Marking a moment: 100 areas complete their Big Local journey

This month we celebrate a major milestone for our programme: 100 areas have now completed their Big Local journey. That’s two thirds of the 150 neighbourhoods in England awarded £1m fifteen years ago. Our CEO Rachel Rowney reflects on a key Big Local milestone and what comes next.

This is a happy moment for the many volunteers, residents and everyone who helped these areas achieve brilliant things over the last decade and a half. The Big Local model is founded on trusting in communities’ capacity to meet their own needs. Looking at what Mossley, St Matthews, Elthorne Pride, Beechwood, Ballantyne & Bidston and so many others have achieved, I’ve never felt more confident in the effectiveness of this model. 

It is a happy moment for me, too, as I reflect on everything these areas have done for themselves. Those feelings of pride are of course tinged with the sadness of saying goodbye. I joined Local Trust in 2012 as a programme manager. In the years since I have witnessed the extraordinary passion and community spirit of people in all these areas. They have taught me so much – not just about the particulars of resident-led regeneration, but about human beings’ remarkable capacity to help and care for each other.  

I look forward to conveying that gratitude at our ‘We are Big Local’ celebration event in March 2026, marking the official end of the Big Local Programme. All 150 Big Local areas are invited to come together, reflect on their journey and toast fifteen years of community action and achievement.

The Big Local model is founded on trusting in communities’ capacity to meet their own needs.

From delivering change to securing our legacy

With only 50 areas remaining in the programme, Big Local is firmly on the home straight. For Local Trust, however, it is also the beginning of a new phase as we shift from delivery to maximising the impact of our legacy.  

Looking ahead, we plan to use what we’ve learned to make the strongest possible case for national funding for community-led, long-term interventions. We believe this is our best chance to rebuild the country’s creaking social infrastructure, neighbourhood by neighbourhood. 

Early next year, we’ll be launching a new online hub titled Learning from Big Local. It will bring together over a decade’s worth of insight, stories, and evidence from across the programme, including in-depth case studies, research reports, and community-led evaluations. 

Whether you’re a policymaker, practitioner, funder or community leader, we hope it will be a valuable resource to inspire and inform future work. 

At Local Trust, we think every neighbourhood in the country should be granted the means to overcome its own challenges and build its own social capital. As the Labour government considers new ways to tackle persistent geographical inequality and boost productivity, we want to demonstrate how the Big Local method is a brilliant way to achieve those difficult aims.

For a decade and a half, [Big Local] has offered communities financial stability and support during a tumultuous period of economic and political change. 

A decade and a half of brilliant results

From the start of Big Local, we all knew it was something special. In terms of scale, time horizon and ethos, nothing like it had ever existed. Indeed, some 15 years later, it has yet to be replicated. For a decade and a half, it has offered communities financial stability and support during a tumultuous period of economic and political change. It has held firm through five governments, sweeping cuts to public funding, recession, pandemic, geopolitical conflict and a cost-of-living crisis.  

It has achieved measurable and lasting change in these 150 neighbourhoods. Social capital and community resilience built up during the programme will echo far beyond Big Local’s 15- year time frame.     

Congratulations once again to all the areas that have reached the end of the programme. Thank you for all you have done, and for proving what we have always believed: that no one is better placed to help a neighbourhood than the people who live there.

Read more about this huge milestone and watch our celebration video on the 100 neighbourhoods page.