Policy spotlight 1: How social infrastructure improves outcomes

Space for community: strengthening our social infrastructure

Published: 2023

The British Academy and Power to Change commissioned the Bennett Institute for Public Policy and the Institute for Community Studies to undertake two related research projects. The first of these explored examples of international policy interventions that aim to strengthen social infrastructure to draw out learning for UK policymakers. The sec…

Community perceptions of social infrastructure

Published: 2023

‘Social infrastructure’ is a phrase often used by policymakers and academics to refer to those spaces – both physical and digital – that people use to come together. In its 2021 report, Backing our Neighbourhoods, Power to Change, the independent trust that strengthens communities through community business, made the case for a more coh…

Social infrastructure: international comparative review

Published: 2023

The British Academy report, ‘Shaping the COVID Decade’, included a call to “strengthen and expand [the] community-led social infrastructure that underpins the vital services and support structures needed to enhance local resilience, particularly in the most deprived areas” (the British Academy, 2021a, p. 34). In response, the British Academy fu…

Levelling the land: Social investment and ‘left behind’ places

Published: 2021

Local Trust commissioned independent advisor and researcher Dan Gregory to explore whether social investment in its current forms could support the regeneration of the most deprived or ‘left behind’ neighbourhoods across the country or, as our experience with the Big Local programme was suggesting, new models were needed, and if so, what th…

Left Behind Survey

Published: 2021

Conducted by Survation on behalf of Local Trust.

You can find more reports written or commissioned by Local Trust here.

The impacts of social infrastructure investment

Published: 2021

Social infrastructure can play an important role in supporting the levelling-up agenda in local areas. It creates institutions and physical spaces that foster personal relationships, civic engagement and social networks, leading to more cohesive and healthier societies.

Frontier Economics was commissioned by Local Trust to bring together exist…

Left Behind areas 2020 – Interim Set

Published: 2020

A Community Needs Index was developed to identify areas experiencing these second set of challenges by combining a series of indicators, conceptualised under three domains:

Social Infrastructure: Measures of the presence of key community, civic, educational and cultural assets in and in close proximity to the area.
Connectedness: Measures o…

Flipping the Coin: The two sides of Community Wealth in England

Published: 2019

The Young Foundation’s 2018 Patchwork Philanthropy report showed for the first time that not only is public sector spending unequally distributed geographically, but so too is philanthropic spend by charities, trusts and foundations. Some of the regions with the highest levels of deprivation receive some of the lowest levels of investment, re…

Achieving local economic change: what works?

Published: 2019

This research examines the impact of community-led partnerships in deprived areas and what makes these successful in achieving local economic change. The research team reviewed evidence from forty years of English regeneration initiatives and interviewed expert practitioners on what works. Local Trust commissioned the research from the Departme…