Long term disadvantage in too many neighbourhoods is fuelling frustration and the growth of populism. The government’s pledge to tackle this by giving power back to local people will be crucial to reversing its fortunes. But for people to feel it where they live, power needs to be in the hands of trusted and transformative community organisations.
The government is all too aware of the need to show tangible change in the most disadvantaged areas of the country to stem the tide of voters towards Reform UK and other populist alternatives.
In September, it announced its new “Pride in Place” strategy, focusing on areas facing the “double disadvantage” of high deprivation and low social infrastructure.
A total of 244 areas will now receive £20m to spend over 10 years on things like “helping communities to take back control of their own lives and areas”.
Among these are Kingstanding South East in Birmingham, Hendon & Docks in Sunderland, and Platt Bridge & Spring View in Wigan – all in constituencies where Reform UK leap-frogged into second place behind Labour at the 2024 general election.
According to the government’s latest deprivation statistics just released, all three neighbourhoods have remained some of the most deprived areas of the country since the last calculation in 2019.
Deprivation persists
In fact, 82 per cent of neighbourhoods currently in the most deprived 10 per cent were in the same situation six years ago.
Among the deprivation and poor social infrastructure of these three places, however, stand beacons of transformation – community “anchor” organisations. These are the strongest, most successful, and well-established community organisations. They use community-owned spaces to create opportunities, employ local staff to support local people and deliver critical local services.
It may seem counterintuitive that organisations like this can operate in such disadvantaged areas, but that’s exactly the point. These are the industrial heartlands, mining towns and urban centres that once powered Britain’s prosperity and now bear the scars of deindustrialisation and neglect. In these places, failed by the state and abandoned by the market, communities are taking over local spaces and doing things for themselves – often in spite of government policy and practice, rather than supported by it.
Community action works
Take Witton Lodge Community Association , in Birmingham. With economic regeneration efforts focussed in the East of the city through a council-led Economic Recovery Board, Witton Lodge decided to convene a north Birmingham equivalent. Its mission was to ensure local people benefitted directly from local growth, tackling the deep-rooted inequalities exacerbated by the pandemic.
With Witton Lodge’s understanding of local need, strengths, and opportunities, the North Birmingham Economic Recovery Board is successfully connecting residents to jobs, apprenticeships, and employment, training, and skills support.
While the East Birmingham Board took over a decade via costly consultants to develop a spatial infrastructure strategy, North Birmingham Board is set to complete a comparable plan within a year, drawing on in-house expertise and community networks.
As an official from the West Midlands Combined Authority put it – “The difference between the two Boards is striking. Community organisations know how to build relationships and turn big strategies into something that actually makes sense on the ground. Witton Lodge doesn’t just convene meetings, they drive forward the actions. For me, the lesson is clear: when I’m setting up new boards in other parts of the city, like in the North West, they will be community-led.”
In Sunderland, Back on the Map was at the forefront of the response to the racist riots that struck the city in summer 2024.
Where the council were surprised by the scale of the unrest, its embedded position in a community-owned local space meant Back on the Map had been monitoring growing local tensions long before the violence erupted.
As such, it understands the issues that drive a wedge between the long-standing, mostly white residents of Hendon, and newly arrived residents from overseas. Housing is central – a scarcity of good quality housing, often exploited by bad and absentee landlords, fuels tensions.
Back on the Map takes on and refurbishes local properties to a high-standard and rents them out at affordable rates.
They bring residents from all backgrounds together to co-produce services, like housing, that tackle local need.
Communities are undermined by government
A lack of government support is one thing, but too often community anchor organisations are actively undermined by government. They’re forced to navigate initiatives done to their communities, not with them, often resulting in wastefully ineffective or duplicated services.
In Wigan, for example, long before the term “social prescribing” entered policy language, Wigan and Leigh Community Charity (WLCC) were already helping people to access locally-provided services to build connections and support their wellbeing.
They housed and supported a “Men’s Shed” group, providing rent-free space and helping it become independent. Over 100 local men participated - as much for conversation, connection and the impact on their mental health as for the woodworking projects.
But demand grew, particularly through referrals from new NHS “Link Workers”, and the group struggled to meet need. While the Link Workers were paid roles, it proved impossible to fund the growing service itself. After two years of providing a lifeline for local men free of charge, the group eventually had to close down. To this day, local people still contact WLCC asking about the service.
At Locality we hear versions of these stories repeated across the country every day.
A vision for community powered neighbourhoods
That’s why next week we're publishing a new report – Community powered neighbourhoods – calling on the government to put community anchor organisations at the heart of its new focus on neighbourhoods – whether through the Pride in Place Programme, the Neighbourhood Health Service, or Get Britain Working.
It’s striking how many areas of government policy could be vastly improved by working with communities not ignoring them. With the right powers and support these organisations could do so much more to turn disadvantaged areas into healthy, wealthy, cohesive communities.
Following the closure of the Community Ownership Fund, we need an ambitious, long-term, coordinated approach to invest in community assets. This is crucial to strengthening the foundations of community power and enable community anchor organisations to be truly independent partners working with the state, rather than simply providers of services.
Beyond that, the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill must embed community anchor organisations at the core of neighbourhood governance, with real decision-making and budgetary powers.
And it must reform public services to take the person-centred services that community anchor organisations deliver so well out of competitive tendering - only then can the public sector and local communities develop better long-term partnerships.
Compared with local councils, the public are more than twice as likely to trust community organisations to understand what their community needs. They are nearly seven times more likely to trust them than Metro Mayors, and over nine times more likely than central government.
If this government is to deliver on economic growth, preventative public services, and community cohesion – and restore trust in politics in the most disadvantaged parts of the country – it must support community anchor organisations to thrive.
Sam Pluckrose-Oliver is Locality's Policy & Public Affairs Manager