Getting pride in place

According to HMG, the Pride in Place strategy will help build stronger communities, create thriving places and empower local people.    A corresponding £1.5bn Pride in Place programme will distribute £20 million of funding and support over the next decade into 75 places from across the UK.  The Pride in Place Impact Fund will provide a further £150 million of funding to up to 95 places across England, Scotland and Wales to support the development of shared spaces, revitalise local high streets and improve public spaces.

Given the strategy was developed in consultation with communities and local people, local people are now expected to be involved in decision-making on how and where money is spent.  The final decision-making power resides with a Neighbourhood Board, led by an independent Chair.  The board includes residents, local businesses, civil society and community organisations who work in partnership with their respective local authority.

To be clear, neighbourhoods are expected to decide how to prioritise funding based on extensive community engagement across three core objectives: building stronger communities, creating thriving places and empowering people to take back control.  While this all sounds great, the cash won’t flow to local authorities until spring 2027.  Enough time for a descent period of engagement!

But no need to wait until then.  We’ve been following the democratisation of devolved funds in places well before this initiative came along.  For example, the London Borough of Newham they have been running a People Powered Places programme since 2018. This has allocated £1.6m of Community Infrastructure Levy funds evenly across neighbourhoods in Newham.  They’ve funded over 300 projects in that time.

Similarly, in Falkirk, the 2025 ‘community choices’ project distributed £100k via 22 small grants in a similar fashion.  Meanwhile, the London Borough of Southwark they are currently running a ‘THINC fund’ which will distribute £400k between Brixton and Peckham.

The point about these project examples is that you don’t need to submit a 100-page business case in order to get your concept funded.  Instead, ideas are submitted via on online portal and fully transparent to the community.  People can comment on the proposals that appear in a map or ideas board – and eventually an online vote is cast to determine which ones get funded.

The participatory approach seems to be working in places like Grimsby which are beneficiaries of Pride in Place funding. They started by crowdsourcing where something good was already happening although as yet it’s not clear what is being proposed.    

What seems to be missing is a specific pot of money for civic technology as an enabler for Pride in Place.  For example, for everyday people to run local democracy and to maintain civic infrastructure.  That might have helped with sustainability.

And don’t forget prizes are still relatively small.  The city of St Louis allocated $250 million as part of the Rams settlement fund.  Between the survey and their ideation project, over 3,500 ideas on areas of improvement were collected in just a couple of months.  Not all of that money was allocated in this way – some went to disaster relief – but it’s a transformative amount.

It’s easy to imagine a world in which revenues from fines and lawsuits could end up with the community but we’ve also long advocated for consultation over public sector investments and major spending decisions.  Let’s consider this a waypoint in a longer journey.