When Collaborate welcomed 60 public sector leaders, councillors, and community practitioners to our online session, Beyond Structures: An Ecosystem Approach to Neighbourhood Governance, the message from our panel was clear: don’t wait for permission or legislation – start where you stand.
With central government set to publish guidance on the new requirements for councils to establish “effective neighbourhood governance” under the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill, it can be tempting to wait for top-down instructions. But as our discussions with Test Valley Borough Council, Ealing Council, Vibrant Warsop, Locality, and Demos proved, a wealth of inspiration, practice, and momentum already exists.
Successful neighbourhood governance isn’t defined by rigid organisational charts or one-size-fits-all structures. Instead, it functions as a relational ecosystem – a dynamic network of partnerships, community anchors, and democratic spaces operating across various scales. Structures like parish councils or ward forums can play a role alongside other diverse spaces and engagement methods, to enable a plurality of voices, perspectives and different kinds of conversations to be included.
[I]t’s about rewiring… We had a neighborhood governance model. It was a ward forum model across different parts of the borough. But it wasn’t working and we definitely weren’t hearing from different voices…It wasn’t necessarily enabling that progression that we were hoping for and that shift of power and relationships.
— Carrie Deacon – Assistant Director of Connected Communities, Ealing Council
Driven by a fundamental belief that people should be active shapers of where they live—not passive recipients of services—relational, place-based working isn’t “soft”. It enables concrete outcomes. Demonstrating strong community engagement can unlock major capital investment, while pooling assets across public health, primary care, local authorities, and the voluntary sector builds collaborative capacity focused on prevention.
We have become trusted deliverers of new things… [External funders] knew that we had the connections with our communities through our partnership working to be able to actually have meaningful impact with those funds and we were trusted with that…This can sound airy fairy but, actually, when you start to demonstrate what you can deliver, people get behind it and things come
— Dr Kate Elliott – Andover Primary Care Network
To build a healthy local ecosystem, we must focus on culture, behaviours, and beliefs. This takes everyone – across public services and in the community. As the different examples in the event showed, the igniting spark to drive this work forward in a place may come from within the council or within the community, but it is in working together that neighbourhood governance becomes meaningful. While roles, resources and power may differ, there are common principles that everyone can adopt.
Here are four practical ways you can start making the shift right now:
1. Adopt the convener mindset
Whether you are a public servant, an elected councillor or a community leader, step back from traditional command-and-control hierarchies. Enter the work prepared to be an equal partner, listen deeply, and focus on unleashing local assets that already exist.
Our model has just evolved to a place where our councillors, I think, play the role of convener of place… they’re not seeking to impose their personal will anymore.
— Andrew Ferrier, Chief Executive, Test Valley Borough Council
We got together, we invited 18 local groups who were doing work in the area, and we did a “warts and all” exercise – what’s good, what’s great, what don’t we even talk about that we, what might we never have a chance for fixing… and we started work together from there”
— Maddy Pritchard, Director of Vibrant Warsop CIC and Community Leader at We’re Right Here
2. Build long-term collaborations
Treat collaboration as your default setting rather than an optional add-on. Invest time in building trusted, authentic relationships – not just as a means to an end for a single project, but as the core infrastructure of a healthy place. When new funding or challenges arise, you’ll already have the foundation to act quickly together.
If you have community infrastructure in your area, please use it… I would urge politicians to be quite courageous in these situations… taking a risk, trying something new, a different way of engagement… and persist.”
— Janpal Basran, Director, Southall Community Alliance
3. Be bold and experimental
Try new participatory approaches,from deliberative assemblies to hyper-local power-sharing covenants, to reach beyond the usual voices and engage those who feel excluded or left behind. Adopt a continuous learning culture where you build on what works, learn from what doesn’t, and build collective confidence.
My tip would be to just get on with it… be brave, get out there, make some decisions, create the space for those networks, build those relationships and you will get a lot out of it. And the best time to start is today…”
— Cllr Phil North, Leader, Test Valley Borough Council
4. Connect with the wider movement
You do not have to invent this alone. Share your learning, join national coalitions (such as the We’re Right Here campaign or Demos’s neighbourhood governance initiative), and tap into established networks like Locality. Telling real-world stories of what this relational work takes is essential to shaping the broader national narrative.
Be part of these types of networks, get involved when we’re out here, talk to us at Locality… There’s lots of things out there which can provide some inspiration for getting started”
— Ed Wallis, Director of Policy and Engagement, Locality
Our panellists noted the important role that national Government has in creating an enabling context for neighbourhood governance.
..all the [shifts in the] relationship between local authorities and communities, are also true for the rest of the system, how local government relates to central government… Convening, facilitating, enabling, curating, supporting…can’t just describe how councils relate to communities. Those have to be words that can be used to describe relationships throughout the whole system.
— Lucy Bush, Director of Research and Participation, Demos
Lucy highlighted the following implications for national government:
- Narrative: Craft and communicate why this matters – not mandating a way of doing things, but winning hearts and minds
- Coherence: Support coherence and logical structuring of ideas, while supporting different practice in different places
- Focus on outcomes: Align measures of success and incentives to outcomes not structures; reward the right things
- Scaling: Inspire, guide and showcase to spread the approach, rather than trying to scale through a traditional ‘roll-out’
- Plan for change: allow for enabling, organic evolution as capability and capacity evolves at a hyper-local level, not a fixed model that looks the same today as it will 10 years from now
Lucy and colleagues at cross-party think tank Demos are running a policy project to help build out the detail beneath the new statutory duty on local authorities to secure “effective governance of any neighbourhood area”. As there is not yet a clear framework for how these arrangements will operate in practice, the moment for influence is now. If you would like to share your own policy ideas, views, experience, insight or examples of innovative practice or international case-studies, Demos’ Call for Evidence is now live. You can access the form here.
Find out more
Watch: Catch up on the full event recording to hear directly from our panellists.
Read: Download Collaborate’s full or summary report Neighbourhood Governance in Practice: Lessons from Test Valley for Democratic Renewal for deeper case studies and practical frameworks.
Read Noel Hatch (Assistant Director for People and Change at Adur & Worthing Councils)’s reflections on the event here.
Thank you to everyone who joined the workshop and to our panellists:
- Cllr Phil North, Leader, Test Valley Borough Council
- Imogen Colley, Community Engagement Manager, Test Valley Borough Council
- Andy Ferrier, Chief Executive, Test Valley Borough Council
- Dr Kate Elliott, Andover Primary Care Network
- Cllr Stuart McDonald, Cabinet Member, Delivery Lead for Community Led Projects, Test Valley Borough Council
- Ed Wallis, Director of Policy and Engagement Locality
- Maddy Pritchard, Director of Vibrant Warsop CIC and Community Leader at We’re Right Here
- Carrie Deacon, Assistant Director of Connected Communities, Ealing Council
- Janpal Basran, Director, Southall Community Alliance
- Lucy Bush, Director of Research and Participation, Demos