Hopeful Towns: BID-BUILDER

6. Know your area in order to make your case

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As a local authority or community leader, you know your community and understand its needs. But funders will often have to see these needs demonstrated, in a quantitative way, to provide a justification and rationale for green-lighting a given proposal. The better able you are to do this, the stronger your bid will be.

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There are two particular elements, here. The first is to show your needs in a national context. Why would your authority be a deserving cause for extra resources, compared to another area? Why is the context you are working in particularly challenging?

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Our National Data Library page provides some places to start here, in terms of making your case. And there is more data available online. But the more you are able to have this kind of information easily to hand yourself, the more you will be able to weave it into future proposals.

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The second element is about showing that you know the local context and have thought hard about which parts of your authority need which sorts of funding and why. This requires a more granular type of data. It might work to ‘LSOA’ level (the geographical level favoured by the ONS) but ward data is also useful, if you have insights to this level.

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Other council departments can provide this in places – particularly if you have a business insights team. But having several maps ‘on file’ is again useful here, allowing you to quickly set out a rationale for why you intend to focus your efforts on a particular estate or neighbourhood. The Local Data Library page provides a good start-point if you are evidencing a bid in this way.

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Other insights which the council has collected can also provide vital resources. These may come from an annual resident survey, or from more bespoke work carried out by engagement teams. In particular, if you have key data on metrics such as 'how well people say they get on with each other' or 'how well residents know their neighbours', then be sure to use them.