Beyond engagement: how participation and partnerships can unlock real change

What if participation wasn’t just about consultation, but about co-creating the future of local places — together?

Across the UK, councils are rethinking how they work with communities, businesses, and civic organisations — moving beyond traditional consultation and towards co-designed, mission-driven approaches to local change.

At Adur & Worthing Councils, we’re already embedding this shift — building real participation infrastructure, testing new models of civic funding, and developing place-based partnerships that empower people to shape decisions and deliver change.

But what if this thinking wasn’t just local?

✅ What if we built a regional participation system — so engagement didn’t stop at council boundaries?
✅ What if public participation wasn’t an add-on, but a new way of making decisions?
✅ What if councils, businesses, and communities worked as a connected ecosystem — sharing power, insight, and responsibility for shaping the future?

This blog explores how Adur & Worthing Councils are already developing new ways of doing participation locally — and how these approaches could form the foundation of a bigger, regional shift in how councils, communities, and businesses work together.

🔍 The challenge: why participation teams need a radical shift

Participation is too often treated as a one-off exercise — a consultation, a survey, a focus group — rather than an ongoing, evolving way of governing.

Yet councils are trying to do more than ever:

✅ Creating participatory budgeting processes, giving residents a real say over spending.
✅ Strengthening community-led decision-making, shifting power to local people.
✅ Developing cross-sector partnerships, bringing councils, businesses, and civil society together.
✅ Supporting place-based collaboration, making sure communities shape regeneration, climate action, and service design.

But the system isn’t designed for deep participation. Right now:

❌ Most engagement stops at council boundaries — even when communities and issues don’t.
❌ Partnerships are often ad hoc, rather than long-term, mission-led collaborations.
❌ Councils, businesses, and anchor institutions work separately, rather than as a connected ecosystem.

To create more participatory, resilient, and innovative places, we need to rethink how participation and partnership teams operate locally — and regionally.

🛠️ How Adur & Worthing are embedding real participation at a local level

We are already making this shift through:

1. The Community Participation Team: investing in participation as a long-term approach

Our Community Participation approach is based on real investment in people, relationships, and capacity-building — not just short-term engagement.

🔹 We support participation leaders within our communities — training and supporting local people to take the lead in shaping their neighbourhoods.
🔹 We embed participation into decision-making, ensuring that communities aren’t just consulted but actively shaping policies, projects, and funding decisions.
🔹 We see participation as long-term and evolving — not a one-off project, but a shift in how local government works.

💡 What could this look like at a regional level?

• What if participation teams across councils worked together, so learning, resources, and investment weren’t duplicated?
• How could we create a shared regional participation strategy, ensuring engagement doesn’t stop at council boundaries?

2. The Kitchen Table: funding civic leadership, not just projects

Through our partnership with Funding People and The Kitchen Table, we’re testing a new way of supporting community power.

🔹 Rather than just funding projects, we fund people — giving small grants to those who are already making a difference in their communities.
🔹 We remove bureaucracy — allowing people to access funding without complex processes.
🔹 We build community capacity — supporting local leadership and helping people turn small initiatives into lasting change.

💡 What could this look like at a regional level?

• Could councils co-invest in a regional civic funding model, ensuring communities across multiple areas can access funding for grassroots leadership?
• How could anchor institutions — universities, NHS trusts, and businesses — contribute to place-based civic investment?

3. Worthing Neighbourhood Fund: participatory budgeting as a tool for community power

The Worthing CIL Neighbourhood Fund is giving real financial power to communities, allowing residents to decide how local infrastructure money is spent.

🔹 Funding decisions are community-led, ensuring resources go towards projects that matter most to local people.
🔹 It’s an evolving model, testing how participatory budgeting can become a core part of public funding decisions.
🔹 It shifts power, ensuring that decision-making isn’t just held by councils but is shared with residents.

💡 What could this look like at a regional level?

• What if multiple councils pooled resources to create a regional participatory budgeting process?
• How could participatory funding models be scaled to tackle regional priorities like climate resilience, housing, or local economic development?

🚀 What’s next? A mission-driven approach to participation and partnerships

Instead of treating participation as an add-on, what if we redesigned local governance around collaboration, community power, and shared responsibility?

1. A regional participation infrastructure

✅ Cross-council engagement platforms, ensuring residents shape regional decisions.
✅ Shared public participation data, mapping insights across councils and communities.
✅ A regional participation team, working across councils to coordinate engagement.

2. Funding and investment models that strengthen participation

✅ Regional participatory budgeting, giving residents a say over public spending.
✅ Civic co-investment funds, where councils, businesses, and communities finance local projects together.
✅ Public-private partnership governance models, ensuring long-term collaboration.

3. A mission-driven, cross-sector partnership approach

✅ Multi-agency partnership hubs, embedding councils, businesses, and communities into place-based decision-making.
✅ Resident-led commissions, shaping everything from planning to economic development.
✅ A shift from consultation to co-governance, ensuring participation is not just heard but drives real decisions.

📢 Calls to action: let’s build a new model for participation and partnership in local government

We need a shift — from council-led consultation to regional collaboration, and from partnerships based on funding to partnerships based on shared responsibility.

✅ What if participation was embedded in decision-making at every level?
✅ How could councils, businesses, and communities co-invest in place-based change?
✅ What would it take to make regional participation the foundation of governance?

💬 What’s next? Let’s start the conversation.

Is your council or organisation already testing new approaches to participation and partnership? We’d love to hear from you.

Let’s co-create, experiment, and scale what works.

How could regional collaboration strengthen local government participation? Drop your thoughts below!