With Keir Starmer’s Labour government facing testing times – rocked by external geopolitical pressures and a internal errors like the Peter Mandelson scandal, and facing challenges on its right and left flanks from Reform and the Greens, its actual policymaking often seems to go undiscussed.
That policymaking includes a string of actions which feed into its ambition to double the size of the co-operative and mutual economy. One of those policies is Pride In Place (PiP), which also supports its efforts to devolve power, by sharing up to £5bn across nearly 250 areas across the UK.
Each of the chosen areas will receive up to £20m of funding and support over the next 10 years to make long-term improvements that residents want.
A successor to the previous Conservative government’s levelling up agenda, it aims to revive struggling local economies, and has received a broad welcome from democratic economy organisations, including the co-op movement.
But Frances Northrop, head of community economic power at the New Economics Foundation, who has worked with Co-operatives UK on a number of place-based initiatives, has some reservations.
“I see the what Pride in Place is trying to do,” she said, “and after austerity it is lovely to see some areas getting this money. But my concern is that the handover of power to the grass roots is not going to happen in some of these places.”
Community-led neighbourhood boards are being created to handle the funds in each area, but, warns Northrop: “Some of this boards, I’m hearing, are in the image of the local council – they have the same biases. You try to transition power away from the council but that culture stays.”
With much of the money going to the North, Northrop is concerned that policymakers misunderstand how power works in the region.
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“The people who shape policy, the people who advise them, are not working class people and they are not northerners,” she says. “There are different power structures in some of these areas – whether it’s party political groups, or business people with a lot of power who have filled the void the state has left. A lot of power is invested in people who are not community-focused.”
The result, she has found on previous projects, can mean male-dominated processes which fail to address local issues – “who owns the assets, how are they being managed, how the money can enable more good stuff to happen”.
Posting on LinkedIn, Northrop cited concerns from a resident in one PiP area that their local council is appointing the chair of the neighbourhood board, and inviting members of community interest companies with links to the authority to apply. This could lead to a sense of further disenfranchisement, she fears.
It’s a far from simple task, with many areas lacking any infrastructure for power outside the local authority, and it being politically difficult for Westminster to cut local government out of the picture. But if control is to be given away, an answer is needed.
“The co-op movement specifically has a role to play in being more vocal,” Northrop tells Co-op News. “This should be seen as a project to give economic power to communities.
“We also need to build the power of grassroots groups who aren’t co-operative, but are the ones with closest contact to local people, and have the most energy to deal with it.”
The water may be muddied further after the local elections, with a predicted wave of Reform and Green successes. How this will play out is unclear, says Northrop.
“It might mean more chaos and less of a stronghold by paternal old councils – that remains to be seen, but we need to be thinking about it. The Greens are saying everything we’re saying – but, like Reform, have no idea what they’re going to hit when they take power, and council officers aren’t going to say what they want them to.
“We need to encourage them to see the money spent how communities want it spent.”
And lessons can be learned as PiP plays out, she hopes – just as PiP learned from devolution work done by the Conservatives, which saw a lot of money go to consultancies.
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“They learned from that, they really did think about it and spoke to organisations like local trusts,” says Northrop. “But in the future they need to speak to people actually in the places, rather than the mediators, and find a way to bypass local government in a way they still holds local government accountable to what’s happening on the ground.”
Asked by Co-op News about PiP, James Wright, policy and development lead at Co-operatives UK, said: “We’ve heard reports of goings on similar to those raised by NEF, and share their concerns. But this is a problem with implementation of PiP in local areas, rather than a fundamental design feature of PiP.
“In fact, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) is really clear in the PiP Strategy and Prospectus that councils need to establish genuinely inclusive, community-led governance structures, that reach beyond the usual suspects – and then hand power to these structures.
“A co-operative model of PiP governance, combined with true community organising and empowerment, provides a practicable solution for doing this.”
Co-operatives UK is represented on the PiP Expert Reference Panel and also involved in a design sprint on community-led governance.
“We’re working to help ensure the issues NEF calls out are addressed,” said Wright, “by providing practical solutions.”
Those solutions also include a toolkit, funded by The Co-operative Bank, that will help Neighbourhood Boards explore how and why they could adopt a co-operative structure.
It will cover governance options and legal structures, with practical examples of existing organisations. In addition, the will provide a broader guide on co-operative solutions for community-led development
Co-operatives UK is also urging its members and the wider movement to be proactive. James Wright said: “Our members should look at getting involved in any PiP activity in their areas, like getting involvement in Neighbourhood Boards.”
A spokesperson for the Centre for Local Economic Strategies said: “We recognise many of the concerns of partners and activists but there is still a lot to like in the intent behind PiP. At its best, the programme is a government‑backed invitation for communities to meet their own needs by building local institutions such as co-operatives, community benefit societies and community land trusts.
“That represents a significant opportunity for anyone interested in a more cooperative, locally‑rooted political economy – one where public investment is used to build local assets, create good local jobs, and support locally owned businesses and VCSE organisations, rather than leaking out of places as it does through conventional regeneration models.
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“Local authorities are operating under immense pressure, and the temptation to fall back on familiar, top‑down approaches is understandably strong. The programme arrived quickly, and councils are now under pressure from Whitehall to put structures in place before they have had the space to work out what good governance really looks like locally.
“The challenge now is to help councils get this right — through better governance, programme design and evaluation — rather than defaulting to business as usual. That means putting genuine power in local hands. There are real risks around how representative neighbourhood boards currently are, and we are seeing both positive and problematic approaches across the country. It’s crucial that local authorities are held to the programme’s own guidance, which makes clear that neighbourhood boards are a transitional arrangement and should give way to genuinely community‑led delivery models by around year three.”
Plunkett UK, which represents rural community businesses, has expressed disappointment that rural areas have been neglected by PiP.
“We also have questions as to how it will be delivered in practice,” it added. “Whilst communities benefit from the cash and quite rightly know what their needs are, they do also need organised facilitation to enable democratic community decision-making to really dig deep and work out identified needs of the whole community. and how best to respond to those. rather than it being a subgroup of the community taking control.
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“We would hope some of these questions will be taken seriously and that government will ensure that the programme is managed and supported by organisations who can best enable community empowerment.”
A spokesperson for MHCLG said: “Pride in Place is built on the principle that local people know their communities best and programmes are community-led
“This is why neighbourhood boards are made up of local residents who will decide how funding is invested, supported by their MP and local authority.”
