Pride of Place Learning Hub: Phase Five
Pride of Place Learning Hub: Phase Five
In Phase Five, you can explore making your Place sustainable and leading the way in placemaking by sharing your learning. This Learning Hub is sponsored by Aviva, Strategic Partner of the Business in the Community (BITC) Pride of Place programme.
Making Your Place Sustainable
This module discusses the different ways you can secure a lasting legacy for your Pride of Place Partnership.
Designed for partnerships that are in their third year or later, it considers the expertise, experience and connections you will already have in place as you make the case for further commitments to deliver a lasting transformation.
It looks at sustainability in terms of funding, leadership, relationships and resources and draws on examples from Pride of Place partnerships in Blackpool, Sheffield and Newport.
What does a sustainable Place Partnership look like?
For your partnership to be described as sustainable, it will need to show that it is ready to build on the different strengths and opportunities unique to your place.
The first part of this process is reflecting on what’s been achieved so far. It can be helpful to think about this under the following five key themes.
1. Funding
Sustainable partnerships will have a solid and growing range of funders committing to support their activities for the long term. This will look a bit different in each place and you’ll need to work with your Board to agree an appropriate budget. See our funding module for more on this.
Setting a goal of securing significant, multi-year investment in your place, such as major Government funding or drawing new businesses to invest in your place, can act as a useful North Star for long-term planning.
2. Leadership
Your partnership will be led by a highly effective, mission-focused Place Board. Its Chair will retain focus within the partnership while seeking to draw in new funders, Board members and delivery partners to support your shared objectives.
Your Board will include senior representatives of your local authority, major employers (with both local and national reach) and key connecting stakeholders such as community voluntary councils and regional networks.
3. Solid, trusting relationships
When your partnership is sustainable, it will feel like part of the fabric of your place. Between the Place Lead, Board, Chair and key engaged stakeholders, your partnership will position itself as an aligned voice with the local and regional authority.
With evidence of success building long-term relationships between organisations from different sectors, you will have built trust with local communities and key decision makers. Your representatives will be invited to speak and show leadership on major challenges and opportunities.
4. Access to resources
With a Place Lead in post for the last three years or more, your partnership will also be benefitting from the input of skilled volunteers and employees from Place Board member organisations and other local stakeholders.
Calling on the input of long-term allies and supporters, your partnership will be able to make things happen on the ground. It will act as the connecting force between the public, private and voluntary sectors in your place.
5. Clear and communicated vision
A clearly articulated vision and strategy linked to your desired impact and success measures are prerequisites for a sustainable partnership.
You may have developed and delivered a Prospectus document or be working on one. Key audiences will be aware of and supportive of your overall narrative, goals and future ambitions.
What can we learn from sustainable Pride of Place Partnerships?
Every place is different, meaning that every partnership will also arrive at a different definition of what it means to be sustainable. Our longest-standing Place Partnership is in Blackpool and other places that are on their way to being fully sustainable can also provide helpful insights.
Blackpool
The Blackpool Pride of Place Partnership, founded in 2017 by BITC, set a clear ambition to grow Blackpool’s economy by £1bn by 2030.
Building on its existing strategic partnership with the UK Government, it is working with other departments to deliver improved housing, health, education, skills and employment, and digital outcomes.
As a result of its long-term vision and plans set out in the Agenda for Change Prospectus, in 2021, Blackpool was awarded the largest single Town Deal of £40 million. The following year it agreed a strategic Levelling Up Partnership with the Government which has resulted in over £140 million of Levelling Up Funding and a £90 million commitment to creating new housing in the town.
The Blackpool team’s iterative and developmental approach has helped to move the town and Fylde Coast region up the UK Government’s agenda, while putting it on the map for a growing range of employers and businesses.
Sheffield
The Sheffield Pride of Place Partnership is supported by a range of cross-sector funders and is led by a highly influential and proactive Chair and Board.
The partnership has helped to bring diverse stakeholders together to pioneer a range of effective projects and long-term partnerships, such as See it Be it, that have delivered evidenced social outcomes for local people.
It is taking a leadership position on key issues facing the city and has held iterations of The King’s Seeing is Believing visits to bring in more support from businesses in the city and further afield.
Sheffield is now working with stakeholders to ensure clear strategic alignment between its work and the goals and ambitions of Sheffield City Council and South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority. Its forthcoming Sheffield Prospectus aims to draw more investment into the city to drive economic growth and improve social mobility.
Newport, South Wales
While it is a relatively young partnership, the Newport Pride of Place Partnership has built on solid stakeholder engagement and relationship building to accelerate through the Pride of Place process quickly.
Now in its fourth year, it has diverse income streams and has drawn in additional funding from UK Government sources, allowing it to grow its team to a Place Lead plus a local programme manager.
Concentrating its activities and impact on a chosen focus area – the ward of Pillgwenlly – has enabled its work to connect with governmental priorities and attendees of its three The King’s Seeing is Believing visits have been able to track the tangible impact made.
With Newport City Council as an early funder and supporter, the Newport Partnership has been able to demonstrate solid alignment with the ambitions of its relevant local authority while connecting with the policy agenda for the Welsh Government.
The partnership’s well-connected and highly active Chair and growing Board with Welsh and international business representation are now working on the first version of a Newport Prospectus to build the case for support.
What needs to change in our business planning approach?
While your partnership was developing, immediate and mid-term priorities will generally have taken up most of your time. Now it is maturing, your business planning should set out your longer-term ambitions and translate them into sustainable impact.
Your reach, purpose, knowledge of the place and available resources will all be quite different for an established partnership compared with a new initiative. The partnership may also now face a different set of challenges, such as new competitors, evolving local needs, shifts in the political climate and macroeconomic change.
A well-defined, multi-year business plan will provide a framework to navigate these complexities, ensuring your partnership can proactively plan for the future.
This will feed into your Prospectus, which will publicly set out your long-term direction, thinking in decades rather than months and years.
How do I plan for sustainability?
Make sure to fully engage your Board and key stakeholders to call on their experience in business planning and learn from their approaches and findings.
Conducting a Board Health Check to assess your Partnership Board’s skills, experiences, networks and available resources will help to identify any gaps and help you plan to address any areas for development. It is normal to refresh your Board over time, both to replace members who have moved on and to ensure that locally important sectors are represented.
Business in the Community’s Advisory Services Team are highly experienced at supporting director-level stakeholders to assess board effectiveness, so get in touch with them to discuss how they can add value to this process.
The following six steps will help you plan for sustainability.
Resources
The resources below will support you in starting your placemaking journey and help provide an overview of best practice. More resources will be added to the modules as this Learning Hub is developed and improved, so keep in touch with your main BITC contact to learn more about the latest content as it launches:
Making Your Place Sustainable: FAQs
Next steps
This is the final Phase of the Learning Hub, however, you may want to reassess how you go about Defining and Measuring Impact or to take another look at Building Long-Term Partnerships in a way that will help secure additional support.
Our Leading the way by sharing learning module will help you to develop a Prospectus and build further awareness and traction for your place.
If you are ready to bring the successes of your place to the national conversation, BITC can work with you to map out a Prospectus and identify events, meetings and forums with national reach to share your learning.
Leading the Way by Sharing Learning
This final module supports you to bring together all that you’ve learnt through your place-based activities and experiences to advocate for your place on a national scale.
It looks at the purpose behind the stories you share, sustaining impact through collaboration and creating a Place Prospectus to make the case for further investment in your place.
You will gain an understanding of how partnerships learning from each other can help to strengthen the Pride of Place approach through creating strategic opportunities to bring national decision-makers to the table.
Why share what we have learned?
Throughout your Pride of Place journey, you will have shared stories of the difference your partnership has made, primarily with the aim of encouraging further support from local businesses, communities, and government.
Having worked so hard to build strong local relationships, it can be tempting to guard your successes and hold on tightly to things that work.
However, when you’re in the business of creating a lasting legacy of local pride and hope, recognising the benefits of giving and gaining knowledge will take you much further.
By clearly and confidently sharing your ambitions and findings, your partnership will have a better chance at securing UK government funding, attracting inward investment and securing positive, lasting change for communities in your place.
What are the different ways to lead by sharing learning?
Telling your story and articulating the needs and vision of your place for national decision-makers can take time. You will need to continually reflect on, refine and adapt the proposals that could help your place create large-scale, high-value, long-term impact.
Influencing also requires you to become comfortable with repeating your message in different ways to appeal to different audiences.
There are many different channels and methods that partnerships can use to share what they know to secure the advocacy, influence, investment and relationships that are so important to sustained impact.
Advocating within your organisation and with its partners
If you work for a UK-wide business with an interest in your place, you can support your business’s objectives and create more community impact through sharing your achievements with senior colleagues and key stakeholders. For example, Aviva has built its social action strategy around place and other businesses are taking a place-based approach to strategically important locations.
Representing your Place Partnership in region-wide forums
With a growing body of evidence and impact, you can make regionally significant contributions via events, meetings and working groups. These can help you reach regional decision-makers, leaders of government departments, elected officials and national budget holders.
Pride of Place insights: Norwich Place Lead Tracey Drake represented the Norwich Pride of Place Partnership as a panel speaker at the launch of Norfolk County Council’s Economic Growth Plan, highlighting the importance of inclusive growth and cross-sector collaboration. Coventry Place Lead Heather Black shared details of what the Coventry Partnership does to support the social economy as part of Coventry and Warwickshire Co-operative Development Agency’s 2024 Social Economy Drive event. Both examples demonstrate how places can contribute to the wider regional conversation.
Share local learning nationally
Once you have developed, delivered, and evaluated a range of quick wins, medium-term projects and longer-term partnerships, you will have access to evidence and findings that could prove helpful to communities across the UK.
Some of the different avenues you could explore to help you get in front of decision-makers and access different funding opportunities include:
What’s the Pride of Place Summit?
Business in the Community’s Pride of Place Summit first took place in May 2025, hosted and supported by Aviva at its Studios in Manchester. It brought together more than 200 leaders from business, communities and local, regional and national government to exchange insights and build connections with the aim of reducing regional inequality across the UK.
As well as attending and meeting with senior decision-makers, Place Leads and Board members are also encouraged to shape the conversation, using the event as a platform to share what works and source additional support.
With Aviva’s support, BITC plans to increase the scale and reach of the Pride of Place Summit as an annual, unmissable point in the diary for cross-sector leaders to coalesce around place-based solutions. Other opportunities for the growing Pride of Place network to exchange learning will also be offered throughout the year. Speak with the BITC Place team to explore whether and how your place could be involved at an upcoming event.
How do we produce our Place Prospectus?
Your Place Prospectus document distils the key challenges and opportunities for change in your place in order to advocate for additional resources from UK Government, national businesses and other funders.
It articulates the case for investment in your place and is an opportunity for you to share what you’ve done, what you’ve learnt and what you now need to unlock the opportunities that will have the most powerful impact within local communities.
Every Place Partnership and prospectus will identify different challenges, strengths and development opportunities. However, some key building blocks will help to ensure your prospectus is an effective tool. These include:
Typically, a prospectus will focus on three to five primary topics (often aligned with existing local or regional government plans and strategies) and one or two specific neighbourhoods to help make the strongest case for additional resources to generate impact.
A number of different Pride of Place Partnerships currently have a prospectus in development. For inspiration for yours, take a look at the Blackpool Pride of Place Prospectus, which is now in its fourth iteration. The Bradford Pride of Place Prospectus, launched in 2024, provides an example of how a younger partnership has approached this task.
BITC’s Place team has guidance to help you plan, produce and make use of a prospectus in your place, so get in touch with your BITC Place contact for support.
Resources
The resources below will support you in starting your placemaking journey and help provide an overview of best practice. More resources will be added to the modules as this Learning Hub is developed and improved, so keep in touch with your main BITC contact to learn more about the latest content as it launches:
Leading the way by sharing learning: FAQs
Next steps
This is the final module on the learning hub, however, you may need to go back to earlier modules to fill in any gaps and confidently complete this phase. To improve your chances of securing additional support, review our modules on Defining and Measuring Impact and Building Long-Term Partnerships.
If you feel you are ready to bring the successes of your place to the national conversation, set up a meeting with your BITC Place contact for help and support with this significant step.
Help us build the Pride of Place Learning Hub
Our modules will be continuously updated. Your experience and feedback can help these tools become richer. Contribute to the conversation of best practices in placemaking by sharing your perspective with our team today. We welcome your feedback, case studies, and reflections on placemaking to help us curate our modules.
Our Pride of Place Partnership is made possible through partnering with Aviva
Aviva is the first Pride of Place Partner, working together with BITC, the partnership will build thriving communities by breaking down barriers that impact access to education and employment, improving housing and local facilities, and tackling wider inequalities facing individuals throughout the UK. The work will bring together key local stakeholders in places such as community groups, businesses and local councils to create a strategic vision for long-term change.