From Ramsay Street to real life: Why everybody needs good neighbourhoods

New research from Local Trust, OCSI and Shared Intelligence points to the value of investing in communities and local social infrastructure. Daniel Crowe, policy and parliamentary manager at Local Trust, explores these findings following the publication of the report Everybody needs good neighbourhoods: The impact of resident-led neighbourhood-based initiatives in deprived communities.

Where we live – and the neighbourhoods that we call home – play a significant role in the determination of our life-chances, our potential and our prosperity. The experience of where we live is fundamental to our wellbeing and outlook on life, but it shouldn’t be a postcode lottery.

Whilst Shakespeare observed that “All the world’s a stage” against which we play out our lives, it is at the level of the local community where we often find real meaning and belonging. It is also this that underpins our sense of wellbeing and notions of security, as the fictional residents from Ramsay Street to Albert Square and Ambridge can attest.

Place and history

The role played by place is crucial to this and is well documented. At the end of the nineteenth century, in what must surely have been one of the most impactful early uses of infographics, findings from the Inquiry into the Life and Labour of the People of London were visualised in the Charles Booth poverty maps, with areas colour-coded, ranging from ‘vicious and semi-criminal’ to wealthy.

Many parts of London have of course been ‘gentrified’ since then, with investment in physical infrastructure, particularly transport, helping to transform the prospects of whole swathes of London, and better connecting residents in traditionally deprived areas with opportunities and access to skills and services.

Improving areas that experience socio-economic disadvantage has, in different ways and under different guises, been a focus of government policy for at least the last hundred years. The last major national attempt was a quarter of a century ago, when the Labour government launched its National Strategy for Neighbourhood Renewal with the ambition that, “within ten to 20 years, no one should be seriously disadvantaged by where they live”.

Where we live – and the neighbourhoods that we call home – play a significant role in the determination of our life-chances, our potential and our prosperity.”

Overcoming spatial inequalities

Today, overcoming the effects of spatial disadvantage underpins the government’s levelling up agenda, its policies and funding streams, and in particular its focus on boosting pride in place and building social capital.

The harmful impact of spatial inequalities, particularly in those disadvantaged areas with low levels of social capital and social infrastructure, has more recently been documented by the All-Party Parliamentary Group for ‘left behind’ neighbourhoods. It found that the 225 most ‘left behind’ wards in England experience nine key dimensions of disadvantage which interact and reinforce each other, leading to poorer outcomes overall, from health and wellbeing to educational attainment and employment.

We also know how important day-to-day quality-of-life issues play out at the neighbourhood level. For example, experience of crime, low level disorder and anti-social behaviour can impact on everything – from our sense of identity and belonging, to our feelings of happiness and security.

Trust, resilience and social bonds

The experience of COVID-19 showed how the levels of trust and resilience as well as the strength of the social bonds in an area can influence a community’s ability to cope in a crisis. Research conducted by the APPG for ‘left behind’ neighbourhoods in 2020 shows that ‘left behind’ areas were, through no fault of their own, less successful in attracting specific COVID-19 charitable grant funding during the pandemic compared to other disadvantaged areas, and saw fewer local mutual aid groups set up in response to the crisis.

A lack of resources means these communities lack the knowledge, experience, networks and local institutions to successfully apply for funding and organise mutual support, which wealthier and better connected areas often take for granted.

An innovative research approach

With this new research from OCSI and Shared Intelligence we wanted to test the hypothesis that areas with hyper-local, neighbourhood-based initiatives (NBIs) active in the local community, particularly those that put local residents in the driving seat, have better outcomes across a number of liveability and quality of life issues than similarly deprived areas that don’t have active NBIs.

The research compares highly deprived areas that are fortunate to be home to resident-led NBIs, such as a Big Local partnership, with equivalent ‘benchmark’ areas (bespoke ‘counterfactuals’ created specifically for this research) which mirror their comparator area’s characteristics but where there is no such evidence of neighbourhood working or NBIs.

It is an attempt to do robust statistical analysis with big datasets whilst taking an innovative approach that uses a trail methodology mixing qualitative and quantitative research. It is important to note some key caveats – the small sample size, and the difficulty of proving that no NBIs exist in a local community being chief among them.

COVID-19 showed how the levels of trust and resilience as well as the strength of the social bonds in an area can influence a community’s ability to cope in a crisis.”

The impact of neighbourhood-based initiatives

Nevertheless, the findings are very interesting, revealing the potential impact of NBIs on a range of outcomes around quality of life indicators and the health of social relationships over a ten-year period within a local geographic community.

Compared with the benchmark areas, areas with NBIs show:

• lower overall levels of crime
• a greater reduction in levels of anti-social behaviour
• a greater reduction in levels of criminal damage
• a better neighbourhood environment
• fewer empty homes, and
• better self-reported outcomes around community strength (such as connections between neighbours).

This report is a modest but potentially important contribution to the evidence base on the value of investing in communities, which includes the recent research Local Trust commissioned from Sheffield Hallam University into the track record of area-based regeneration programmes. It also illustrates the possible social benefits of NBIs and the merits of neighbourhood working that puts decision-making into the hands of local people.

It clearly flags the need to conduct more research into the positive impact of resident-led NBIs, something that Local Trust plans to further explore with its research partners in 2024.

The new report – Everybody needs good neighbourhoods: The impact of resident-led neighbourhood-based initiatives in deprived communities – is available for download now.