Community Involvement

Sponsored by


Cramlington Town Council

Community at heart

Community is at the heart of the work carried out by Cramlington Town Council as it focuses on engagement with residents, listening to their concerns and bringing people from across the town together through a number of community and youth actions. With community connections at its core, the Council created the role of Community Manager in 2020. This has enabled the creation of several Community Led Hubs, Cramlington Heritage Hub, a Community Allotment, an Neurodiversity Network, a Wildspaces Hub, an Anti-social Behaviour Partnership and more...

Durham CC

Horden together

Horden Together is an innovative, place-based initiative led by Durham County Council which brings together partners to collaborate with local people and groups to address local priorities in Horden, one of the most deprived areas in the country. Horden Together has delivered positive change by empowering the local community, as well as improving the futures of the most disadvantaged individuals living in Horden. Community is at the heart of our approach and by engaging and working with local people Horden Together is creating a place where everyone can thrive and live happy, healthy and connected lives.

Ealing LBC

Let’s go Southall – fostering a collaborative ecosystem where everyone’s contribution matters

Let’s Go Southall is a community led initiative to get Southall more physically active. Driven by Ealing Council, we have brought together community groups, businesses, faith groups, charities a volunteers to help people in Southall to get moving. Southall has a real sense of community and a strong entrepreneurial spirit. We’re harnessing that passion and energy to help the community develop its own long-term solutions, make lasting changes to their lifestyle. It’s a co-designed approach that empowers Southall residents through providing skills, knowledge and resources to make a lasting change, based on true human insight. It is truly transformative.

Kensington and Chelsea RBC

Co-designing service standards

Kensington and Chelsea residents and staff have co-designed Service Standards which are ensuring residents receive the best possible service when they contact us. Their energy, enthusiasm and talents led to an output that was co-designed and tested with borough residents before being adopted. Residents said: “Our Council makes living in the borough better in ways which are too often unremarked. Sometimes it doesn’t fulfil its potential, very occasionally it fails grievously. We hope that setting clear standards mean residents can speak and be heard better, to the benefit of all in making Kensington and Chelsea a good place to live.

Lancaster City Council

A collaborative approach to addressing the climate crisis through planning

Lancaster City Council and Lancaster University collaborated on the project Placemaking for Young Adults to engage young people in local plan development. The project addressed the underrepresentation of young people in planning processes and incorporated their visions and ambitions. Through engagement events, policymakers worked side-by-side with young adults to develop a placemaking framework and co-envision the future of Lancaster District.

Lewisham LBC

Streets trees for living

Lewisham Council has been working in partnership with Lewisham based charity Street Trees for Living to plant street trees since 2012. Together we now plant over 700 street trees a year across Lewisham. The involvement of our residents is key to our tree planting projects and our extensive number of over 450 community volunteers in Lewisham has directly led to our extremely successful outcomes. We have a very high new tree survival rate of 96% in Lewisham compared to a national survival rate of 70% (Tree Talk). This is the measurable difference that community involvement makes! 

North Northamptonshire Council

Team LIVE

LIVE is an enabling service that supports adults with complex learning disabilities work towards their learning, independence, volunteering, and employment goals. Promoting positive risk taking, smashing glass ceilings, and challenging stereotypes and myths is definitely our thing and since we first started in 2015 with only a headline to work with, we have harnessed our customers potential and creativity to develop and deliver some incredible community projects. We have made and continue to make a difference to hundreds of people across north Northamptonshire, always looking for how we can increase our reach and scope, only ever believing that we can.

Nottinghamshire CC

Communities connected – community flood signage scheme

Nottinghamshire County Council’s commitment to community involvement within flood risk management is second to none, as we acknowledge its significant importance in developing community flood resilience. Our Community Flood Signage Scheme (CFSS) is an excellent example of this and to our knowledge is the only one of its kind nationally. It allows trained members of the community to close roads during flood events to prevent flood damage from bow waves. We now have over 250 community volunteers across 18 area as part of the scheme, whose involvement has dramatically increased flood resilience for their local area.

Peterborough City Council

School streets initiative

Peterborough School Streets Initiative, has made schools safer and increased active travel. We have work with schools in busy urban locations to close streets to vehicles access during school drop off and pick up times, this has allowed children to safely walk or cycle to school. Many locations previously had issues with double parking, parking on double yellow lines and on pavements making it unsafe for children accessing their schools. Following this initiative we have seen more schools signing up to the scheme and increase use of active travel options, offering both safe access to schools and health benefits.

Redbridge LBC

#Thisability – Disability Awareness Festival 2023

There is no better example of community involvement than London Borough of Redbridge’s Disability Awareness Festival in the Park. Designed in partnership with the community, featuring musical acts from the community and involving providers who support the community, community involvement is the at the heart of our annual festival. People who came or were involved in the festival felt they belonged, that there was somewhere for them and where they could get information tailored to support them. We believe we are the only local authority to do a festival like this which makes its community involvement unique and award worthy!