By Jennifer Wallace, Head of Policy, Carnegie UK Trust

IT’S simple, towns matter.

Two out of five people in the UK live in a town. A town that flourishes improves quality of life, the health, the work opportunities and the general wellbeing of its residents. Ultimately a town’s people are better able to benefit from the wider social and economic opportunities around it.

The Brexit vote demonstrated what can happen when a lack of investment and voice for towns at spatial planning and policy levels is felt by those communities. Leaving people and places behind comes at a cost to us all – not just those living in those towns.

In this context it is even more important that the Shared Prosperity Fund and post-Brexit policy making is geared towards the real needs of towns.

This was a key motivator behind the initiative from Carnegie UK Trust to embark on a small-town domestic twinning programme across the UK. The resulting Twin Towns UK programme was kicked off 18 months ago, in September 2017. It aimed to reinvigorate local towns through a process of learning and collaboration. Towns across the UK were paired with others that had similar characteristics and socio-economic challenges. They were then encouraged to think differently about what they could do to improve their local places with a fresh perspective.

The towns involved in the project faced a range of challenges. Challenges experienced in different towns up and down the country. Some pairs shared the fact that they’d seen a loss of employment due to the decline or closure of major industries either recently or more historically. Others faced the increasing landscape of seeing empty shops on the high street and low energy and motivation of community.

Inspired by each other, the towns involved all began to turn around their prospects. Some of the highlights from the Twin Towns UK programme include improved footfall to the town centre, the introduction of new cycle paths to boost wellbeing and a better understanding of the town’s unique selling point for further development.

Whitburn in West Lothian, one of the six partner towns, took inspiration from its twin, Oswaldtwistle in Lancashire. Through involvement in the programme it repurposed community spaces, including a former small council building which became a community resource for small enterprises and community groups. Additionally, a derelict phone box was transformed into a community defibrillator station.

Importantly, the programme demonstrated the benefits of learning directly from other people engaged in community regeneration. It took a fresh, inspiring approach rather than producing yet another toolkit for regeneration or dropping in external experts. The result was that local communities were energised with untapped resources being activated. This included from some within towns who would admit that delivering ‘place based’ projects was a relatively new experience.

The encouraging results demonstrates the power of pioneering projects, with arguably modest funding, to make a real difference by helping to energise communities and generate practical outputs to develop social capital.

We’re not saying that domestic twinning is the answer to solving the existing towns challenge, nor are we in any way making commentary about the state of the UK state. However, we have found that by starting with “where the community is” rather than where planners and policy makers think it should be, can help towns to develop new community leaders to help shape the future of their towns. It is about a positive approach to empowering towns around the UK through collaboration and being inspired by each other.