Place Based Social Action

  1. Funding
  2. Funding programmes
  3. Place Based Social Action

Place Based Social Action (PBSA) is a joint £4.5m programme between the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and The National Lottery Community Fund (the Fund)

Area
England
Application deadline

28/11/2017

What's it all about?

The Place Based Social Action (PBSA) Programme is a joint funded programme with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) and the National Lottery Community Fund. It provides approximately £4.5M of funding up until December 2024. The funding will create positive change by enabling people, communities, local non-statutory organisations and the statutory sector to work collaboratively to create a shared vision for the future of their place, and address local priorities through social action.

The programme will support The National Lottery Community Fund’s commitment to supporting communities to flourish by delivering the change they want to see locally. It will also support DCMS’ commitment to enable and build demand for social action to become routine in communities, and in public service design and delivery.

Social action is about people coming together to help improve their lives and solve the problems that are important in their communities. It involves people giving their time and other resources for the common good. This can be in a range of forms, from volunteering and community owned services to simple neighbourly acts.

We have commissioned an evaluation and learning contract to Renaisi to generate learning, provide capability and capacity building support to funded organisations and enable them to use our funding to improve practice, drive organisational capacity and become sustainable after funding ends. A support and development contract for the programme is provided by Locality, along with the New Economics Foundation (NEF) and Cooperatives UK (Coops) over the first four years of the programme.

Programme delivery

Over a one year period in 2018, our contractors worked with the 20 partnerships to help create a shared vision and plan setting out how high impact social action can help respond to local priorities. This was an opportunity for partnerships to receive one years’ worth of support to build and establish trusted networks locally, develop local capacity and capability, and identify potential social action opportunities.

In early 2019, based on the strength and ambition of the plans, 10 partnerships were awarded a grant of approximately £240,000 over a three year period to implement their social action plan. The support and development contractors will remain in place to deliver a bespoke package to each partnership.

The ten successful partnerships are:

  • The Onion Collective CIC, Watchet (West Somerset)
  • Hartcliffe and Withywood Community Partnership (Bristol, South West)
  • Grapevine Coventry and Warwickshire (Coventry, West Midlands)
  • Safe Regeneration (Sefton)
  • North East Lincolnshire VCSE Alliance (North East Lincolnshire)
  • Halifax Opportunities Trust (Calderdale, Yorkshire and Humber)
  • Joseph Rowntree Foundation (Hartlepool, North East)
  • Lincoln City FC Sport & Education Trust (Lincoln, East Midlands)
  • Volunteer Centre Hackney (Hackney, London)
  • Community360 (Colchester, East)

In 2022, the 5 most promising partnerships will be awarded approximately £240,000 to continue delivering their social action plan over the following 3 years, and scale up social action to build better local outcomes during and beyond the duration of this programme.

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