Case studies

Buckinghamshire County Council has engaged in a range of community action activities, at different scales of investment to enable local priorities to be determined and better met.

Cornwall Council Cornwall Council’s approach to community action has focused on its programme of devolution to parish and town councils, and using that learning now to foster partnerships with a wider range of community groups to improve health and wellbeing.

Leeds City Council recognised the need to offer more opportunities for people to take part in activities they enjoyed, and in particular, to make sport and leisure activities more accessible for people with a learning disability.

The living independently in later years (LILY) programme began in 2012 with the intention of helping older people access the right level of community-based support at the right times in their lives, to help them avoid triggering an event that will move them into high cost services.

Birmingham City Council and its partners have concentrated on mainstreaming Prevent across all relevant service areas and, in particular, in schools and has appointed a schools resilience adviser to help them address the Prevent agenda.

Under the previous Prevent regime Bristol established a successful partnership with the Muslim community called Building the Bridge. It is now redeveloping that scheme so it has a wider focus including setting up advisory groups to engage women and young people and tackle far-right extremism.

Calderdale Council has worked with taxi drivers to maximise the reach of its Prevent work.  It has been able to recruit dedicated staff, including a Prevent coordinator. The focus for the future will be working with women and schools.

Cornwall has put a big emphasis on helping tackle dangerous internet use. It has used an EU project to help parents keep their IT-savvy children safe. Prevent training is also being rolled out to groups such as local Scouts to ensure its impact is felt far-and-wide.

Greenwich has been working on this issue since 2012 and has used football as a medium to reach out to the local community. The project resulted in participants playing a friendly match against soldiers from Woolwich barracks where Lee Rigby was based when he was murdered. The council has also developed an interactive DVD for school children which is being rolled out nationally.

Waltham Forest has made early intervention a priority as part of its Prevent work. One of it’s flagship programmes is ‘Digital Resilience’, an education resource for secondary school children and staff designed to safeguard young people from potentially harmful information or views online.