About Us
Local Trust is a unique combination of place-based funder and policy innovator. We believe there is a need to place more power, resources, and decision-making into the hands of communities. We put this into practice by trusting local people to decide how best to spend the funding we provide to improve their neighbourhoods. And we share learning and insight from that work with the aim of informing and inspiring others to do the same.
Local Trust was established in 2012 as delivery agency for Big Local – the largest ever single-purpose National Lottery Community Fund endowment. The programme committed £1.15m each to 150 communities across England to spend over 10 – 15 years. The communities that were chosen were often ones that were low on pre-existing community activity and were seen to have missed out on their fair share of previous funding. The rules about how the money was spent were deliberately limited – only that local residents should take the lead in making the decisions.
As a consequence, Big Local is like no other funding programme. It places money directly in the hands of people and communities, with the aim of harnessing local people’s skills, knowledge, and passion for where they live to create meaningful place-based change. From the establishment of community wind farms to the restoration of 14th century buildings; from supporting young people to create nationally-recognised mental health campaigns to collaborating on multi-million pound regeneration projects – just as every community is different, no two projects to come out of the programme are the same.
But we are not just a funder. At the heart of our Trust Deed is an expectation that we take the learning from our work and share it with others, to influence policy and practice more widely. Local Trust commissions extensive insight, evaluation and data analysis as part of an ambitious research programme aimed at providing the evidence for a wider transformation in the way policy makers, funders and others engage and support with communities and place. The fifteen-year programme provides a unique opportunity to demonstrate the value of long term, unconditional, resident-led funding as a way of helping local communities change for the better. In many ways it is one of the biggest think-do explorations of what works in delivering change at a neighbourhood level ever commissioned.
A decade into the programme, we have already a wealth of research and evidence about community-led change. We have learnt how this model can promote long-term improved outcomes for residents living in places that, in the past, may have missed out on funding and opportunities, and we are sharing insight into how others can learn from our experience. For the remainder of the term of our Trust Deed, this will become an ever more important part of our work.
We have already used our learning to work with like-minded partners to establish an additional resident-led funding programme, using the arts to lead change in communities. Creative Civic Change works with 15 communities across England with creativity and peer learning at its heart to help us understand how resident-led funding can be applied across different sectors. Similarly, our work developing a Community Leadership Academy is helping generate wider understanding of the support individuals need to be able to lead change in their community.
In 2019 we commissioned ground-breaking data analysis to explore the difference that social infrastructure such as places and spaces to meet makes to outcomes in deprived communities. The research, which identified 225 ‘left behind’ neighbourhoods across England, generated significant interest across Government and beyond. In 2020 the All-Party Parliamentary Group for ‘left behind’ neighbourhoods was established, providing a united voice in Westminster advocating on behalf of these places; Local Trust is secretariat to the APPG.
Local Trust is also a founding member of the Community Wealth Fund Alliance, a growing group of over 400 organisations, including over 30 Local Authorities, calling for a major new independent endowment from the government, funded from dormant assets to be invested in rebuilding the social infrastructure of ‘left behind’ neighbourhoods.
At a moment when the power and importance of local community has been highlighted by the last year of the pandemic, and levelling up exists as a shared national challenge, we are seeking to contribute positively to the policy debate, as a source of ideas, research and data and the compelling evidence of what has been achieved across Big Local neighbourhoods already.