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Community Power is about shifting power and resources to communities to enable them to have much greater influence and control over the plans, decisions, and public services that affect their lives. 

It’s about giving people the power and opportunity to use their lived experience and their local knowledge to decide what happens to the place they live in and the improve the services they rely on.

It's about working together with people to create solutions to the things that matter to them, giving power back to where it belongs in communities. 

At its heart, community power is based on the principle that communities have a wealth of knowledge and assets within themselves, which if understood and nurtured by practitioners and policymakers, has the potential to strengthen resilience and enable prevention-focused public services, and create community led systems of public services.

What does Community Power look like?

  • Budgeting & decision-making

    Allowing residents to directly decide how a portion of a public budget is spent in their neighbourhood, ensuring investment meets local priorities.

  • Co-production of services

    Designing public services with users rather than just delivering for them, shifting from top-down to bottom-up, such as in social care or youth services.

  • Asset transfers & ownership

    Communities taking ownership of local assets or amenities, such as public buildings or spaces, or community centres from closure.

  • Residents assemblies & juries

    Decision-making bodies involving residents in policy. Local authorities creating resident panels to discuss complex issues like climate change or transport, such as in Camden. 

  • Community rights to challenge

    Using the "Right to Bid" to take over community assets or using "Community Covenants" to formalise partnerships between residents and local government. 

Key aspects of Community Power

Empowerment

Providing tools, information, and opportunities to local groups to strengthen their ability to make changes. Builds residents' confidence, autonomy, trust, and sense of belonging.

Local Knowledge and Locally Driven

Recognizing that community members understand their own needs better than anyone else. Utilizes the unique insights, assets, and skills within a community to address needs.

Collective Action

Fosters collaboration between residents, local government, and other organizations to tackle issues like housing, health, and the environment.

Asset-Based

Focusing on the existing strengths and skills within a community to solve problems.

Small Group Power

Believing in the capacity of small, committed groups to initiate significant, lasting change. 

Greater Influence

Communities have a strong say in local plans, budgets, and services.

Shift in Service Delivery

Moves public services from a top-down, expert-led model to collaborative, community-led approaches.

The Impacts of Community Power

Enhanced Health and Wellbeing

Community-led approaches can improve health outcomes, and the social wider determinates of health; from well-established self-sustaining groups to innovative community-led approaches, with studies showing that areas with high community power experience better health, including a higher proportion of residents reporting feeling connected to where they live, and a reduced demand on public services.

Generate financial savings

There is growing evidence that investing in community power approaches can generate greater impact for existing spend and save money in the longer-term.

Strengthened Social Cohesion and Resilience

By fostering local, grassroots connections, community power builds trust and resilience. The common understanding and social ties that are necessary for cohesion cannot be imposed in the abstract from the top-down level. Involving people in decision making, alongside supporting them with resources and wider social infrastructure, can enable community action to improve wellbeing and resilience locally, allowing for more effective, tailored responses to local crises and needs.

More Responsive Local Services

Services that reflect local needs, such as community-owned high streets or tailored bus routes, are more efficient and effective than top-down solutions.

Increased Democratic Trust

Involving residents in local, deliberative, and participatory decision-making strengthens democracy, participation and boosts trust. Deliberative and participatory methods can be used to navigate complex socio-economic challenges and to strengthen legitimacy of decision-making. It is at the local level that this dialogue and engagement can be most meaningfully realised.

Economic Empowerment

Community ownership of assets, such as buildings and spaces, allows for the retention of wealth within neighbourhoods, promoting local economic stability and reducing reliance on external funding. 

Embed prevention and early intervention in public services

Drawing on the capabilities and capacities of communities, can create a route to more sustainable and prevention focused public services.