Getting Started: Decision Making, Relationships and Managing Conflict in Community-Led Partnerships: Learning from Big Local

How do you turn ambition into action in a community-led programme — while building strong partnerships, making shared decisions, and handling disagreement constructively?

This session explores how Big Local partnerships launched long-term, resident-led programmes. We look at how volunteers were brought in, partnerships with local institutions were formed, communities were consulted, and plans for action were developed and adapted over time.

Alongside the practicalities of starting up, we explore how decisions were made in community-led partnerships, what happened when there was disagreement or conflict, and how those challenges were managed. We reflect on:

We will also consider what level of resource and support is needed in the “start-up” phase, and what a light-touch or smaller-scale version of this approach could look like for funders with more limited capacity.