Essential but unequal: the need for social infrastructure in every place

Community spaces, groups and organisations, plus the activities they deliver, are essential for nurturing connected, confident and in-control communities. This ‘social infrastructure’ supports economically secure and resilient communities, where people care and look out for one another, and come together to make change happen.

A foundation for economic security

Social infrastructure forms the foundations from which social capital and local support systems can grow. It enables communities to build the networks, skills and power that help protect against volatility, everyday shocks and insecurity.

It’s not just money that helps people feel economically secure; having strong social connections and access to community support matters too – these are things we all need, but we don’t all have. In England, people who say their local area is badly served by community groups and spaces are more likely to feel economically insecure (51%) compared to people living in well-served areas (34%).

This does not simply reflect a story of economic deprivation. The death of local industries, sell-offs and budget cuts have led to social infrastructure in decline in many areas, but the speed and severity of this varies. While everywhere has some social infrastructure, its strength varies widely and can differ between areas with similar levels of economic deprivation.

Challenges compound in doubly disadvantaged neighbourhoods

Combining measures of socioeconomic disadvantage with measures of social infrastructure, we find 686 neighbourhoods, home to 5.7 million people, in England facing the most acute form of double disadvantage: where an area has both high levels of economic deprivation and fewer community spaces, groups and activities. Here, people are more likely to experience poor health, insecure work and lower qualifications compared to similarly economically deprived areas with stronger social infrastructure.

Worryingly, in these areas both the community workers that catalyse local groups and activities and the community spaces where people can come together are in decline.

• The number of community workers in doubly disadvantaged areas fell from 10.5 to 8.5 per 10,000 people between 2011 and 2021, whereas numbers in other areas held steady or saw modest growth.
• 20 years after opening, community spaces in the most doubly disadvantaged fifth of neighbourhoods closed at nearly triple the rate of the least doubly disadvantaged neighbourhoods (30% compared to 11%).

It is also much harder for doubly disadvantaged places to stem the impacts of decline. They face significant challenges in fundraising for community groups and activities, and it is harder for them to build community power and control by owning local assets.

• Less grant funding flows to neighbourhoods with weaker social infrastructure, with voluntary and community sector (VCS) organisations in the most disadvantaged decile typically receiving half as many small-to-medium-size grants compared to areas with the strongest social infrastructure, and those grants being on average £6,000 smaller.
• Rates of community-asset ownership in doubly disadvantaged neighbourhoods are almost one third (31%) lower than the rest of England.
• VCS organisations in areas with weaker social infrastructure are also less likely to receive large grants for asset ownership, with those operating in neighbourhoods with the strongest social infrastructure receiving almost 3 times as many of these grants.
• Neighbourhoods in the most doubly disadvantaged decile are registering Assets of Community Value at roughly a fifth the rate of neighbourhoods in the median decile (3% vs 13%), with a clear skew toward wealthier areas. This is the first step in exercising the Community Right to Buy locally valued buildings.

Overall, the very neighbourhoods that would benefit most from stronger social infrastructure struggle to draw in funding and make use of mechanisms to protect community spaces and grow community groups and activities.

A bold policy offer supporting communities to be connected, confident and in control

Past and present community policy falls short of what is required to revive social infrastructure on the scale needed. Such agendas have oscillated between universal offers that fail to ensure the most disadvantaged places actually benefit, and time-limited targeted approaches that struggle to sustain impact after programmes end.

This contributes to a pervading sense of political abandonment. We find that feeling the Government doesn’t look after the interests of people in their local area is significantly more likely in the most doubly disadvantaged neighbourhoods compared to the least, and this disillusionment appears to be playing out at the ballot box.

Our analysis of the 2026 English local elections shows social infrastructure, not deprivation alone, appears to be a stronger predictor of where anti-establishment voting was concentrated.

Between 2021-2024, Labour and the Conservatives dominated in doubly disadvantaged wards, with a combined vote share of 68%, by 2026 this collapsed to just 33%. Over this same period in these wards, the Reform and Green vote share rose from 13% to 54%. By comparison, in the least doubly disadvantaged wards the combined Labour and Conservative vote fell from 59% to 41%, and the Reform and Green vote rose from 11% to 32%.

To make sustained progress in every place, a new set of bold policy principles are needed that view government support for community spaces, groups and activities as:

• essential: not a nice-to-have
• perpetual: not time limited
• institution building: not programmatic
• trusting of communities as default: not based on conditional control
• progressively universal: not narrow targeting or assuming equal gains everywhere.

Future JRF work will develop details of policy to operationalise these principles. Ideas we are actively considering include a community endowment, held in perpetuity and invested, with returns regularly distributed to neighbourhoods with residents deciding what existing or new community infrastructure, local groups and activities to fund. And a community asset vehicle helping community organisations manage or own assets that are important to them, offering new routes to ownership and models of shared ownership for those that want it.

Emerging Government rhetoric on how the state can shift where power and resources sit, and better enable communities to take the lead, is hopeful; political narratives must be backed by substantial community power, control and resource if promises are to turn into progress for every neighbourhood, including the places that need it most.

We live in uncertain and unpredictable times. Yet, living in a place where there are local people, groups and organisations looking out for their community helps people better withstand life's shocks and feel more secure.

This report focuses on the community spaces, groups and activities that are essential for resilience, and the role they play in supporting economic security for people and communities across England.

It identifies the forces that have hollowed out this social infrastructure and the places where it is now weakest. It looks in detail at the pressures facing 2 foundational elements of social infrastructure — the community workers and local community organisations that catalyse activity, and the community buildings that create spaces for people to come together and offer opportunities for communities to develop power, agency and control.

Finally, it explores how government agendas supporting social infrastructure have fallen short, before setting out principles and policy direction for a bold new offer for communities in England. It closes with the strong political case for action.

Community spaces, groups and organisations, plus the activities they deliver, are essential for nurturing connected, confident and in-control communities. Spaces like community centres and social clubs bring people together from different backgrounds. Community groups offer shared activities and locally tailored support, like drawing classes or food pantries.

Organisations like neighbourhood associations and sports clubs keep people active and mobilise them around local concerns. All powered by the people that show up for their community, keeping spaces running, managing activities and coordinating volunteers. These community spaces, groups and activities are the ‘social infrastructure’ forming the foundations of security and resilience within neighbourhoods across the country.

Economic security has community foundations

As global economic instability contributes to rising prices at home, and record numbers are unable to afford the essentials (Belfield and Percival, 2026), it is even more vital that people are supported to withstand and recover from the shocks that can rock their lives and the stress they trigger. Alongside good jobs, affordable essentials and an adequate social security system, social infrastructure matters too.

Social infrastructure supports people to feel economically secure – able to bounce back from setbacks and everyday challenges. It also offers protection against the worst impacts of persistent volatility. Community spaces, groups and organisations make up the connective tissue through which social capital is sustained and strengthened. Invisible yet powerful, social capital both deepens familiar bonds and bridges across difference. These support networks promote protective factors associated with economic security, such as good health and wellbeing, plus higher educational attainment, skills, and earnings (Chetty et al., 2022; Wessel and Silva, 2025).

Being resilient is about more than just money, there are also social dynamics and drivers (Ibison and Hunter, 2026). Our analysis of survey data commissioned from the Nuffield Politics Research Centre examined the relationship between feeling economically secure and the strength of social infrastructure in communities across England. It found that lacking local spaces, community groups and networks of local connections are all associated with feeling economically insecure:

• people who say their local area is badly served by community groups and spaces (for example, with local clubs, societies, libraries, parks, community centres/halls, places of worship) are far more likely to feel economically insecure (51%) compared to people living in well-served areas (34%)
• people who can’t rely on their community for financial help are 1.5 times more likely to feel insecure (42%) than those who can (29%).¹

Other polling confirms that, when people need to get back on their feet, the relationships, groups and spaces that hold communities together matter alongside friends, family and money. A third (33%) of respondents select some type of community support as essential in hard times (Ibison and Hunter, 2026).

Notably, in this polling, social infrastructure was a more popular form of support than that provided by either central or local government. State support can sometimes feel impersonal, stigmatising and removed (Curtis et al., 2023; Davies et al., 2025). Community organisations, on the other hand, can reach those who may slip through the gaps of government services, as they offer help that is locally rooted, person-centred and based on trusted relationships (DCMS, 2026a).

COVID-19: a case study in community-led resilience

Communities rich in social infrastructure, capital and connection can weave safety nets of support in hard times, solidifying collective care and community resilience.

The experience of the pandemic shows the connection between community support and resilient people and places. During this time, community-led infrastructure was integral to coordinating local action and responding to community needs (Wilson et al., 2020). Communities with pre-existing trusted relationships, networks and local leaders fared better, as they were able to mobilise quicker than large institutions and adapt support to particularly vulnerable groups (Caistor et al., 2021; Lewis et al., 2023).

The strength of community leader networks, existing community activities and connections between them, feelings of community identity and having physical or virtual spaces, have all been found to be important for explaining differences between community responses to the pandemic (Local Trust, 2022a). Those that lacked social infrastructure struggled to mobilise, setting up fewer mutual aid groups and crowding in less funding, leaving local people isolated from practical support and social connection (Bear et al., 2021; OCSI, 2020).

These findings slot into wider literature about how social infrastructure — its presence or absence — shapes and mediates the extent to which communities can respond to and recover from crises. This includes studies of community responses to the Somerset Levels flood, the Grenfell fire and the Manchester Arena bombing (Goulden, 2025), as well as natural disasters in other countries (Matous, 2026; Ishiwatari et al., 2026). Community spaces, leaders, networks and groups provide a linchpin of community resilience which is vital given our current era of volatility, and the inevitable shocks that are on the horizon (Westerling and Ibison, 2026).

Building pride, reciprocity and belonging

Communities where people know their neighbours, recognise local faces and have opportunities to connect with others are more likely to develop a stronger collective identity, sense of local pride and feelings of belonging (Iqbal and Parnaby, 2022). In such cases, strong social infrastructure not only helps integrate diverse perspectives, but it also acts as a protective immunity against social breakdown (Coutts and Díaz Velásquez, 2025). Shared spaces, from sports pitches to community halls, buffer against divisive forces allowing people to come together, connect, and carry on with their lives. These are things that every neighbourhood needs.

Thriving communities are not built on homogeneity; instead, their strength comes from supporting the collective endeavour of identifying shared interests and values. This ongoing social process helps to form reciprocal relationships within which there is mutual recognition of the communal nature of living with, and alongside each other.

Social infrastructure is essential to this continuous collective negotiation, strengthening the building blocks of active citizenship, mutual care and resilience. In places where it is strongest, local people come together to make change happen, replacing any sense of entrenched decline and dissatisfaction with imbued feelings of community power, control and agency.

The essential nature of community spaces, groups and activities has been undervalued by successive governments. Many places have seen their social infrastructure be hollowed out, leaving community ties weaker and more fragile: 4 interlocking factors help to explain this deterioration. These form part of a greater national story; one of structural socioeconomic shifts and political choices. This tale will feel familiar to many — not least the millions of people who have suffered the most from its consequences.

The 4 horsemen: deindustrialisation, austerity, privatisation, centralisation

Place-based decline and the erosion of social infrastructure are not recent phenomena, and feelings of mistrust or disempowerment in communities have not emerged in a vacuum. They have been shaped by the combination of deindustrialisation, austerity, privatisation and political centralisation.

Deindustrialisation

From the mid-1960s, when the piers, pits and factories closed, so too did the social clubs, youth hubs, miners’ institutions, welfare halls and other community infrastructure that once supported them. These physical spaces not only provided valuable leisure facilities, they also served as local anchors bringing people together to share ideas, educate, organise and build social bonds (Thorpe and Braber, 2025). Yet weakened labour markets meant younger generations moved away (Industrial Communities Alliance, 2023), and the incomes of those that remained were hit hard. Many local spaces and clubs could no longer afford to keep going, as they relied on membership fees, and so they gradually collapsed (Cherrington, 2018). With fewer places to gather with others, combined with more recent technological and labour-market shifts, we have begun to lead more socially atomised lives.

Austerity

Decades later, the 2010s austerity policy agenda drove severe, real-term cuts to local government budgets. Deprived areas were most deeply affected, despite residents having greater needs, leading to uneven geographical impacts (Gray and Barford, 2018). Unprotected, non-statutory social infrastructure bore the brunt of cuts, as councils squeezed funding for community, leisure, sports and cultural facilities and services (Goodier et al., 2024).

Communities were forced to close essential infrastructure that they relied upon, leaving local social safety nets in tatters (Barford and Gray, 2022). Public funding cuts led to the closure of over 1,000 youth centres and their workers between 2010-2023 (UNISON, 2026a). Over the same period, a similar number of libraries shut, and spending on community centres and public halls fell by 39% (UNISON, 2026b; Goodier et al., 2024). Community organisations sought to fill gaps in provision. Yet as many also relied on state funding, which had become increasingly contractual and volatile, their capacity was depleted, despite rising demand for their support.

Privatisation

Local authority financial settlements never recovered to pre-austerity levels (Atkins and Hoddinott, 2026). Rising demand for services, in part driven by the very consequences of austerity itself, adds further pressure. Since 2018, 13 local authorities have declared ‘bankruptcy’, and 4 out of 5 warn they will soon become insolvent (Flinders et al., 2026; Local Government Association, 2026). Since 2018, 13 local authorities have declared “bankruptcy”, and four out of five warn they will soon become insolvent (Flinders et al, 2026) (Local Government Association, 2026).

Squeezed from both sides, many attempt to balance their books by selling off valuable publicly owned assets, with those on the brink of collapse flogging their portfolio at a greater rate (Edwards et al., 2026). From 2010 to 2023, councils sold an estimated 75,000 public assets worth £15 billion (Billingham et al., 2023). 60% planned to sell assets to meet rising costs last year, including social clubs and sports centres (Inman, 2025). In some cases, communities stripped of vital assets see them replaced by expensive alternatives (Pinner, 2026), leaving them with fewer free and accessible spaces that bring people together and support community life.

Centralisation

Decades of socioeconomic change and the retraction of community life have left many people feeling disillusioned. The country’s exceptional levels of state centralisation do little to help this, with most fiscal and spending decisions made in Whitehall. Despite devolution settlements giving more power to combined authorities, people still feel disempowered. 84% state they have no control over decisions affecting their neighbourhood and local community (We’re Right Here, 2025).

Communities feel ‘done-to’ as decisions affecting their lives are made hundreds of miles away. Many feel let down, overlooked or forgotten by those in power, eroding trust in politics. In 2024, 45% said they ‘almost never’ trust any government to place the needs of the nation above the interests of their own political party — the highest rate since the research began (NatCen, 2024). Political trust is even lower for those who are financially struggling (More in Common, 2025a).

Taken together, industrial decline, funding cuts, the sell-off of communal assets, and an overly centralised state trace the core socioeconomic and political forces that outline any map of social infrastructure today. Within these boundaries, the impact of these forces has not been felt evenly — with many people and places affected much more than others.

Places facing a double disadvantage

While everywhere has some social infrastructure, its strength varies widely and can differ between areas with similar levels of economic deprivation. However, where neighbourhoods do face the double disadvantage of high socioeconomic deprivation and weaker social infrastructure, it makes it particularly hard for people to feel connected, confident and in control.

We identify doubly disadvantaged areas by combining the English Indices of Multiple Deprivation (IMD), which measures socioeconomic disadvantage, and the Community Needs Index (CNI), which measures the availability and quality of social infrastructure. Both are available down to a small geography. Deprivation and community needs are distinct but closely connected — it is not a given that places scoring lower on the IMD will also have weaker social infrastructure. Looking at one without the other provides an incomplete picture of place-based inequalities and community life; looking at them together enables us to see where disadvantage compounds and need concentrates at a neighbourhood level (Hunter and Ibison, 2026).

Using this combined measure, we find 686 neighbourhoods in England², home to 5.7 million people, facing the most acute form of this double disadvantage (Hunter and Ibison, 2026)³. These neighbourhoods can be found in all 9 English regions, half of England’s local authorities and 45% of English parliamentary constituencies. Yet while their presence is widespread, their concentration varies. The North West has the highest number of such neighbourhoods at 179 (19% of the region’s total), while over 20% of neighbourhoods in Yorkshire and the Humber alongside the North East are doubly disadvantaged. A much smaller concentration of these neighbourhoods can be found in Southern regions.

It is people that make communities, but this can be catalysed by community development activities. Community development is an ongoing process through which communities build relationships, capabilities and collective power to shape local civic life and decisions that affect them. It is particularly important in doubly disadvantaged communities, where there is a greater need for informal, low-pressure activities to build trust, confidence and connection.

This might look like a community development worker going door to door asking residents what they like about where they live, and what needs to change before turning ideas into action; a group of neighbours being supported to transform a derelict space into a community garden; a youth worker helping kids organise local activities or a campaign.

This work, and the people who deliver it, grows community groups and activities in a neighbourhood. This can lead to a virtuous cycle where community development work increases community activity, and community activity expands and deepens community development work.

Evidence suggests that community development activity has consistent benefits for improving individuals’ wellbeing, confidence, social connections and feelings of control. It helps people build stronger informal support networks and manage day-to-day challenges (DCMS, 2026b; Torbay Community Development Trust, 2020). It also increases people’s confidence, participation, and ability to take action, maturing into a collective power base for resident-led decision making (Local Trust, 2023a; Cabinet Office, 2015; Local Trust, 2023b). It also increases people’s confidence, participation, and ability to take action, maturing into a collective power base for resident-led decision making (Local Trust, 2023a; Cabinet Office, 2015; Local Trust, 2023b).

A declining workforce in doubly disadvantaged areas

Skilled people matter for activating community development. Paid workers, volunteers, trusted local organisations, and informal leaders are all essential to this work (Local Trust, 2022b). Yet the workforce that supports community development is weakening in many of the places that need it the most.

Our analysis of the paid community workforce in England — working in either the public, private or voluntary sector — shows doubly disadvantaged areas experienced a decline in the number of workers between 2011 and 2021, relative to the local population. In other areas numbers held steady or grew modestly.

Looking at the overall pattern in 2011, the number of community workers in the most doubly disadvantaged local authority areas was 10.5 per 10,000 people. This was higher than other areas, reflecting greater need for this foundational work (Figure 2). By 2021 this had fallen to 8.5 workers, showing that provision of this support is in decline in the places that need it most.⁴

Community assets — local spaces and places — are tangible emblems of a neighbourhood’s identity that act as focal points for residents. They offer safe, non-stigmatising places for people to gather, that sit outside of statutory services or professional environments (Locality, 2023). Run by and for local people, they are warm, welcoming and accessible sites often offering low or no-cost activities that are open to all. They also provide a base from which community development work and activities can take place.

Community spaces have wider social and economic benefits. They can reduce social isolation, improve health outcomes, build skills, strengthen social cohesion, and provide inclusive employment for local people — particularly in deprived areas (Locality and Power to Change, 2026).

Community spaces closing

Across the country, community spaces are shutting their doors for good, weakening communities’ ability to connect, shape and participate in local life. Almost half of UK residents (45%) have lost access to at least 1 local community space since 2023, with the steepest losses reported in the most deprived neighbourhoods (Trussell, 2026).

While some closure of spaces is to be expected, our analysis indicates that the closure rate of community spaces has been much higher in doubly disadvantaged areas. 20 years after opening, closures in the most doubly disadvantaged fifth of neighbourhoods were nearly triple that of the least doubly disadvantaged (30% compared to 11%).

Over decades, governments of all stripes have developed interventions for tackling neighbourhood decline, with varying degrees of popularity and success. While the scale, scope and slogans have differed, each agenda builds on elements of its predecessors. None fully embodies the radical shift that is needed today.

New Deal for Communities, Big Society and Levelling Up

The New Deal for Communities (NDC) set the precedent for allocating long-term, generous budgets to hyperlocal communities. Over 10 years, the programme granted £50 million to 39 neighbourhoods.

The NDC built some positive principles, centring resident participation, community development and capacity building, and recognising the need to invest in both physical infrastructure and asset ownership, alongside social capital and community leadership (Batty et al., 2010). Residents had formal governance roles, setting local priorities and overseeing funding. However, while NDC areas generally saw more positive changes than those occurring in similarly deprived places, improvements could not be sustained after the scheme ended (Beatty et al., 2010; Krasniqi et al., 2021).

In the 2010s, the NDC ended and the Big Society agenda began. It established the Localism Act, which included landmark community rights to bid, build and challenge, providing the scaffolding for the recent English Community Right to Buy. It also launched a flagship initiative training hundreds of community organisers to work in deprived areas. However, this programme's reluctance to work through existing community structures generated friction, with local organisations criticising the duplication of activity and lack of collaboration (Fisher et al., 2016).

Big Society was fundamental in socialising the now-common rhetorical framework for communities policy, emphasising public engagement, decentralisation and empowering communities (Clegg, 2010). Yet, the push for community-led delivery and asset transfers was undermined by budget cuts, alongside the deeply flawed assumption that communities had equal capacity and resources to fill gaps in provision after state withdrawal. This created a gulf between the rhetoric of community power and self-reliance, and the practice of austerity-driven degradation (McLinden, 2025; Power, 2012).

The Levelling Up agenda was little better. Framed within the broader ‘take back control’ narrative, it promised a post-Brexit revival of national pride. Here, the Government established the Community Ownership Fund (COF) to support communities to buy local assets. However, demand for COF far outstripped supply; the fund was only able to accommodate approximately 1 in 12 of the eligible expressions of interest (Locality and Power to Change, 2026).

Rather than engineering a genuine redistribution of power, the Levelling Up agenda recentralised decision-making and prioritised ministers’ discretion. Communities navigated a maze of competitive funding pots, opaque bidding processes, and state-imposed performance metrics. The Towns Fund has drawn particular criticism for its resemblance to ‘pork-barrel politics’: the allocation of government funds to local projects primarily to benefit a politician’s constituents and secure their political support (Hanretty, 2021).

While the NDC showed signs of early progress, establishing the principles of long-term, place-based investment, resident-led governance, and capacity building, the policy frameworks that followed did not live up to their accompanying political rhetoric.

Pride in Place: a path well-trodden

The current policy agenda both converges and diverges from past approaches. The most significant development is the Pride in Place programme, introduced under the Starmer Government.

As a time-limited, area-based initiative, Pride in Place offers £5.8 billion to 284 communities across the UK over 10 years. It moves away from flawed competitive funding pots and recognises the need to target investment into doubly disadvantaged places, using this metric as part of the resource allocation method.

Pride in Place follows in the footsteps of the New Deal for Communities in establishing Neighbourhood Boards who oversee how the funding is spent. But the programme’s ambitions go further, mandating every Neighbourhood Board to be community-led by the third year. There is also a positive rhetorical shift from programme management to learning and support, with a Network for Neighbourhoods offering expert advice and peer learning.

However, there are also large gaps in its reach. Our earlier work revealed that 420 doubly disadvantaged places — home to 3.5 million people — are missing out on funding (Hunter and Ibison, 2026). These gaps risk compounding regional inequality, with Northern regions having the lowest proportion of funded doubly disadvantaged neighbourhoods, despite higher shares of these places (Hunter and Ibison, 2026).

Pride in Place also risks replicating the dissonance of the Big Society era, assuming capacity rather than sufficiently investing in it. Despite Pride in Place funded neighbourhoods having some of the least active and engaged communities (Hunter and Ibison, 2026), they have less than 1 year to develop governance structures and co-produce Neighbourhood Plans. It is unclear whether current levels of capacity-building support will be sufficient to realise the ambitions of community leadership within such tight timelines. More broadly, within the context of declining trust and growing fragmentation, it may be much harder to kickstart the motor of local action in places with deep-rooted cynicism.

Ownership and control for the few

The Government’s broader communities policy agenda fails to rebalance power and rebuild social infrastructure at the scale needed, offering good intentions but piecemeal support.

The Community Wealth Fund is a positive shift given its focus on building the foundations for community-led decision making, community development, community anchor organisations and capacity building. However, it too represents a familiar example of investment for a select few over a finite period, granting £175 million to a cohort of doubly disadvantaged places, again over 10 years.

Equally, while the Community Right to Buy and expanded definition of Assets of Community Value are welcome legislative changes, resource for community ownership has shrunk. The £61 million Community Right to Buy fund is 40% smaller than the previous £150 million Community Ownership Fund (COF); this much-reduced pot will fail to meet the increased demand for asset ownership that improved community rights may trigger (Locality and Power to Change, 2026).

Evidence from the COF indicates that communities in more deprived areas found engaging with the process more challenging, struggling to assemble the information required for a successful application (The Co-operative Party, 2024). If there is no targeted support for accessing the Community Right to Buy Fund, there is a risk that wealthier, more capable communities will hoover up the limited resource.

Devolution beyond combined authorities and town halls

Past approaches to communities policy have oscillated between universal offers that fail to ensure the most disadvantaged places actually benefit, and time-limited targeted approaches that struggle to sustain impact after the programme ends.

The fluctuating nature of funding for social infrastructure also makes it harder to build long-term community institutions. Regardless of their universal or targeted design, time-limited government funds are always hostage to political cycles and changing priorities. In the years it takes for communities to feel confident and capable to deliver under one set of rules, the political machine churns out a new batch of ministers, strategies and procedures. Policy has therefore been stop-start, characterised by shifting eligibility requirements, funding logics, design principles and success criteria. The result is communities constantly having to reorient themselves around new priorities or programmes, and rebuild the momentum to jump through new state-designed hoops.

Yet, there are emerging glimmers of hope. The Burnham administration’s recentring of devolution as a key policy priority creates an opportunity to push power into the hands of communities, in addition to combined authorities and town halls. He recognised this when Mayor of Greater Manchester, calling for a politics of community that is rooted in collective power, mutual care and democratic renewal that starts with people and place (Burnham 2025). Recognising the need for a radical shift to where power and resource sit is the first step towards embedding public activation and participation as central components of civic life (Cabinet Office, 2026).

Neighbourhood governance requirements are a further encouraging sign that local people may soon have more control and decision-making power; this a popular idea with the public. Most people feel it is important to be able to personally influence decisions affecting their local area, but few feel able to do so (DCMS 2026c). Almost 3 quarters (70%) thought that residents and community groups have the ideas and skills to improve the local community. And where community organisations exist, the public trust them most to deliver positive change in their neighbourhoods (We’re Right Here, 2025).

To build on this promising direction of travel, the Government must ensure that support for communities is essential to a national agenda, not an add-on that can be cut or redesigned without warning. Communities need to be backed by meaningful resource and capacity — a new set of policy principles lay the groundwork for this shift.

A new set of principles

Social infrastructure is not what simply emerges out of positive social conditions, it is a crucial component of what shapes and drives such conditions in the first place.

However, the incremental and fluctuating nature of past and present communities policy means it is not fit for purpose. We can do policy differently and rewire how government approaches social infrastructure, so it is an integral part of what the state enables and supports.

Policy reform that cements government backing for community spaces, groups and activities must be underpinned by a new set of principles that see social infrastructure as:

• essential, recognised by government as an indispensable foundation that keeps communities secure and resilient, not a nice-to-have add-on that comes and goes on a political whim or is the first to be cut when budgets are tight
• perpetual community-controlled resource, embedded everywhere as the norm, not time-limited and finite, based on fixed-term funding that means activity is stop-start and momentum lost
• prioritising (re)building social capital, local capacity and community institutions that are adaptive, sustainable and deeply anchored in the neighbourhoods they serve, not 10-year cycles of programmes undervaluing the role of community workers, volunteers and control of assets in sustaining success
• trusting communities as a default way of working, enabling them to build power and collectively manage resources, not based on conditional control that is mediated through government-designed success metrics or ministerial discretion
• progressively universal, where no neighbourhood misses out, but support is weighted where need is greatest, not narrow targeting or assuming all will benefit equally from the same policy offer.

Future JRF work will set out details of policy that would operationalise these principles and mark a much-needed shift in direction.

Ideas we are actively considering include the creation of a significant community endowment, which is held in perpetuity and invested. The returns would be distributed to local neighbourhoods for residents to decide what existing or new local groups and activities to invest in, and what community infrastructure or institutions — like community workers and anchor organisations — to build or strengthen.

A one-off government investment could lever in funds from other sources, such as philanthropic organisations, catalysing ongoing financial, social and communal returns. It would create a permanent community-controlled settlement for social infrastructure in all neighbourhoods, with support weighted to those that need it most.

To increase support for community control of assets, there could be a new offer to directly assist those communities who wish to move towards ownership, but who face the most hurdles. For example, a community asset vehicle could help enable community organisations manage or own assets that are important to them, offering more time, flexible capacity plus high-intensity advocacy and expertise so that they have the skills and capacity needed for ownership or management.

The vehicle could also offer new routes to, and models of, ownership such as shared ownership or rent-to-own, sharing some of the risks inherent to asset management, making it an option for the many and not the few.

Such policy ideas would raise standards and expectations for community-led social infrastructure across the country, disrupting the current system of short-term, fragmented and piecemeal funding, plus supporting and de-risking community asset ownership for those that want it, but who are furthest from this goal.

A lack of community spaces, groups and activities does not solely impact an individual’s sense of economic security, or a community’s capacity for resilience. There are wider political ramifications that make action urgent.

Communities where people do not feel connected, capable and in control of their lives are less likely to have developed the protective social fabric that buffers against polarisation and division. Nearly 70% of people feel ignored by politicians, with this figure increasing for those with the greatest financial insecurity (Co-operative Party and HOPE Not Hate, 2025). This political disillusionment fuels and is fuelled by a rising sense of social detachment, with people on lower incomes having lower levels of trust in, and connection to, others (More in Common, 2025).

This sense of political abandonment is heightened in doubly disadvantaged places. Our analysis of data commissioned from the Nuffield Politics Research Centre finds that, compared to those in the wealthiest areas with the strongest social infrastructure, people living in doubly disadvantaged places are significantly more likely to say that government does not tend to look after the interests of people in their local area. This pattern remains after controlling for a range of individual characteristics, personal circumstances and regional differences.⁷

With fewer spaces and groups that make it possible for people to come together, there is a sense that civic life is being hollowed out and that there are fewer opportunities and incentives to engage with others (More in Common, 2025). The loss of these connective structures affects how and where people encounter one another, eroding communities’ capacity to mobilise and express everyday solidarity (Hilhorst, 2025). We have seen the effects of this atomisation and dislocation play out in both the physical and virtual worlds.

They have also played out at the ballot box. Many have made the argument that people living in economically deprived places may be more likely to shift towards challenger parties (Rodríguez-Pose, 2018). Indeed, in the 2026 local elections in England, people living in doubly disadvantaged places turned away from the 2-party system in greater numbers.

Yet, social infrastructure, not deprivation alone, may have been a stronger predictor of where this anti-establishment voting concentrated. While the challenger party advantage was 14 points in the most income deprived wards, it rose to 22 points in the wards with the weakest social infrastructure.

Strengthening social infrastructure in every postcode must be a priority for any government set on making progress on economic security, social dislocation, and the fracturing of community ties. This is in all our interests.

Investment in community spaces, groups and organisations — plus the people who run them — is an essential component of supporting economically secure and resilient communities everywhere. This would reverse decades of managed decline that has left millions feeling disconnected from their neighbours and their neighbourhood.

This doesn’t mean launching a new programme, but radically redesigning policy principles and rewiring the state to transfer resources and control out to communities. It means putting community power into practice permanently — strengthening the muscles of collective decision-making in every place. It means trusting that communities know best what they need and have — or can develop — the skills it takes to lead. It means getting comfortable with the fact that this work is never neat, linear or sequential; it can be messy, frenetic, even conflictual. But with the right conditions, community energy for change can snowball. There are promising signals from the Government that change is underway. But we cannot afford to take our foot off the gas.

1. JRF analysis of Nuffield Economic Insecurity Survey, Wave 4 2026. N = 7,581 adults in England aged 18+. YouGov weights used for national representativeness. Economic insecurity is measured by asking people: ‘How worried are you about your and your family’s economic security?’ where answers can range from 0 = ‘Not at all worried’ (maximum security) to 10 = ‘Very worried’ (maximum insecurity). We define those who gave a score of 7-10 as ‘insecure’. 
   ‘Badly served by community groups and spaces’ includes respondents rating their area ‘very’ or ‘fairly badly’ served by the community groups. 
   ‘Can’t rely on their community for financial help’ includes respondents who either strongly disagreed, or disagreed that they could rely on the local community financially if needed. ‘Financial help’ can be interpreted as an additional source of income (such as support from people in the local community if wages, social security or other sources of income don’t go far enough).
2. Neighbourhoods are defined using the mid-level census geography known as a Middle Super Output Area (MSOA).
3. We combine measures of socio-economic deprivation (2019 IMD) and weak social infrastructure (2023 CNI) at the MSOA level to characterise neighbourhoods, giving equal weight (50:50) to each measure. We classify the top 10% of neighbourhoods in this combined ranking as doubly disadvantaged, representing places with the greatest combined deprivation and community need.
4. Here, a local authority is considered to have seen a change if the number of community development workers per 10,000 residents has changed by more than 1. Our analysis considers the number of community development workers living in a local authority, who could work for a range of organisations across the public and third sector, within or outside of their area. Given the importance of community roots and deep local knowledge in relation to community development practice, place of residence is considered a suitable proxy for place of work.
5. JRF analysis of OCSI, 2023 CNI - Density of Community Owned Assets component. This includes data from: Power to Change, the Community Land Trust Network, Co-operatives UK, Plunkett Foundation, Locality and Keep it in the Community. Community-owned assets divided by the number of people living inside or within 1 km of the local area boundary. The rate is expressed per 100,000 population. Figures are compiled using data from Power to Change, the Community Land Trust Network, Co-operatives UK, Plunkett Foundation and Locality and Keep it in the Community. We calculated this figure by dividing the mean density in doubly disadvantaged places (564) by the mean density in the rest of England (819), showing a difference of 69%, or 31% less.
6. Funders include Architectural Heritage Fund, Arts Council England, Crowdfunder, Garfield Weston Foundation, Mercers' Charitable Foundation, Mercers' School Memorial Trust, Sport England, The Clothworkers' Foundation, The National Lottery Community Fund, The National Lottery Heritage Fund, The Pilgrim Trust, The Tudor Trust, True Colours Trust, Wolfson Foundation.
7. JRF analysis of Nuffield Economic Insecurity Survey, Wave 4 2026. N = 5,817 adults in England aged 18+. YouGov weights used for national representativeness. JRF derived double disadvantage measure (50:50 combination of CNI and IMD deciles) was attached to each respondent via their MSOA. An ordinal logistic regression model was fit using responses to the question ‘How closely does the government look after the interests of people in your local area’ as the outcome variable (people who responded ‘don’t know’ were dropped). Individual characteristics accounted for in the model include age, gender, disability status, degree holder, mortgage owner, insecure job, childcare duties, currently has debt, gross household income, whether they have savings, and the labour-market type of the local authority in the neighbourhood.

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Thank you to Antonia Antrobus-Higgins for their support with research and analysis, and to Naomi Southwell and Sophie Anderson for their support with writing and editing.

If you are using this document in your own writing, our preferred citation is: 

Ibison, Y. Hunter, S. Tims, S. Casey, R. Westerling, J. Schmuecker, K. (2026) Essential but unequal: the need for social infrastructure in every place. York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation.