Pride of Place Summit: Building Thriving Places Together
Pride of Place Summit: Building Thriving Places Together
Sue Husband, Community Impact Director, reflects on the Pride of Place Summit 2026 and how businesses play a vital role in place-based regeneration.
Across the UK, too many places are being left behind: investment is unequal, confidence is low, and opportunity feels out of reach for too many people. At Business in the Community (BITC), we believe business has a key role to play in changing that.
BITC’s Pride of Place Summit 2026, held on 2 June at King’s Business School, brought together over 300 senior leaders from business, government, and communities to address this challenge directly and to explore how we can build thriving places together. The focus was not simply on sharing insight, but on understanding what is holding places back and how a more coordinated, place-based approach can begin to address it.
As Ndidi Okezie OBE, Chief Executive of BITC, said during the Summit’s morning plenary session, “Business is the most underutilised force we have for social progress in the UK.” The presence of senior decision-makers from business, alongside local authorities and central government, reflected a growing recognition that building thriving places requires sustained, cross-sector collaboration and not isolated interventions.
The place-based agenda is gaining national momentum. The Summit’s keynote speech was given by The Rt Hon Steve Reed OBE MP, Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, who reinforced this point. With a renewed focus on Pride in Place – the Government’s long-term approach to community-led regeneration – there is clear intent to give local areas greater influence over investment and decision-making.
However, discussions throughout the Summit made it clear that to deliver lasting change at scale, business must be actively embedded in this approach, bringing long-term investment, capability, and convening power alongside government and communities.
Connecting people to opportunity
Opportunity exists in many places, but too often, it isn’t accessible.
Leaders highlighted persistent gaps between education, employers, and local labour markets. Many people still can’t see or access clear pathways into secure, fairly-paid jobs, limiting both individual prospects and local growth.
The need is not more provision, but better connection through:
Programmes like See it Be it show what’s possible, raising aspirations and confidence through early exposure to the world of work. The challenge now is scale. We need to embed this approach across the UK, not just in pockets of good practice.
Strengthening pride and connection
Alongside barriers to accessing opportunities, leaders pointed to rising social isolation and disconnection as contributing factors to communities being left behind.
Thriving places rely on strong local networks, a sense of belonging, and the ability for people to participate fully in community life. Without this, access to opportunity is weakened.
Summit discussions focused on how place-based partnerships can rebuild this foundation, particularly through the role of business in:
This is not a secondary issue. Connection and belonging are central to building resilient, thriving communities.
Local control and long-term investment
A third theme from the Summit was who shapes investment, and in whose interests.
Too often, funding decisions are made externally, with limited local influence. This leads to short-term, fragmented approaches that fail to build lasting change.
The Summit explored how this can shift, including:
The direction is clear: thriving places are built through shared leadership, with communities, business, and local partners shaping investment together over the long term.
From discussion to action
A defining feature of this year’s Summit was its focus on moving beyond conversation to practical action and accountability.
On the morning of the Summit, over 30 business and education leaders came together to mark the expansion of the See it Be it programme.
This emphasis on action was carried through the day via the Pride of Place Pledge, which asked organisations to commit to specific contributions at both a local and national level. Nearly 100 Summit attendees have already pledged to take forward place-based action through investment, partnership, and programme delivery.
Underpinned by the strategic leadership of BITC’s Place Taskforce and a growing network of 18 Pride of Place partnerships, this work is helping to align effort, turning shared ambition into delivery.
Building a network for thriving places
The Summit highlighted both the scale of the challenge and the opportunity for coordinated action.
There is now growing alignment between national policy and local practice around what thriving places require. The question is no longer whether action is needed, but how effectively different stakeholders work together to deliver it.
Pride of Place plays a critical role in this, ensuring that alongside government and communities, business is actively part of shaping, delivering, and sustaining long-term change in places.
We need to scale up this work if we want to ensure that more places benefit from this joined-up approach, with long-term commitment matched by coordinated delivery on the ground.
Next steps for employers
The Pride of Place Summit made one thing clear: lasting change in communities requires collective action. Now is the moment to get involved.
If you want to find out more, contribute to this work, or make a Pride of Place Pledge, visit Pride of Place Programme – Business in the Community.
Next steps for employers
The Pride of Place Summit was kindly hosted by King’s Business School, and sponsors included: Pride of Place Founding Partner, Aviva; Summit Expert Partner, Coventry Building Society; Alliance Partner, Starling Bank; and Collaboration Partners, Lloyds Banking Group and Muse. Special thanks to BITC’s supporters Greggs, Linklaters LLP, and Salesforce.
