Caroline Slocock: Early Action Task Force and Community Links

Year of publication: 2018

This report reviews social infrastructure across communities. Social infrastructure is what makes people want to live in an area, businesses want to trade and investors invest. It comprises:

• Buildings, facilities and the built environment
• Services and organisations
• Strong and healthy communities

Some communities are more deprived in terms of social infrastructure than others are, but this isn’t recognised by current measures of deprivation used by the Office for National Statistics.

The main findings are:

• Recognise that social infrastructure supports prevention
• Social infrastructure needs to be considered in the round – it is not just services or specific interventions
• Regeneration may often focus to narrowly on capital projects
• Community-based activities add value, but would be more effective if all dimensions of social infrastructure are deployed and aligned, including public services
• Social infrastructure needs to be geared towards long-term planning
• Greater investment in social infrastructure in deprived areas is required alongside investment in more traditional infrastructure, such as employment, skills and physical infrastructure
• To develop preventative social infrastructure locally, more should be made of mapping and making use of existing resources and collaborative partnerships. This helps to empower communities to determine priorities and take control of assets and devolved budgets.

Content type: Anchor institutions

Tags: Report

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