2025: A landmark year of learning and action

Our CEO Rachel Rowney reflects on a landmark year for Big Local and Local Trust – celebrating communities, seeing real experiences shaping government policy, and sharing lessons from resident-led regeneration. 

As we near the end of 2025, my first year as CEO of Local Trust, I feel real pride in all that the Big Local programme has achieved – and excited about how its legacy is taking root.  

2025 felt like the year that the closure of Big Local came into sharp focus. In June, our 100th area completed its 10-year partnership. By Spring 2026, the remaining 50 areas will have done the same. 

But a year of endings and goodbyes has also been a year of action. In 2025, Local Trust shifted from simply delivering the Big Local programme to gathering and sharing what we’ve learned. Over 15 years, in 150 of the country’s most disadvantaged neighbourhoods, Big Local showed what long-term, place-based, resident-led regeneration can achieve. We now have a rich evidence base about how to help places help themselves. And over the last year it has become clear others have been paying attention too.

A major funding win

In June 2025, we celebrated a major funding win when the government announced it would commit £175m from the Dormant Asset fund and the National Lottery Community Fund to the Community Wealth Fund (CWF). Back in 2018 Local Trust led to the establishment of the Community Wealth Fund Alliance (CWFA). As a founding member, we brought together 800 civil society organisations, local authorities, funders and community groups all advocating for long-term, resident-led investment in the county’s disadvantaged areas, in the form of a CWF. In September, the government further confirmed that this new CWF funding would be targeted at doubly disadvantaged areas – bringing the lessons from Big Local to the heart of the strategy.  

…and I’m thrilled that real people and real experiences are finally shaping government policy.” 

Real people and experiences shaping government policy 

Autumn also saw the government announce Pride in Place: a flagship plan to devolve power and investment to communities by giving local people the tools, funding and decision-making control to shape their own neighbourhoods. We were incredibly pleased to discover that the strategy allocated funding using the Community Needs Index tool: a measure Local Trust pioneered with OCSI to identify doubly disadvantaged neighbourhoods. 

Taken together, the CWF and Pride in Place Strategy show that the resident-led and place-based principles pioneered by Big Local are informing national policy and creating nationwide, long-term funding programmes. National recognition of Big Local concepts and ideas is also direct recognition of the lived experience of residents in our areas. Our insights are their insights, and I’m thrilled that real people and real experiences are finally shaping government policy. 

A pathway to stronger and more connected communities

But there’s still more we want to do. In November, we helped launch the Centre for Collaboration in Community Connectedness (C4) based at Sheffield Hallam University. C4 is a national research centre dedicated to understanding and strengthening community connectedness across the UK. We are proud to be both a founding partner and contributor to the Centre’s research by providing over a decade’s worth of evidence through the Big Local programme.  

C4 will preserve and build upon the legacy of the Big Local principles in the form of a policy and research archive and produce further research. By partnering with leading universities, community organisations and civil society groups, C4 will translate intelligence and data from Big Local and other place-based programmes into evidence and practice guides that can be accessed by anyone seeking to build local community cohesion and resilience.  

Committed to ensuring the future of Big Local’s legacy 

So, for Local Trust, 2026 represents the beginning of an exciting new era. We will support the last tranche of Big Local areas as they finish their journey – an emotional moment for all of us at Local Trust, I am sure. However, there will be plenty to do, on multiple other fronts. To help build a new generation of sustainably funded, place-based regeneration projects, we will need to engage with national policy makers, academics, local authorities and residents alike. I know that in doing this, we can ensure Big Local’s legacy lasts long into the future.