There is something powerful about long-term investment in neighbourhoods.
£20 million over ten years.
Resident-led Neighbourhood Boards.
A commitment to rebuilding trust, pride and belonging.
Pride in Place represents a significant shift away from competitive, short-term funding pots towards sustained, locally directed change.
But if we are honest, this is not the first time we have placed substantial funding into communities with the intention of putting people at the heart.
And history offers some useful lessons.
What We Know About Large-Scale Community Funding
Over the past 15 years, we have worked alongside many programmes designed to strengthen neighbourhoods.
Some have flourished, and others have struggled! Not because the funding wasn’t welcome, but because participation wasn’t strong enough, early enough, or deep enough to sustain momentum.
We have seen areas with significant allocations find themselves stuck (remember some of the Big Local areas?). This is not through lack of goodwill, but because they could not demonstrate meaningful resident involvement at the level required. In some cases, money sat unused for months or years while governance structures caught up with ambition
It was a reminder of something simple…
Community-led funding only works when the community is genuinely leading.
Not symbolically.
Not representatively.
But actively, visibly, confidently.
The Risk Is Not Failure: It’s Drift
The greatest risk for Pride in Place is not that it will fail outright.
It is that it becomes procedural: boards are formed, plans are written, projects are delivered. But the deeper objective of rebuilding relationships and belonging remains untouched.
Without strong foundations, even well-intentioned investment can drift back toward traditional delivery models, where decisions are made for communities rather than with them.
Pride in Place is trying to do something different. And doing something different requires starting differently.
Start Small But Start Well
Meaningful participation does not have to begin with a full-scale deliberative process.
In fact, it often shouldn’t.
What matters most is that early involvement is:
- Genuine
- Diverse
- Structured
- Memorable
If the first engagement experience is vibrant, inclusive and energising, people remember it. They come back. They bring others.
A well-designed World Café that brings together long-standing residents, new arrivals, young people, business owners, community activists and those who rarely attend meetings can set a tone for the entire ten-year journey. It says:
This is different.
Your voice matters here.
From there, you can move into deeper deliberation: structured decision-making, prioritisation, and eventually shared delivery, but you cannot shortcut the relational groundwork.
Sharing Power Is a Practice, Not a Statement
Pride in Place talks about “Taking Back Control.” That phrase is powerful. But shared power does not emerge automatically from new governance structures. It is cultivated through:
- Transparent decision-making
- Clear roles
- Constructive facilitation
- Managing disagreement productively
- Supporting those less confident to participate
- Creating visible links between voice and action
If funding flows without those practices embedded, we risk repeating a familiar pattern:Investment in infrastructure, but not investment in relationships.
The Scale of Funding Makes This Even More Important
£20 million is transformative. It can revitalise high streets, parks and community spaces. But the larger the investment, the greater the responsibility to ensure the community is not an audience, but a partner.
Doing something for people, even generously, will not rebuild trust.
Doing something with people might.
Doing something led by people has the potential to change the trajectory of a place.
Don’t Let This Be Another Well-Intentioned Programme
There is enormous potential in Pride in Place.
Long-term funding.
Flexibility.
Local leadership.
New powers such as Community Right to Buy.
It is an opportunity to avoid the fragmentation of past short-term initiatives, but it will only be different if participation is different.
That means:
- Designing involvement carefully from the start
- Ensuring diverse and disparate lived experiences shape the plan
- Moving from conversation to deliberation to shared delivery
- Building structures that will outlast the funding cycle
Communities are not lacking ideas. They are often lacking the structured, positive spaces in which those ideas can be shaped collectively.
If Pride in Place keeps people genuinely at the heart, and not just in the language, but in the lived experience of decision-making, it could restore more than high streets.
It could restore confidence, so let’s do it properly.