in the driving seat. Participation was embedded in every part of the programme. 

It was never just about funding projects locally – though that is of course important – but it was about empowering and enabling residents to build the skills, capacity and confidence to sustain community action into the future. It was as much about removing unnecessary rules or bureaucracy. There was inherent willingness to take risks and enable communities to take risks and even fail, but importantly to learn from that. The 10-15 year timeframe really enabled us to deliver on that ambition. 

Q: What are some of the different approaches to participation that Big Local areas have taken? 

A: What we’ve seen is that there are so many different ways of putting participation into practice and there is no one size fits all approach. Local Trust isn’t prescriptive on that front – we have purposely tried to strip back criteria so that local areas and residents can direct delivery as far as possible. Our core criteria relies on a ‘partnership’ of residents as the decision makers and vision-setters, who elect a ‘locally trusted organisation’ which acts as the mechanism for getting money out to the community. Outside of this there is almost full flexibility, which means we’ve seen so many different approaches to participation across the Big Local programme. 

It starts with the way partnerships set about consulting and engaging the wider community, to define local priorities and create a ‘plan’ for the money. That might be by training residents as community researchers, running events and community festivals, or good old-fashioned door knocking. 

Once they’ve consulted widely, we’ve seen partnerships take different approaches to distributing the funds. Some Big Local areas operate a grant giving model themselves, while others have adopted creative commissioning approaches, participatory grant making or co-design projects with user-led groups. There’s a real mix and it’s not something Local Trust has a say in – it’s about residents setting their own priorities. 

Q: What do you think has worked well?  

A: I think there are a few key things that it takes to do this well, the first being having time to build trust. Progress moves at the pace of trust, and that’s going to take time. Reflecting back on the early years of the programme, it was very much about getting people around the table, listening to concerns and the challenges affecting local people, and setting priorities for change. Very little money was actually spent in the first few years, it was more about building relationships and laying the groundwork for the community action we’ve seen up and down the country ever since – from reclaiming community assets to transforming green spaces and so much more. 

The second thing that’s worked well is providing support alongside the funding, which has been central to the programme since its inception. Our local advisors and coordinators, who work alongside and provide residents with support and advice, have been one of the most valued elements of the programme. We also have a network of national support partners who provide bespoke support around different topics like community assets, legal entities and climate action. There’s also support for individual partnership members through our Community Leadership Academy, which is all about investing in them and their skills, providing coaching, peer support, and more formal learning opportunities. 

Finally, I think it’s been about the willingness to take risks. For Local Trust, there was always going to be an element of risk taking and learning from this new way of doing things, but that has also translated to residents and the local partnerships. Being able to take those risks and learn from them is only doable when you feel that those decisions are really robust and genuinely participatory. When you know decisions have been made by local people, you feel it’s worth doing – you can’t take participation out of the risk taking. 

Q: What have you learnt from some of the challenges that have arisen along the way? 

A: I think overwhelmingly, the experience of Big Local has been one of transformation, but it hasn’t always been easy or straightforward.

Conflict is one challenge. It’s normal in any community, and can be heightened in those that have been ‘left behind’ or historically had little power or control over their area. The stakes can feel even higher when choosing where money should be invested. When conflict or friction occurs in a Big Local area – whether that’s a disagreement about funding or interpersonal issues – our approach is always to support those who are directly involved to resolve the issues locally. And I think that's in line with our ethos around community leadership, accountability and control, but also our experience and belief that ultimately local action will lead to better and longer lasting solutions. 

A combination of long-term funding and wraparound support (which includes advice, facilitation and mediation) can help, as groups develop the confidence to navigate conflict with time and ‘disagree well’. When those tensions arise, it’s challenging but I also think it’s necessary and important, and by being there for the long-term we’ve been able to see how overcoming conflict can be really powerful.

There are also challenges around risk – we’ve seen residents feel a real weight of responsibility about where the funding goes. At times that's resulted in a cautiousness to spend the money; no-one wants to spend the money ‘badly’ and that can feel like a lot of responsibility. It’s also why we’re supporting residents to think about how they will demonstrate their impact locally and share their Big Local story.

This risk aversion has also meant that some Big Local areas have more funding left to spend and now less time in which to spend it. We’re working hard to ensure the right support is in place, so those communities benefit from the full £1m before the programme comes to an end. 

Looking back, what has really come through is that residents have felt able to take risks when they have local backing – nervousness to spend has often correlated to times when partnerships have struggled to bring residents around the table. This really shows how important participation is to each area’s ability to make spending decisions. 

During our annual Festival of Learning, Local Trust is hosting a session on what they’ve learnt from adopting a non-prescriptive funding model to build community power across the Big Local programme. More details and registration for London Funders’ members is available here. 

You can also find out more about Big Local at The Big Local story: A summary of our learning from the Big Local programme.