The Big Local programme was designed around a simple but unusual proposition: rather than funding short-term projects, it provided 150 communities with at least £1 million over 10–15 years, alongside a comprehensive package of non-financial support. Instead of prescribing activities or outcomes, Local Trust invested in local residents’ capacity to identify priorities, make decisions and develop the leadership, relationships and organisations needed to deliver lasting change. The support offer, combined long-term flexible funding with mentoring, peer learning, training, networking, access to specialist advice and opportunities to share learning across the Big Local network.
This long-term approach recognised that resilient organisations and communities are built through trust, relationships and learning rather than short funding cycles. Local Trust’s wider research highlights that successful place-based partnerships depend on sustained relational investment, protected time to build trust, and institutional support for collaboration. Across multiple community–university partnerships, trust emerged as the essential foundation for lasting change, while long-term funding enabled communities to develop local leadership, influence public services and create partnerships that continued beyond individual projects.
The experience of St Matthew’s Big Local, one of the spaces were this programme was held in, illustrates how this model translated into practice. Following extensive community consultation, residents transformed a derelict site associated with antisocial behaviour into an open-access community sports facility. Rather than simply creating a new asset, the partnership invested in structured youth programmes, volunteer pathways, qualifications and paid coaching opportunities for local young people. This created a pipeline of local leadership, strengthened relationships between generations and ethnic communities, and embedded a sustainable model in which participants progressed into leadership roles while mentoring younger residents.
The wider lesson from Big Local is that organisational resilience is created by investing in people, relationships and local capability over time. Long-term, flexible funding, combined with practical support, peer networks and trust-based relationships, enabled communities to build institutions and partnerships capable of adapting to changing local needs rather than simply delivering time-limited projects.
What practitioners can take from this
Big Local’s experience shows that communities can make effective decisions about funding when they are given both the resources and the support to do so. Providing long-term funding and giving residents control over how it is used can feel challenging for funders, particularly when outcomes are not predetermined. However, Big Local found that combining local decision-making with leadership development, mentoring, peer learning and ongoing support helped communities build the skills, relationships and confidence needed to drive change. This suggests that lasting results are more likely when funders invest not only in projects, but also in the people and local leadership that can respond to changing community needs over time.