Case Study: designing a Community Resource Strategy

In an environment of shrinking budgets, how can the Royal Borough of Greenwich better support its residents through the incredible, experienced, and passionate voluntary and community sector?

“Greenwich has a really nice feel. Despite the politics, the politicians do their best to look after residents. It’s frustrating and effective in equal measure, but the borough is somewhere you get out of bed to be in. When I speak to councillors 1:1, they’re deeply dedicated to the borough and residents.”

The problem

The Royal Borough of Greenwich features great cultural diversity, a strong voluntary and community sector and a host of community assets and resources. Greenwich is also a borough that has seen significant changes in the last 10 years, including a population increase of 13.6% between 2011 and 2021, the 5th largest increase in population of any London borough. This trend is set to continue, with the most significant increases in population likely to be seen in Peninsula and Woolwich Riverside wards.

The broader macroeconomic context is characterised by a distinct uncertainty and instability. The Council is grappling with the twin challenges of public spending cuts and increased demand for public services, alongside societal challenges including climate change and migration, resulting in the need for greater efficiencies, collaboration and innovation. 

The Communities team needed a better way to assess need and provision of services, and allocate its community assets (particularly community centres, libraries, leisure centres etc) in the way that can best enable the voluntary and community sector, and in turn Greenwich residents, to thrive.

Our solution

In order to capture the multi-layered complexity of the voluntary and community sector (VCS), we carried out a comprehensive needs analysis of the borough, assessing resident demographics + factors of deprivation before interviewing 30+ VCS organisations about their expertise and the challenges they face in delivering that expert support. Our work aimed to provide a data-driven understanding of the needs of residents, including the most marginalised communities, but also to identify the existing strengths and initiatives within the Council and its VCS groups. This was based on workshops, roundtables, 1:1 interviews, and street engagement across the whole of the borough.

Based on this needs analysis, our strategy seeks to recognise not only the material needs that are necessary to pull people out of poverty, but also the powerful forces of belonging, aspiration and community that Greenwich VCS groups provide. The full strategy can be found here on the Council website, and you can read a shorter overview here.

Outcomes

We identified three priority areas for the Council to focus on going forward, all of which build on excellent initiatives and ideas that are pre-existing within the VCS sector, and simply need support to come to life:

  • Continuing to build trusted relationships: the Council and VCS need to work together to make decisions that impact the Greenwich community through participatory processes where communities have their voices heard, ensuring equitable power distribution and strong relationships between the Council and community.

  • Achieving catalytic resourcing for the common good: building structures for Council and VCS organisations to work together to resource the VCS ecosystem fairly and effectively for the long term: developing an equitable,  transparent framework that guides how Council resources, including funding and Council-owned community assets, are used and accessed by VCS groups.

  • Making great assets available to the community: community assets and data need to be managed in a more transparent way, with involvement from more stakeholders, to provide quality shared public spaces for the VCS and wider community: ensuring that appropriate, safe spaces are made available, maintained and affordable for VCS and the wider community to use.