Andy Burnham has today become Prime Minister, with a vision to spread “Manchesterism” across the UK – reshaping the country through radical devolution to spread power right across our economy, public services, and democracy.
At Locality, we are hopeful for what this can mean for the community sector. In particular, we see a crucial role for community anchor organisations as the multifunctional centres of this “place-first” politics.
These strong, independent, well-established organisations provide people with holistic services and vital connection from community-led spaces, and they act as trusted local hubs. They combine a mission to improve social wellbeing with economic regeneration, driving local growth and reinvesting any surplus directly back into their neighbourhoods.
As such, they are central to the achievement of the new Prime Minister’s nationwide aim of “good growth in every postcode and hope in every heart”.
From our recent experience of working with him as Mayor of Greater Manchester, we know that he “gets it”. We look forward to working with him and his government on three high-impact, low-cost shifts that we believe can firmly secure community anchors at the heart of his vision for the country.
1. Inspiring a community ownership revolution
As described in our recent report with Power to Change – “Keys to the future: How we build a new era of community ownership” – we need the government to catalyse a long-term, strategic approach to community ownership investment and support.
We believe that by scaling the recently announced Pride in Place Community Right to Buy Fund from £61m to £200m at the next Budget, government could leverage in hundreds of millions from charitable funders and social investors to create a £1bn investment pot.
Alongside a new National Community Ownership Strategy to coordinate policy levers across government, this fund could create a step change in community ownership, backing several thousand community assets projects over five years.
This will give existing community organisations the support they need to transform their neighbourhoods and enable a whole new generation to grow and develop.
2. Putting communities at the centre of local public services
We know that the community anchor model produces public services that transform lives. But there is also now a clear body of evidence – developed by our “Keep it Local” campaign as well as others – that, rather than providing a good source of income and support, public sector service contracts are increasingly extractive and a drain on community organisations.
Speaking as Mayor of Greater Manchester at Locality Convention 2024, Andy Burnham showed us he understood the futility and frustration of this reality:
“Imagine if you didn’t have to [spend your time bidding] because you were just trusted to deliver and the money just came. And you could focus on what you want to do which is why you set your organisations up.
“So what does government, national and local, need to do? Let me make it really plain and simple: it needs to start backing you all with core funding. Not project funding, core funding. Give you the money that you need to further your community”
This would be a radical, game-changing shift in how we produce the impactful local and preventative public services that the Labour government has espoused since it came to power.
And the most hopeful blueprint we have is to be found in Greater Manchester, via GM Live Well. As Andy Burnham described in an article for UCL Policy Lab and We’re Right Here, responding to an essay from our policy director, Ed Wallis, GM Live Well is:
“A whole-person support system delivered not by distant and extractive corporations ticking boxes and handing out sanctions, but by strong local government, trusted community organisations, and proud citizens working as one team. We’re working towards… Live Well spaces in every neighbourhood, each shaped by its community, each offering practical support for the issues that hold people back, like debt, poor housing, poor mental health, and isolation.”
This is exactly the vision imagined by our Keep it Local campaign. To achieve it nationwide, we propose three important reforms:
a. Take person-centred services out of competitive tendering all together
This would empower the local public sector to build the long-term partnerships with local community organisations that can transform lives. It would immediately transform public services, without new money, and make much better use of many billions of existing spend.
b. Treasure the intrinsic social value of community organisations and their services
Our social value regime is increasingly becoming a racket, benefiting larger organisations who are able to use generic formulas to attach monetary value to long lists of “extras”. The social value that community organisations create is not an optional extra bolted onto a contract; it is the core of what they do. As the government refocuses on social value, that intrinsic value should be recognised within the quality of a service rather than scored as an add-on.
c. Create a new Community Right to Shape Public Services
Communities need bottom-up rights to drive public service improvements when they aren’t working for them. The We’re Right Here campaign has proposed a new Community Right to Shape Public Services, building on the existing Right to Challenge. This would mean communities could come together with the local public sector to review and redesign services, either improving existing provision or coming up with community-led alternatives.
3. Making neighbourhood governance community-led
Neighbourhoods are back in the limelight under this Labour government. While Pride in Place has been the most visible element of this, we believe the provisions for developing neighbourhood governance arrangement set out in the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act could be even more significant in changing where power lies in the country.
This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to give powerful, national recognition to the community anchor model as the trusted, locally-rooted, community-led paradigm of neighbourhood governance.
However, it could equally end up an exercise in local authority compliance, without fundamentally changing where power lies.
So, as proposed by We’re Right Here, the new government must ensure the forthcoming regulations centre local people’s voices and the integration of existing social infrastructure.
Neighbourhood governance must actively include the community groups and organisations already working in local areas, including community anchor organisations. They bring vital local knowledge and reach into parts of the community that local authorities often struggle to engage.
Provided they have a genuine connection to their neighbourhood, they should be given a formal role in governance arrangements, ensuring decisions are grounded in the lived realities of local people.
There is now an urgent political imperative to reconnect people with the decisions that affect their lives – to create local services that help them thrive, local economies that bring shared prosperity, and local governance that centres their voice on the issues they understand best. Without this, our communities will continue down a road of disillusionment, desperation, and division.
You can read more about of vision, ideas, and evidence base for these proposals in our report “Community powered neighbourhoods: How community anchor organisations can transform our places”.