This year’s theme for the annual LGA conference in Bournemouth made it clear that neighbourhoods are having a real moment. ‘From neighbourhoods to nations – building lasting futures locally’ succinctly drew connections between our communities, and the streets, pubs and parks we know best, and the hopes and ambitions of our country as a whole.
With its new 3ni Social Capital Score (SCS), 3ni had an important contribution to make to this agenda, and on how those very community connections can be explored, mapped, and captured. In an evening fringe event, members of the team linked up with OCSI and Wigan Council to launch the landmark SCS: a new measure that maps the combined presence or absence of bonding, bridging and linking aspects of social capital at the neighbourhood level. This enables the identification of those areas which, through no fault of their own, have seen the erosion of the social capital that makes a neighbourhood a place “[where] you trust the people you pass on the street. [Where] you have a long list of people you could call should things go wrong. [Where] you know where to go to make your voice heard.”
Dan Crowe, Director of 3ni, introduced the concept of social capital as something that most of us draw from, and contribute to, even if we don’t know we are doing it. He explained that “it’s built from the social networks and relationships – often based in neighbourhoods – and the resources that flow along those networks”. He explained that what is just as important, if not more so, are the shared norms, values and trust that build and grow between the individuals that make those networks up. This is what makes social capital the key factor that permits co-operation and forms the basis of collective efficacy: it provides the social scaffolding that enables communities to get things done.
Dan’s presentation provided historical context on why social capital at the neighbourhood level needs a spotlight, drawing on 3ni’s foundational work with Stoke-on-Trent City Council. He explained that hit by deindustrialisation, the financial crisis and imposed austerity, many neighbourhoods in the city faced an endemic lack of the social infrastructure – the social clubs, residents’ associations, women’s institutes – that, in the past, had allowed local people to get together to support and stand up for one another. 3ni, working with data analysts at OCSI and the city council, was able to use measures included in the SCS to identify where community need was greatest, enabling the City Council to reallocate resource towards a long-term, asset-based community development approach to help rebuild those communities from the bottom up.
This work inspired 3ni, working with Demos and Local Trust to produce a series of papers on the impact of social capital on a range of outcomes: from the economic, to health and wellbeing, education and skills, and crime and anti-social behaviour. The research showed that where social capital is resourced and supported, communities are better able to confront the challenges they may face, reducing the burden on over-stretched public services.
The problem was – until now – that there has not been a single agreed measure of social capital. That is where Stefan Noble, Director and Head of Research at OCSI, came in. Stefan described how 3ni and OCSI, having reviewed existing approaches to neighbourhood-level insight, realised that they fell short. The Community Life Survey or Understanding Society “simply aren’t designed to produce reliable estimates for neighbourhoods.”
Rather than relying on one survey or administrative source, the SCS combines multiple complementary datasets, each capturing a different aspect of social capital, to produce a consistent measure for every Lower Layer Super Output Area in England. It is complementary to the Index of Multiple of Deprivation (IMD) because, while the IMD tells us where deprivation is greatest, it cannot measure the capacity of residents, if properly supported and resourced, to work together to turn things around. It goes one step further than the Community Needs Index too: rather than measuring the infrastructure that supports communities, it measures the connections between local people that can make that infrastructure come alive or happen in the first place.
The results of OCSI’s first run of the SCS was striking. Focusing specifically on the city-regions of Merseyside, Greater Manchester and London, the data showed that neighbouring communities can have very different levels of social capital despite sitting within the same Local Authority. Sometimes differences are significant despite only a tiny adjustment in postcode.
Stefan explained that nineteen of the twenty neighbourhoods with the lowest levels of social capital also fall within the 20 per cent most deprived neighbourhoods nationally according to the IMD. From a policy perspective, these neighbourhoods – facing both the greatest economic challenges and a damaged social fabric – should be prioritised for long term, resident-led regeneration support.
The final speaker of the event, Alison McKenzie-Folan, Chief Executive of Wigan Council, described how local authorities can operationalise the Score to do just that. Alison explained that “being able to map and profile levels of social capital at a hyper-local level through the Social Capital Score is an incredibly powerful tool.” Having been a recipient of Pride in Place Impact funding, to be used anywhere in the borough to improve community assets, high streets and public spaces, the SCS helped the council to identify where that investment might deliver the most impactful results.
3ni used the SCS to support the council to develop heatmaps which showed where the borough’s “social capital coldspots” are located. This enabled the council to target the funding towards four areas where deprivation is highest and social capital weakest. The council has paid specific attention to building relationships with local groups and community leaders in these areas to ensure that investment gets exactly to the people and places where it can have the deepest impact.
The two latest Pride in Place areas located in the borough, Platt Bridge and Spring View and Marsh Green and Laithwaite, will also use the SCS to identify “the strengths and gaps in local relationships, networks and community activity, helping boards invest not in physical improvements but also in the people, groups and connections that build resilience, participation and community-led change.”
But Alison noted that the SCS is not only helping to shape how initiatives and investments are designed and delivered. It is also impacting how the Council navigates its wider relationships with neighbourhoods and communities. While Wigan scores very highly on bonding capital – meaning the existence of strong, tight-knit communities- it has low existing linking capital, with some residents potentially having “fewer opportunities to access new opportunities that often come through wider connections.”
Alison talked through how the Council was rethinking its approach to neighbourhood participation and engagement, and how it connects with external partners like the NHS, universities and colleges. Using the SCS enabled it to centre the role of social capital in delivery of its two missions under the Progress with Unity strategy, of “creating fair opportunities for all children, families, residents and businesses” and “making all our towns and neighbourhoods flourish for those who live and work in them”.
Alison’s presentation provided an insightful, evidence-led close to 3ni’s session, giving a taster of what the SCS could be used for in the day-to-day operations of a local authority, from targeting investment under the Pride in Place programme to those neighbourhoods that have missed out on their fair share of funding, to incorporating the latest data on social capital into the council’s neighbourhood profiles.
What was clear throughout the session as a whole was that while the merits of social capital have been largely accepted, officials and policymakers are still trying to establish what this means in practice. The SCS is the first push over the line: showing where to focus on first, and in which neighbourhoods a relatively small pot of money and offer of support could deliver meaningful, much-needed change.