Back in January John Houghton used the launch of the What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth’s report into estate renewal to consider what can be done to understand why so many estate renewal programmes fail to deliver benefits beyond the built environment. It is worth highlighting again. Alongside being better at listening to and involving communities, as well as public sector bodies being better at collaborating, he also concludes that we need to build a much stronger evaluation and learning culture around estate renewal. Read more here. [Source: New Start Mag, 29 January 2015]
Big Local – evaluation of the early years published
In April last year Local Trust brought in the first team of independent evaluators to assess how well things are going across the Big Local programme – to look at areas’ progress, whether Big Local is starting to make a difference, and what kinds of things have helped and hindered areas in their Big Local journeys. At heart the big question was – is Big Local working?
Find out more about the research, undertaken by NCVO in partnership with the Institute for Volunteering Research and the Office for Public Management, and read a summary of their findings here. On the same page you can also download the full report, as well as a shorter summary. [Source: Local Trust, February 2015]