July – September 2020 As your Big Local Rep, every three months I share my thoughts on local area progress with you as residents and with the central team managing the national programme. Your comments and thoughts are always welcome. A strong and committed partnership “Never doubt that
As your Big Local Rep, every three months I share my thoughts on local area progress with you as residents and with the central team managing the national programme. Your comments and thoughts are always welcome. Big Local is half way through. An excellent report charting
Local Trust gives the thumbs up to our review of the current plan ending in April Local Trust looks at how we’ve reviewed our existing plan before we can submit and have accepted our latest one due to start in April. Comments were very positive. Local
Local Trust has announced additional funding for all 150 areas taking part in the Big Local programme, including Allenton. Big Local areas will each receive an extra £105,000 on top of the £1 million already committed to helping make their communities even better places to live.
Allenton Big Local provided £2,500 of Community Chest funding to the Brigden Allotment Association to allow them to install a toilet block at the site. The facility will be used by allotment holders and visitors to the site, including children during school visits.
Local Trust wanted to capture the power of Big Local and celebrate some of the great work taking place in the 150 Big Local areas across England. Working with film production company Panda Media, Local Trust visited Allenton and South Bermondsey to film residents and partnership group members in a bid to tell some of the amazing Big Local stories that have unfolded so far.
On 7 December members of the Allenton Big Local Partnership Group attended a Locally Trusted Organisations and Big Local Partnerships learning and networking event at The Edge in Sheffield.
The day provided a useful opportunity to meet and learn from residents and workers in other Big Local areas. The programme for the day included an update from Local Trust, followed by a series of workshops and information sharing sessions on topics such as financial management, collaboration, organising and facilitating meetings, working with volunteers and managing workers.
Allenton Big Local was one of 20 Big Local areas chosen to participate in a piece of research conducted by Resources for Change on behalf of Local Trust. The aim of the research was to:
“Capture the impact, achievements and learning of some of the earliest plans to be endorsed to demonstrate what the Big Local model has been able to achieve and draw out learning for other Big Local areas moving into delivery. “
Additionally, the researchers were tasked with finding out how each of the Big Local areas they talked to were measuring the impact of their activities.
Allenton Big Local is pleased to report that our second plan, covering the period 1 April 2016 to 31 March 2019, has been approved by Local Trust.
We’re now into year three of our ten year Big Local project, and have already funded and supported a number of great activities that are helping to bring about change and make Allenton a better place to live.
Allenton Big Local is about to enter Year 3 of a 10 year investment period. As we developed our plan for April 2016 to March 2019, we reflected on and reviewed our activities to get a better understanding of the impact Big Local is having on the local community. We also monitor projects on an ongoing basis through management reports and by talking to delivery partners and the people who are benefiting from activities. The reports are shared on our website alongside case studies and stories of change, as well as through our newsletters and on social media.
The Partnership Group met in January to review the first year of the Allenton Big Local plan. The session was aimed at checking progress against objectives, assessing the effectiveness of activities, and identifying action points for the second year of the project. The group also reviewed changes that had taken place locally during the last year, and revisited the project vision and themes to check that they still met the needs of the local community.
An annual review report will now be submitted to the Local Trust that will allow funding to be released for Year 2 of the project.
These last three months have been busy in running ABL and doing things to deliver on the plan’s priorities.
The partnership has continued to meet monthly and has a strong core of residents and workers bringing commitment and leadership. There has been a change in plan co-ordinator, with Kim Bell moving on and Jane Bettany taking over. Jane is already a member of the partnership, focusing on the news hub and communications and so knows the workings of the partnership and the plan very well. This has enabled a smooth transition.
Here’s a great article which has just been published online by Positive News. It talks about Big Local as a “bold approach to regeneration, investing over ten years in communities which have been overlooked for funding in the past and, most radically, letting residents hold the £1m purse-strings.”
“Resident decision-makers have gained confidence in public speaking, accounting and community consultation.”
“For most people in these areas, this is the first time they have ever experienced this degree of control over so much money.”