No national capacity institution for neighbourhood governance and resident leadership

From April 2026, around 379 Pride in Place neighbourhood boards begin spending up to £20m each, and the 2026 Act obliges councils to establish neighbourhood governance arrangements. The infrastructure that trained resident leaders is disappearing at the same moment. Local Trust, whose Community Leadership Academy supported leaders across 150 Big Local areas and helped mobilise more than 6,000 first-time volunteers, winds down in 2026. The government's community organiser training programmes ended years ago. Community Organisers Ltd runs a small academy, and Locality supports organisations rather than resident boards. JRF has flagged capacity as the programme's key risk, and no body is charged with training, peer networks or governance support for thousands of new resident decision-makers.

Big Local's core lesson is that resident-led funding works when long-term capacity support and conflict-resolution help sit behind it. Pride in Place boards in the most deprived neighbourhoods often have no governance experience at all. They are the likeliest point of failure for a £5bn, ten-year programme.

A National Neighbourhood Academy, funded for ten years by MHCLG with the National Lottery and foundations. It would provide training, accreditation, peer networks and troubleshooting for resident board members and neighbourhood committees, inheriting Local Trust's Community Leadership Academy methods and the Big Local evidence base.

// Build now: First artefact: foundation-funded academy cohort inheriting Local Trust's Community Leadership Academy curriculum and Big Local evidence base.

Boards begin spending up to £20m each this year while the institution that trained resident leaders winds down, leaving a £5bn programme's likeliest failure point unsupported.