What Big Local teaches us about community-led change

What Big Local meant for Gaunless Gateway

When Big Local started, Gaunless Gateway faced serious challenges:

• 35% of children lived in poverty (compared with 20% nationally)
• violent crime was high
• anti-social behaviour was more than twice the national average

But we knew our community was more than those negative statistics. Big Local helped us show what Gaunless is really about. Together, we took a resident-led, community-focused approach to tackle local issues. This created a lasting legacy that will continue well beyond the programme’s official end in March 2026.

Personal reflections: what trust makes possible

When I first came into this work people told me: “those communities are hard to reach.” I learned they weren’t ‘hard to reach’; they were just rarely listened to. Big Local changed that. It gave us time, flexibility and, most importantly, trust.

That trust turned small ideas into things people could own:

• a double-decker bus becoming a soft-play space
• Daisy and Dispel Arts growing into a creative collective
  Bridge Creative becoming an employer and opportunity maker for people with autism
• a tiny £2,500 start that became Simply Social - now bringing 80 to 100 people together each month

These weren’t tidy, instant wins. They were patient, resident-led moments that stuck because they belonged to local people.

I’ll never forget the tradespeople and young people who began as volunteers and are now running businesses, like Cameron from Trades4Care, who moved from apprentice to company director by age 21. That kind of local progression is the measure of success I care about. We recorded over 21,000 partnership volunteer hours, 112 small grants and a host of new projects and sustainable jobs. It’s proof that long-term investment builds real civic muscle.

What we invested in and why it mattered

Our resident-led partnership invested our Big Local funding in projects that delivered improvements to local social infrastructure, supported residents into employment, and improved overall community cohesion. In the process, we formed strong partnerships with other organisations and agencies. These included:

• a long-term partnership focused on creative arts (Daisy and Dispel Arts)
• connecting local volunteers with organisations and opportunities in the area (‘volunteer brokerage’)
• a bursary scheme for college leavers completing apprenticeship elements of trade qualifications
• employment workshops and support
• supporting crisis and welfare services

Building a legacy beyond the funding

We also worked hard on long-term community growth and development, building the capacity of local community organisations. This includes Bridge Creative, an organisation supporting the development of a social enterprise hub. This helps develop job opportunities for young people and adults with autism and other learning disabilities in the area. Our aim was to build a strong network of organisations that will bring in funding - providing support and services for the community long after the Big Local programme ends.

From local change to national influence

We also learned the hard lessons. Too often, communities are invited in after decisions are made, consultations that feel like a tick-box, or the “big fish in small ponds” where a few voices dominate. These barriers taught us to insist on genuine co-production and to remember that voluntary does not mean amateur: lived experience is expertise.

Taking our local stories to national spaces reinforced that neighbourhood-level trust is where change grows. For example, giving evidence to the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Left Behind Neighbourhoods and panel talks at Neighbourhoods Matter. The policy wins (like recognition of community wealth funds) showed that when residents lead, ideas scale beyond a single street.

My hope for Gaunless Gateway is practical and cultural. We’ve invested in organisations, jobs, and new ways of working. But more than that, we’ve proved a simple truth: when residents are trusted, when there is space for failure and celebration, communities become authors of their own future. That’s the legacy I’m proud to leave.

Why Learning from Big Local matters now

Gaunless Gateway has changed so much since Big Local came to town. The legacy of the programme here is clear to see. That’s why I am so happy that all the lessons we’ve learnt in Gaunless Gateway - as well as the policy and research that came from it - have been put in one place: Learning from Big Local. This new website tells the story of each of the 150 Big Local areas, sharing their challenges, successes, and impact.

There are communities up and down the country, just like mine, who could learn so much from what the 150 Big Locals managed to do. And Learning from Big Local is a great place to start. It’s designed with policymakers, funders and researchers in mind, as well as community practitioners. It’s the most complete evidence base on resident-led neighbourhood renewal in the UK.

You can browse by themes like community change, investing in young people, and responding to crisis. You will be able to read the story of one of our first projects, creating a mobile soft-play centre and bringing play to children’s doorsteps in a big purple bus. And find out more about how our residents worked to grow our neighbourhood's social capital.

If there’s one thing I’d want people to take from our story, it’s this: communities don’t need fixing, they need trusting. Big Local gave us the time, space, and belief to do things our own way and that made all the difference.

I hope Learning from Big Local helps others see what’s possible when residents are genuinely in the lead and gives people the confidence to back communities - not just with money, but with trust.