Improving digital connectivity in communities

On 9 June, Local Trust and The Good Things Foundation partnered to host an online panel discussion on the question of “Why is digital connectivity important for communities during COVID-19 and beyond?”.

This report summarises the discussion from the event, which was the second in a series looking at how communities have responded to COVID-19 and will renew and increase their resilience following it.

The importance of digital connectivity for resilient communities is not a new issue. However, the pandemic has seen digital connectivity move from a ‘nice to have’ to an ‘essential’ for everyone and highlighted pre-existing inequalities. For many Big Local areas and other communities, supporting people to be digitally connected has become a focus of their work during the pandemic. To explore what this change in context could mean for future policy and practice, Local Trust commissioned Good Things Foundation to guest-host a discussion exploring community responses to the pandemic and how sustainable solutions to the issue of digital exclusion could be developed.