A new way of regenerating the local communities and their economies

The Institute for Community Studies has launched the report ‘Why don’t they ask us. The role of communities in levelling up’ which shows that current approaches to regeneration and economic transformation are not useful for the majority of local communities and their economies in the UK.

The report aims to demonstrate a new approach to mapping and co-designing stronger local economies for communities.

In the document, we can find that interventions have consistently failed to address the most deprived communities and the majority of ‘macro funds’ and economic interventions have not involved communities in a sustainable way.

The focus of interventions typically concentrates on a small number of approaches, which risks missing crucial dimensions of local need, opportunity and agency, and reinforcing gaps between the national and the hyper-local.

Where funds and actions have had higher levels of community involvement, these have typically been disconnected from the structures where decisions are taken, undermining their aim of building community power into local economic solutions.

Recommendations

The document makes recommendations to government such as a new levelling up commission, the creation of new locally led partneships and a more equitable distribution of community asset ownership.

You can take a look at the full report.