Community participation

Supporting and enabling inclusive and resilient community participation

We have learnt a lot about where we need to focus future resources to support and enable inclusive and resilient community participation thanks to the great involvement of local people and community groups in November's survey:

Working for positive change in your community

More than 90 people took part in the survey - sharing nearly 150 personal stories about including and involving others and overcoming challenges, and 200 wishes for the future. In addition, we carried out 15 hours of interviews, observation with community leaders and support organisations to gather further insight.

In December, we shared the early findings from the survey over two sessions at The Shoreham Centre. Survey participants, grassroots community leaders and support organisations came together to make sense of the data and identify key areas for future focus together with our councillors.

Over the two sessions we identified four principles to guide the future focus of our support for community participation and enterprise:

root future support in people and places
relationships are the engine of change
experiment with practical action using a 'test and learn' approach
protect and strengthen volunteering, community spaces and support

You can read all of the insights from this discovery work with community participants here:

Community participation discovery research (February 2025) (6,993KB)

What's new?

To respond to the needs and wishes set out in the discovery report we are now commissioning a new model of infrastructure support for 2025 to 2028.

The focus of the new infrastructure will be on:

involving and including more diverse groups of people in neighbourhood action and community participation
developing the use of digital tools to unlock connection, collaboration and sharing of resources in the neighbourhood and beyond
developing healthy democratic spaces where residents and communities can work with elected representatives for positive change at the neighbourhood, local and regional levels

For full details see:

Community Catalyst - Tender Specification (1,421KB)

What's next?

In February 2025, we began the tender process to appoint a partner who will develop the new infrastructure model from July 2025. We will keep you updated on the outcome of this process and next steps on this page.

In the meantime, we will be working with Community Works (our current infrastructure partner), to understand the impact of the change and how best to transition support for local voluntary and community groups as we move to a new infrastructure model.