Austerity’s Long Shadow: Rebuilding the Foundations of Community Life

The consequences of austerity begining in the 2010's were never confined to the public services whose budgets were cut. The reductions also had a profound effect on the network of community organisations that helped people remain connected, supported and well.

We are now beginning to see the full consequences. They have taken ten or fifteen years to emerge because community infrastructure rarely disappears overnight. It weakens gradually as grants end, buildings deteriorate, experienced staff leave, volunteers become exhausted and organisations use up their reserves.

The pandemic accelerated this process. Many community groups responded heroically, providing food, checking on isolated neighbours and supporting families in crisis. But they emerged from Covid with fewer volunteers, depleted finances and much less energy. Some have never recovered. Others are now closing, leaving their communities without the informal support they need to thrive.

When prevention disappears

Community organisations often undertake work that is almost invisible to policymakers. A conversation over a cup of tea, a weekly lunch, a youth club or a parent-and-toddler group may not appear very significant when measured against the scale of public expenditure. Yet these activities create relationships through which people receive help before their difficulties become crises.

When a lonely person can no longer visit their community centre, they may go to their GP because it is one of the few places where someone will listen. When informal support for someone experiencing poor mental health disappears, their condition may deteriorate until they require clinical intervention. When youth clubs close, young people lose trusted adults who might notice that something is going wrong. When advice services disappear, relatively manageable problems with debt, benefits or housing can escalate into homelessness or serious ill health.

A parent who once found friendship and practical support at a local group may become isolated. An older person who previously shared a weekly meal with others may experience declining physical and mental health. A family that might have received early help can reach the attention of statutory services only when its problems have become acute.

Austerity may therefore have saved money in one part of the system while creating much greater costs elsewhere. Hospitals, GP practices, social care, schools, housing services and the police increasingly encounter problems that might once have been prevented—or at least moderated—within the community.

The unequal geography of community capacity

This loss has not been evenly distributed. More prosperous communities often possess the money, confidence, professional expertise and personal connections needed to sustain voluntary organisations. Residents may know how to establish a charity, write a funding application, negotiate a lease or manage safeguarding and financial reporting.

Poorer communities are less likely to have these resources readily available. This is not because local people lack abilities, ideas or commitment. It is because poverty places enormous pressure on people’s time and energy. Communities experiencing the greatest need are therefore often those with the least organisational capacity to attract investment and maintain community institutions.

Once their remaining organisations close, there may be very little civil society on which to build. The loss of a community centre, local charity or residents’ association is not simply the loss of a service. It can mean the disappearance of relationships, knowledge, trust and local leadership accumulated over many years.

The limitations of regeneration

Rebuilding this infrastructure is arguably one of the most important challenges of our time. But we should not imagine that another conventional regeneration programme will be sufficient.

The regeneration initiatives of the 1990s and 2000s taught us some hard lessons. Considerable investment was directed towards particular geographical communities, producing new projects, buildings and services. Some achieved important things, but the overall results were mixed. One community in which I worked was “regenerated” three times in twenty years.

Too often, regeneration created a burst of externally funded activity without building a community’s enduring capacity to act for itself. Projects were established, staff recruited and services delivered. When the funding ended, much of the activity came swiftly to an end as well.

Local people have frequently been promised new opportunities by organisations that arrive with money and enthusiasm but leave when priorities change or grants expire. It is hardly surprising if communities become sceptical. Repeated disappointment undermines trust and reinforces the sense that change is something done to people rather than something created with them.

Funders are therefore right to be cautious about organisations entering communities from outside. Those organisations may have expertise and resources, but they do not automatically possess local relationships or legitimacy. The answer, however, cannot be to abandon communities in which little organised civil society remains. It must be to find a different way of working.

Building community, not merely delivering services

At Toc H, we are trying to help rebuild civil society in places where it is absent, fragile or severely stretched. Our approach begins with relationships rather than services.

The first stage is listening. We take time to understand the place, its history and the experience of the people who live there. We look for existing relationships, however informal, and for those individuals who are already contributing to community life without necessarily describing themselves as leaders.

The second stage is gathering. We create opportunities for people to meet, form relationships and develop a sense of belonging. This cannot be hurried. In some communities trust develops relatively quickly; in others it takes much longer, particularly where people have repeatedly experienced initiatives that promised a great deal and then disappeared.

The third stage is discovery. Together, people identify the community’s gifts, skills and abilities as well as its unmet needs. This matters because beginning only with need can define a community by what it lacks. Every community also possesses knowledge, resilience, creativity and people with something to contribute.

Only then should external resources be sought to fill the gaps that local people cannot address alone. Outside support has an important role, but it should strengthen local agency rather than displace it.

The final stage is consolidation: developing the leadership, governance, safeguarding, financial management and income needed to survive beyond the first grant. The aim is not simply to sustain a collection of activities. It is to establish a durable focus for community life that can adapt as local circumstances change.

The ethics of belonging

This is as much an ethical and psychological process as it is an organisational one. Good governance, fundraising and financial management are essential, but they are not the starting point.

The starting point is recognising the dignity and integrity of the people who inhabit a particular place. It is creating a community of belonging in which people are known, valued and able to contribute.

As trust and confidence grow, honest discussion becomes possible. People who bring resources or expertise from outside and people who possess the lived knowledge of the community can meet as equals. Neither has all the answers.

Simply “serving the needs” of a community can become patronising if local people are treated only as recipients. Telling people what they need is equally patronising. But genuine participation does not mean avoiding difficult conversations. Sometimes relational community work involves encouraging people whose confidence has been diminished. At other times, it requires telling the truth about prejudice, discrimination, destructive behaviour or unequal power.

There must also be a continuing critique of how power and knowledge are being used. Are local people genuinely leading, or are they being consulted after the important decisions have already been made? Is an activity being developed because the community believes it matters, or because it fits the priorities of a large funder? Are we strengthening local relationships, or pursuing a visible legacy project that will look impressive in a report?

These questions are uncomfortable, but they are essential.

Rebuilding what austerity eroded

Community organisations are not an optional addition to public services. They form part of the social infrastructure through which people remain connected, difficulties are noticed early and communities develop the confidence to respond to change.

Rebuilding that infrastructure will require long-term investment, but money alone will not be enough. It will require patience, humility and a willingness to measure success through stronger relationships and greater local agency, not simply through the number of services delivered.

The deepest cost of austerity may prove to be the erosion of the places in which people learn to trust one another, exercise responsibility and experience belonging. Restoring those places could reduce pressure on public services and help address loneliness, poor health and polarisation. But its greatest value is more fundamental.

Strong communities provide the conditions in which people can flourish. Rebuilding them should now be regarded as one of the central tasks of our common life.