Pride in Place provides 284 neighbourhoods across the UK with up to £20 million each in funding and support over ten years, with local communities intended to play the leading role in deciding how that investment is used. The report welcomes the scale, duration and community-led ambition of the programme, but finds that there remains a significant gap between that ambition and the practical capability needed to deliver it — particularly around co-design, community capacity, governance, knowledge-sharing and long-term evaluation.

Commissioned by Key Cities and conducted by the Key Cities Innovation Network with the Centre for Place at the University of Plymouth, the study draws on detailed interviews in seven Pride in Place neighbourhoods across England and Wales, alongside reviews of policy and academic evidence and consultation with parliamentarians, local authorities, universities and officials at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. The research was undertaken deliberately at an early stage, while neighbourhood governance and delivery arrangements were still being established, so that emerging lessons could help strengthen implementation as the programme develops.

The report argues that establishing neighbourhood boards and devolving substantial funding are necessary but not sufficient to create community power. Communities also need the skills, confidence, relationships, evidence and organisational capacity to exercise meaningful control, while local authorities, MPs, universities and other civic partners need to develop enabling roles that support community agency without substituting their own priorities for it.

The recommendations are to:

• Invest in the practice and methodology of co-design, enabling neighbourhoods to move from consultation to meaningful shared decision-making.
• Build from existing community capacity rather than around it, recognising trusted grassroots organisations, networks and social infrastructure.
• Support the evolving roles of local authorities and MPs, helping them move progressively from establishing and administering the programme towards enabling community control.
• Plan for long-term stewardship, not only project delivery, connecting capital investment with sustainable community institutions, activity and ownership.
• Use the Network for Neighbourhoods to build shared learning and practical support, so that local autonomy benefits from learning across the national programme.
• Measure what matters and mobilise universities as civic partners, establishing proportionate baselines and longitudinal learning combining quantitative, qualitative and community-generated evidence.

Of the 284 neighbourhoods funded through the main Pride in Place programme, 45 are within Key Cities local authority areas. Together with Key Cities receiving support through the Pride in Place Impact Fund, this represents up to £916.5 million in government funding and support across the network. But the report is intended to have wider application: its recommendations are offered as a contribution to improving outcomes for Pride in Place neighbourhoods across the country.