Written evidence submitted by Local Trust

About Local Trust and this submission

Local Trust is a place-based funder supporting communities to transform and improve their lives and the places in which they live. We believe there is a need to put more power, resources, and decision making into the hands of communities. We do this by trusting local people. Our aims are to demonstrate the value of long term, unconditional, resident-led funding, and to draw on the learning from our work delivering the Big Local programme to promote a wider transformation in the way policymakers, funders and others engage with communities and place.

This submission explores how to grow sporting opportunities for all, particularly those living in doubly disadvantaged neighbourhoods – areas that have the highest levels of deprivation, and the weakest social infrastructure.

How can volunteers be better supported and what is needed to attract and retain more volunteers to grassroots sport?

Providing local people with the opportunity and resource to identify and lead projects within their community, alongside appropriate capacity building and support, has significant benefits for building a network of active citizens and grassroots volunteers. The Big Local programme has illustrated how long-term, community-led funding encourages knowledge sharing, deepens local collaboration and improves civic resilience in deprived neighbourhoods. The success of this model has attracted many first-time volunteers, with 20 per cent of people on Big Local partnerships having not volunteered or engaged in community activity before the programme (Local Trust, 2024a).

Studies have demonstrated that community involvement is crucial for the long-term success of regeneration initiatives and local projects. This is because community involvement, alongside appropriate capacity building, creates a network of local experts who know exactly what their areas need and can have great success in addressing social problems (Tanner et al., 2021). This has also been evidenced by the Big Local programme, as communities set their own priorities, agree the activities they want to engage in, and organise themselves as appropriate to their local area. The programme has shown that when communities get the support they need, they can contribute meaningfully to make their neighbourhoods better places to live.

In one Big Local area, local parents used Big Local funding to create spaces for their children to play sports, after identifying there was a lack of suitable facilities in the area. One of these parents described how “sports clubs are critical to community. It’s so important to use sports clubs as a way into communities,” highlighting how community involvement and grassroots sports go hand in hand. The hyperlocal nature of Big Local also allows volunteers to enjoy their activities, despite the demands on their time, because they value the sense of community connection. In the words of one Big Local volunteer “I feel a part of everything. My friends in the community are closer than family” (Local Trust, 2022). Such an approach can be used to increase engagement and volunteering in grassroots and community sport.

How can grassroots sport be made more engaging and accessible to under-represented groups?

Local Trust research suggests that a lack of places to meet, and the absence of an engaged and active community, makes a significant difference to the social and economic outcomes for deprived communities (Local Trust, 2019a). This highlights the importance of schemes that focus on increasing access and opportunity to engage in sports and physical activity in doubly disadvantaged neighbourhoods.

Data from OCSI shows that doubly disadvantaged neighbourhoods (OCSI, 2023):

• Have fewer sporting assets compared to the English average; 86.2 per cent have a lower density of leisure assets, and 66.7 per cent have a lower density of sport assets
• Receive less sporting investment than other equally deprived areas, this includes grant funding from the Department for Culture Media and Sport, and Sports England[1]
• Show lower participation in sporting activities than those in other deprived areas or nationally, 97.3 per cent of LBNs have a lower proportion of ‘active’ adults than the England average.

One way to increase the accessibility of sport is through community ownership of sports and leisure assets. Community ownership gives local people control over buildings and spaces of significance. They can then use these spaces to prioritise the needs of the local community. This builds collective capacity, skills, and innovation in communities and creates social value through the retention of public spaces and services (LGA, 2023).

Council-provided sport and leisure services are struggling from the impacts of COVID-19, the cost of living crisis, and increases to the National Living Wage (LGA, 2023). Community ownership can support councils to improve the uptake of discretionary services by rooting them deeper in the community (LGA, 2023). In the case of sports, this increased participation can lead to improved physical activity levels and mental wellbeing.

The government’s commitment to strengthen the existing Community Right to Bid into a Community Right to Buy is a welcome shift that will help communities to save local assets and support the provision of new local amenities and facilities (MHCLG, 2024). However, without social infrastructure, communities can lack the individual and institutional knowledge and capacity to apply for competitive bids, meaning they miss out on funding.

Doubly disadvantaged neighbourhoods often have few local charities based in their area that can bid for funds, a lack of access to funding, alongside community members who have greater time commitments from work or caring responsibilities (APPG, 2023). Therefore, as the APPG for ‘left behind’ neighbourhoods has argued, a new community right alone will not solve the problem. To ensure this new right reaches doubly disadvantaged communities, government should invest in building community capacity, in addition to more flexible funding to support communities. Clear and accessible language should be used to communicate policies and initiatives, so that local people can easily engage with information and decision-making processes (APPG, 2023).

How can funds be distributed more effectively and application processes be improved?

A lack of social infrastructure in doubly disadvantaged neighbourhoods contributes to depleted levels of social capital, weakened connections between residents, organisations and public agencies, and lower levels of volunteering and wider civic activity: 97 per cent of doubly disadvantaged neighbourhoods have lower levels of civic engagement than the national average, with 98 per cent of these neighbourhoods having lower rates of volunteering (OCSI, 2021). This results in lower capacity to respond collectively to challenges and access support from elsewhere.

While many people living in doubly disadvantaged neighbourhoods want to see their places thrive and will contribute significantly to community-led initiatives to transform them, they may lack the time, resources and existing networks needed to secure vital funding. Programmes or funding that rely on organisations or individuals to apply for grants to get projects up and running tend to benefit areas with existing levels of civic capacity (Local Trust, 2024b).

OCSI research shows that doubly disadvantaged neighbourhoods have received lower levels of Sport England funding than other deprived areas and England. Between 2004 and October 2023, they received £19.24 in charitable grant funding per head – less than half the proportion received across other deprived areas (£68.21) and below the average across England as a whole (£38.02).

A move away from competitive bidding towards allocative funding can help overcome area-based disparities in the distribution of funding. Using the Community Needs Index to identify areas with low social infrastructure and social capital can help inform these decisions.

The Community Needs Index has resonated with policymakers and analysts and has become increasingly embedded across central and local government, as well as civil society organisations. It  has informed the distribution of a range of funding programmes, including the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport’s Know Your Neighbourhood Fund and Sport England’s recently expanded Place Partnerships.

Furthermore, on 7th November 2023, Sports England announced an extension to place partnerships by investing a further £250 million and expanding the number of places that they will work with. To identify places in need, Sports England have established a Place Need Classification which uses local-authority level data and neighbourhood level data to identify sport and physical activity need and social need. The Community Needs Index and the Index of Multiple Deprivation have been included in the data used to identify social need (Sports England, 2023).

Case Study - Luton Arches Big Local (Local Trust, 2019b, p41-46).

In 2017, St Mary’s Amateur Boxing Club in Street End Road, Chatham, began running boxing sessions for people suffering from Parkinson’s disease. The programme was run with Olympia Boxing, a partner of Luton Arches Big Local, and brought together people across a range of ages, all learning to cope with a disease for which there is no cure.

The boxing club had been going strong since the 1920s but became under threat of extinction. Millennium Green became the proposed location for the new St Mary’s. The Big Local area committed £50,000 to a regeneration project that cost £250,000 in total and was also supported by Sport England and Medway Council.

The project itself was a success but also raised awareness of the problem of ‘holiday hunger’. Children in the area became involved in the project and it became clear that for many of them their only regular meal was a school meal.

The group started running a programme called Fit & Fed. The programme runs out of Luton Primary School and gives young people aged from 7-16 the opportunity to stay active with activities such as dodge ball, football, cricket, tennis, and tag archery. They also offered arts and crafts sessions and space to join for the social element. Crucially, they are also guaranteed everyone at least one good meal a day. The program runs during school holidays and even provided provision during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Case study: The Woolavington Wanderers 

In 2023, a group of local dads in the village of Woolavington, Somerset, came up with the idea of starting a football club, to give local kids something to do.  

Inspired by an unused pitch on the edge of their village, they approached the parish council with a proposal to use the pitch in return for helping with its maintenance. With the terms agreed, the group set about undertaking the FA’s Playmaker training, so they could host training sessions and ensure the appropriate safeguarding was in place.  

Once a date was set for the first session, word had got round, and without any formal promotion kids showed up to play – and kept doing so, with numbers growing week on week.  

Initial sponsorship from Villages Together Big Local for the team’s kit helped give them an identity. Their badge features an old mill, a nod to the windmills that used to stand at the top of the village. Their name is taken from the original local team, Woolavington United AFC, which was started in the late 1940s by a committee including the father of the parish council clerk. 

A year later, the Woolavington Wanderers consisted of three youth teams, with plans to grow to four, and were playing in the Taunton District League. Meanwhile, local people had seen the impact, reflecting that the football club had helped to reduce anti-social behaviour. The community were also happy to see the pitch being used once more.  

References

All Party Parliamentary Group for ‘Left Behind’ Neighbourhoods (APPG). (2023). Levelling up local outcomes: The importance of community spaces to neighbourhood regeneration. Available at: https://www.appg-leftbehindneighbourhoods.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Policy-Short-1-Levelling-Up-Local-Outcomes.pdf [Accessed January 2025].

Local Government Association (LGA). (2023). Supporting community ownership of leisure and sports assets. Available at: https://www.local.gov.uk/publications/supporting-community-ownership-leisure-and-sports-assets [Accessed December 2024].

Local Trust (2019a). Left behind? Understanding communities on the edge. Available at: https://localtrust. org.uk/insights/research/left-behind-understanding-communities-on-the-edge/ [Accessed December 2024].

Local Trust. (2019b). A level playing field. Available at: https://localtrust.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Local-Trust-A-level-playing-field-November-2019.pdf [Accessed December 2024].

Local Trust. (2022). Volunteering and Big Local: Who volunteers in Big Local communities, what they do and why. Available at: https://localtrust.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Volunteering-in-Big-Local.pdf [Accessed January 2025].

Local Trust. (2024a). The Big Local story: A summary of our learning from the Big Local programme. Available at: https://localtrust.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/9951-The-Big-Local-story-Summary.pdf [Accessed January 2025]

Local Trust. (2024b). A new neighbourhoods policy. Available at: https://localtrust.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Neighbourhoods-Manifesto.pdf [Accessed January 2025].

Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG). (2024). English Devolution White Paper​: Power and partnership: Foundations for growth. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/english-devolution-white-paper-power-and-partnership-foundations-for-growth [Accessed January 2025].

Oxfrod Consultants for Social Inclusion (OCSI). (2021). ‘Left behind’ Neighbourhoods: Community data dive. Available at: https://www.appg-leftbehindneighbourhoods.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/APPG-Community-Data-Dive-Report-for-APPG-S7.pdf [Accessed January 2025].

Oxfrod Consultants for Social Inclusion (OCSI). (2023). ‘Left behind’ Neighbourhoods: Art, Culture and Sport Data Dive. Available at: https://www.appg-leftbehindneighbourhoods.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/OCSI-Arts-and-Culture-Data-Dive-October-2023.pdf (Accessed December 2024).

Tanner, W., Krasniqi, F., Blagden, J. (2021). Turnaround: Learning From 60 Years of Regeneration Policy. Available at: https://www.ukonward.com/reports/turnaround-regeneration-neighbourhood/ (Accessed December 2024).