Hamp and parts of Westover in south Bridgwater, Somerset have been awarded a place in the government’s Pride in Place programme. They will receive up to £20m of public funds over the next 10 years.

The funding will be for local people to spend on what matters most to them. Sound familiar? It should, because it’s very like the Big Local programme.

Big Local was run by Local Trust and launched in 2012 with 150 communities receiving over £1m to spend over ten years. Local residents were in charge and the money could be spent on almost anything. The programme has just finished (it lasted a bit more than 10 years) so there has been much recent reflection on its achievements, successes and lessons.

I was lucky to work for Local Trust on the Big Local programme for about 10 years. I was a Rep (a sort of facilitating role, providing guidance at a local level) for four communities in the South West, ran a national series of environment workshops and supported other communities write their delivery plans. I also project managed some major investment projects contracted directly by local areas. Plus I’ve worked on a number of other major funding programmes or projects within them (SRB5, Youth Investment Fund, INTERREG, HLF etc).

So from my perspective, what can Pride in Place learn from Big Local and other investment programmes?

1. It takes time for residents to respond to the huge task of engaging in a programme of this size and complexity. Good outcomes for local people will not come from rushing the process. A lot of hand-holding will be needed, people will come and go, there will be false starts but they will get there in the end. Just don’t expect it to be tomorrow.
2. Government understands “local decision making” to mean something different to the lady at 34 Anywhere Avenue. For government it’s the local council (so Somerset or possibly Bridgwater Town) but for No.34 it’s her street and the ones around it. Clarity as to what ‘local’ means is essential from the outset.
3. Unlike Big Local the Pride in Place programme (PiPP) expects local councils and even the local MP to be actively involved (in Big Local they could be involved but were not allowed to be in charge). A ‘Neighbourhood Board’ has to be established and an independent chair appointed to run that Board. That immediately sounds very formal and structured. This will do nothing for encouraging community participation with committee type structures being alien and excluding for many people. Creative solutions will be needed to ensure that local people play a meaningful part in making decisions.
4. There is a risk that Councils will put themselves in the role of delivery body and recruit sizable teams of staff to run the programme from remote offices. Council departments will then start bidding for allocations of the money to deliver their priority projects. As a result local people will end up with just the leftovers. When I worked in Hartcliffe, Bristol on the SRB5 programme there was vocal scepticism of the ‘professionals’ taking over. So they setup their own charity controlled by local residents but supported by the Council to manage the £13m fund. The charity employed the staff, provided the office, wrote the delivery plan and made sure residents were in charge.
5. Time pressures imposed from London (or wherever the programme is run from) can easily conflict with the local need to move more slowly. Politicians want action, Treasury wants expenditure, the press wants a story. But at the street level there’s only so much time available to get to understand what’s involved, to find your place in a new group and work out how to make decisions. In that gap between nationally set timescales and the time taken to do stuff locally there is a risk that decisions will be steam-rollered through without local people really understanding them or, in the worst cases, even agreeing to them. The independent chair, whoever that is, will have to ensure that that doesn’t happen.
6. Local people will have lots of ideas but they need employed staff to make them happen. Really good community workers are invaluable. Few councils employ community workers any more so they have to be found elsewhere.
7. Investing in assets owned by local organisations that can generate their own income is key to a lasting legacy from the programme. In Lawrence Weston, Bristol they invested in a solar farm and wind turbine which will provide a secure income for decades to come. But in Whitleigh, Plymouth where there were huge gains in community empowerment and capacity the legacy is much less certain as they were unable to develop an asset which would generate a long term income.
8. Investment in assets can also be transformative for the organisation that owns them. The Youth Investment Fund has shown the changes and benefits that improving youth buildings can deliver for young people and residents. And when the improvement includes investment in energy conservation, how it can provide financial security for many years to come.
9. From the outset a small grants programme for local groups and organisations can build confidence and support for the programme, quickly putting money where it is most needed. Radstock & Westfield Big Local have been running a very popular ‘Dragons Den’ event for the last ten years which has given residents a vote in who gets the funding.
10. Devising a programme that is light on bureaucracy and quick to allocate funding is essential for maintaining local support.

That’s a mouthful, but this example from Ohio clearly shows how short term projects of just a day or two can help stimulate lasting change in urban environments. https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/5/9/4-permanent-impacts-of-temporary-tactical-urbanism-projects

There are more details at https://www.betterblock.org/

And of course in the UK there are traditions of street markets, play streets and street parties as a way of temporarily changing how a road is used and putting it over to people.

The design and use of urban spaces will be explored at the next Big Local environment cluster event which Julian and colleague Margaret Jackson are running on 8 July in Sheffield. https://localtrust.org.uk/big-local/events/environment-cluster-lived-environment-and-the-public-realm/

A bit off-topic but a solution worth pointing out for Mac users who have upgraded to Mavericks OS10.9 and aren’t too happy with being forced to use iCloud (aka big computers in the USA) in order to sync calendars and contacts between devices.

In the old days it was possible to sync your calendar and contacts between your computer, iPhone, iPad etc via by simply plugging in and everything would be updated via cable and iTunes.  With the coming of Mavericks however this facility was removed.  While there’s some sense in this (Apple’s syncing system was bespoke whereas the new system  using CalDEV and CardDEV is industry standard) it does create a few issues around security of your data (not only is it held on computers in the USA where the NSA now snoops, but it’s also an exciting target for every hacker) and who has access to it.

But there’s a solution.  In a very useful blog Michael Gracie explains how to turn your Mac desktop or laptop into its own Cloud.  Having set it up (required a bit of fiddling and trial and error), whenever I’m within WiFi range my iPhone, iPad and laptop sync their calendar and contacts with my iMac.  So it’s just as good as iCloud, but I know exactly where the data is held!

About 50 people turned out for the Big Local community meeting in Radstock and Westfield last night.  Lots of good contributions about what could / should be achieved with their million over the next 10 years

The Big Local project in Woolavington and Puriton now has a new website to help share information.  You can find it at wpbiglocal.wordpress.com

An interesting day in London last week.  Firstly meeting Apple‘s education people to talk about support for visitor interpretation in the Tamar Valley (notable that they offer support rather than cash discounts!).  Lots of interesting ideas about how the new visitor centre could be tooled up and offer something quite ground breaking in the area.

Then to an interesting (and unexpected) discussion over lunch with, amongst others, Mark Campanale from the Social Stock Exchange and Tim Crabtree from Wessex Reinvestment Trust about the virtues of IPS and straight company setups for raising capital by share issues.  IPS rules have been adopted by many social enterprises as they are now relatively straight forward as a means of raising money from the community via share issues.  But the shares aren’t tradable (or ‘on-market’) so aren’t eligible for the Enterprise Investment Scheme or as a place for your pension.  The trouble with that is the perception of much higher cost and tougher regulation.  SSE are trying to promote the on-market approach as a way of tapping into all those pension pots (mine included!) that are otherwise invested in conventional big-businesses, and thereby bring huge investment in the social enterprise sector.  The discussion, which focused on getting investment into renewables, was enlightening!