Influences on the development of Big Local areas

Five years of Empowering Places: Evaluation report

Published: 2023

Empowering Places was designed by Power to Change as an experiment to explore what happens when local anchor organisations are supported to catalyse community businesses in deprived communities in England.

This evaluation report is the final in a series of six reports and several short
ethnographic films. The interim reports took a formative a…

Lessons in community-led housing

Published: 2023

In 2017 Power to Change launched its Homes in Community Hands programme, to support community led housing (CLH). Focusing on five urban areas across England, the programme has helped plan and develop individual housing projects, develop enabler organisations, and capitalise other investment and funding mechanisms. These three reports summarise …

Supports and challenges for community businesses: Lessons learnt from Power to Change’s legacy programme evaluations

Published: 2022

This report summarises findings from a desk-based review of 17 publications commissioned by Power to Change, to share findings on the support and challenges that are faced by community businesses. Looking across Power to Change’s grant and support programmes such as the Bright Ideas, Trade Up and Community Business Fund programmes, the report…

Empowering Places: Impact on the community and wider place

Published: 2022

Empowering Places aims to build more resilient and prosperous communities by building the capacity of local organisations to catalyse and support the growth of new community businesses. It funds locally rooted ‘catalyst’ organisations in six areas of high deprivation. Each catalyst receives up to £1 million (July 2017–December 2022)…

Reaching Further: Lessons for Funder Practice

Published: 2022

This report sets out eight lessons in funder practice from the work of Lloyds Bank Foundation for England and Wales from 2018 to 2022. During the five years of their strategy Reaching Further, the collision of unprecedented social, health and economic crises brought both the strength and fragility of civil society into sharp focus – funders and…

Homes in Community Hands: Year Three Evaluation

Published: 2022

In 2017 Power to Change launched its Homes in Community Hands programme, which sought to boost the development of community led housing (CLH). This would focus primarily on five urban areas across the country. The programme has provided funding to help plan and develop affordable housing projects to meet community needs. It has also provided gr…

The role of paid workers in supporting a community-led programme

Published: 2022

The Big Local programme aims to put more power, resource and decision-making in the hands of local communities. Most Big Local partnerships have chosen to hire paid staff, who support the delivery of Big Local in a huge variety of different ways.

This briefing is part of Local Trust’s research paper series, originally shared internally with st…

One pandemic, many responses

Published: 2022

This is the third report from Local Trust’s research study exploring how 26 communities across England responded to the COVID-19 crisis.

It follows Strong than anyone thought, published in September 2020, which looked at the initial lockdown period and Now they see us, published in August 2021, which saw the communities adapting to a…

Understanding the financial impact of Power to Change’s grant funding on community businesses

Published: 2022

This research paper emerged from the need to better understand the financial impact generated by Power to Change’s investment in community businesses. In other words, several years after Power to Change’s investment, what has the financial impact of each programme been on its grantees? The paper draws on previous work that identified the va…