Reviewing your Big Local plan

We need you to:

• complete at least one plan review during the time that the plan is active
• answer the plan review questions: if the plan under review is not your final Big Local plan, you will have to answer eight questions; if the plan under review is your final Big Local plan you will only have to answer the first six plan review questions.
• submit your plan review before you submit a new or updated plan and ask to withdraw more of your funding
• complete a final plan review if you are in the close out phase but have more than £75,000 funding remaining

Once you are officially closed out of the programme (with up to £75k funding held locally) we will no longer require a final plan review from you, because we will be waiving all reporting requirements at this stage. However, we still welcome a review of your final plan after your area has officially closed out if you wish to send it to us. A final plan review can be great to complete your journey on the programme and tell the story of your achievements as part of our website called Learning from Big Local.

The plan review is an opportunity to come together and reflect as a partnership on what you have done, the difference you have made, what you have learned, and your plans going forward, including the legacy you hope to leave in your Big Local area.

It provides your partnership with:

• an opportunity to reflect on progress and celebrate achievements
• new learning to:
  • incorporate into your next Big Local plan
  • help you plan for after the Big Local programme finishes
• success stories to share more widely in your Big Local area
• the chance to feedback information to us and others involved in Big Local

Your plan review may result in you wanting to make changes to what you are doing. If that means updating your Big Local plan, you need to be clear about why you want to make those changes and provide evidence that your decisions are supported by the wider community. For more information on updating your plan please see our guidance on the Big Local plan.

You may need to set aside some dedicated time and space for your review, to enable your partnership to think about and discuss your progress.

Your Big Local area advisor or area coordinator can help you with your plan review. This might include suggestions for structuring discussions, who to involve, and what kind of information to prepare.

Our measuring change resources can also help you use different methods to gather evidence of the work you’ve done and communicate it not only to Local Trust but back to your community and beyond.

The review is made up of eight questions (you will only need to answer the first six questions if you are reviewing your final plan before you reach the close out pathway and complete the Big Local programme).

We need you to answer these questions:

Learning from the delivery of your plan:

1.Under your current plan, what have you delivered in your Big Local area?

2. Under your current plan, what difference have you made in your Big Local area?

3. Under your current plan, what have been the partnership’s proudest achievements and why?

4. What have you learnt from the delivery of your current Big Local plan?

The legacy of your Big Local:

5. How are you progressing towards your legacy?

6. What needs to happen to enable you to achieve your legacy?

Looking forward (if you are reviewing your final Big Local plan, please skip questions 7 and 8):

7. What are the current needs and opportunities in your Big Local area?

8. What help do you need to deliver your next plan and achieve your legacy?

The questions are broad and provide space for your partnership to explore them in any way that you want. To help you with this, we have provided a more detailed explanation for each question in Appendix A: Plan review questions

The plan review will help you identify what difference your Big Local activities are making, how they fit in with your vision and priorities, as well as Big Local outcomes, and whether or not you need to revise your plan as a result.

Please complete the plan review form on ‘the community’ to submit your plan review. We will read your review when we assess your new plan.

Your plan review helps to inform us about what your Big Local area is doing, including what is working well and what the challenges are. This helps us understand how we can support you more effectively in the future.

Finally, your plan review helps us better understand how Big Local works in practice and build an evidence base that supports our efforts to promote more investment into resident-led initiatives.

If you have feedback on how we can make this document more helpful, particularly if you are a Big Local partnership member, please let us know. It will be developed over time using feedback from the people who need to use it.

The plan review consists of up to eight questions. More details on what you should consider when answering each question is provided below.

Learning from the delivery of your plan

1.Under your current plan, what have you delivered in your Big Local area?

Refer to your Big Local plan, including what activities you planned to do and the main things you wanted to achieve.  Has your delivery stayed within the priorities of your plan or did your priorities change during this review period? If they changed, how and why did they change?

Organise your answer using the priorities from the period under review.

2. Under your current plan, what difference have you made in your Big Local area?

When answering this question, you may want to consider the different types of change that you have made/ experienced in your Big Local area, which may include:

• the impact your activities have had on
  • the people in the Big local area;
  • the physical place of the Big local area;
• the changes to community connections and networks within the Big Local area;
• changes in the views and attitudes of people inside and outside of the Big Local area (reputation, community pride, increased participation);
• the skills learned and developed as a partnership;
• progression towards your community’s vision for the Big Local area and the Big Local priorities.

What information and evidence have you collected that demonstrates these differences you’ve made in your Big Local area (e.g. evaluations, stories from residents, case studies, feedback from the community, photos, and any information provided from delivery partners)? We’d love to see examples of this so please attach or send us any of this information that demonstrates the difference you have made in your Big Local area.

3. Under your current plan, what have been the partnership’s proudest achievements and why?

It’s important to acknowledge what you’ve been able to achieve since your last plan. You may want to consider how you’ve developed as a partnership, the challenges you’ve overcome to deliver your plan, or how you’ve made your Big Local area a better place to live.

4. What have you learnt from the delivery of your current Big Local plan?

Learning is an important part of the Big Local programme, as is incorporating what you have learned into your future plans and activities. This could be learning from working as a partnership, working with others, delivering your plan, learning about your Big Local area, or anything else you’ve learnt during this review period.

How will you use what you’ve learnt to improve your delivery going forward?

The legacy of your Big Local

By legacy we mean what will remain in your area after the Big Local funds have been spent. It may be useful to think about legacy in reference to your legacy statement and in terms of changes in:

• People (like skills, new experiences, opportunities to learn and socialise)
• Connections (like people feeling connected, organisations working better together)
• Place (like new or improved physical assets, improved physical environment)
• Succession (activities that will continue after Big Local)[1]

5. How are you progressing towards your legacy?

• Do you have a clear idea of what your legacy will be

6. What needs to happen to enable you to achieve your legacy?

Looking forward (if you are reviewing your last Big Local plan, please skip question 7 and 8)

This section looks ahead to your next Big Local plan, your plans to spend the remaining money, and what comes after 2026 when the Big Local programme ends.

7. What are the current needs and opportunities in your Big Local area?

You may want to consider how the needs and opportunities in your area have changed or stayed the same in this review period. Consider any recent engagement that has helped you to identify priorities for your next plan.

• How do you know these are the current needs and opportunities in your Big Local area?
• Are they different from previous needs and opportunities that shaped your former plans?

How will you prioritise these needs and opportunities going forward, especially as your Big Local nears its conclusion by 2026 or earlier?

8. What help do you need to deliver your next plan and achieve your legacy?

We’d like to hear what will enable you to best deliver your next plan and achieve your legacy. This help and support can be from within the partnership, from partner organisations, from the community, or from Local Trust.

Additionally, sometimes things don’t go as we hope. As the end of the Big Local programme in 2026 approaches, it is important to consider any potential challenges ahead. Do you have any alternative plans or ideas if things don’t go to plan? If so, what are they?

[1] Wilson M, McCabe A, Macmillan R; Building Big Local Futures: Towards legacies for people and places. May 2022