Telling a resident “you now control £20 million of investment in your neighbourhood over the next ten years” is a genuinely exciting message. Telling them how to actually get involved, have their say, and see it followed through, is where most participatory budgeting programmes succeed or fail.

That’s the challenge facing every council and MP now standing up a Neighbourhood Board as part of the government’s Pride in Place Programme, one of the flagship mechanisms behind the Protecting What Matters cohesion plan. This piece covers what government actually expects from resident engagement on Pride in Place, and where Orlo fits into delivering it well.

Pride in Place is the government’s flagship community regeneration programme, now worth up to £5.8 billion across 284 places in Great Britain over the next decade, following the announcement of a further 40 places joining the original 75 phase 1 and 169 phase 2 areas. Each place receives up to £20 million over ten years.

The money isn’t controlled by the council or central government. It’s controlled by a Neighbourhood Board: a resident-majority group, led by an independent Chair, that must include the local MP and at least one ward councillor, but must always have more residents and local people on it than elected representatives. Boards are responsible for co-creating a Pride in Place Plan with their wider community, setting out how the funding will be spent, and MHCLG requires evidence that meaningful community engagement shaped that plan before approving it.

The Pride in Place Programme prospectus sets out named best-practice principles for community involvement that every Board must evidence when submitting its plan. Several of these map directly onto core comms and engagement skills.

Engage from the start, not after the plan is drafted
Government is explicit that engagement should shape the plan from the outset, not validate a plan that’s already been written. Boards are expected to tap into resident ideas early so plans are co-created and co-owned.

Reach those less likely to be heard
The guidance singles out people who struggle to access “usual” engagement methods, including those without internet access, non-English speakers, people experiencing homelessness, and older residents, as groups Boards must make active efforts to reach, not simply hope will show up to a consultation event.

Take a genuinely participatory approach
Government wants Boards to go beyond consultation into real participatory budgeting: co-production workshops, resident panels, citizens’ juries, and votes on priority projects, rather than gathering views and deciding without residents in the room.

Make time for meaningful engagement, and follow up
This is one of the most specific requirements in the guidance: Boards must avoid one-off consultations, keep engaging over the programme’s full ten years, and critically, return to the people they’ve engaged to show what happened as a result. Feedback and follow-up are described as crucial, not optional.

Invite challenge and scrutiny
Boards are expected to create space for residents to hold them to account, potentially through a shadow residents’ panel, and to invite feedback regularly, both online and offline, to track how sentiment and priorities shift as delivery progresses.

This is the part most relevant to comms teams specifically: MHCLG requires evidence that engagement has taken place and that community feedback has been meaningfully considered, both when the Plan is first submitted and on an ongoing basis through the Pride in Place monitoring guidance.

Boards submitting weak or thin evidence risk their Plan being sent back before funding is released, so building a genuine, ongoing evidence trail from day one, rather than assembling one retrospectively, is worth treating as a comms priority rather than an afterthought.

A Social Cohesion Measurement Framework and local risk assessment tool

Responding to long-standing calls for consistent metrics, the government will develop a framework to help local areas measure cohesion in a robust, comparable way, alongside a new local cohesion risk assessment tool designed to help councils spot emerging tensions earlier and share that information with central government and partners such as Prevent.

This is the clearest signal in the whole plan that the government expects councils to have structured, evidenced insight into local sentiment, not just anecdotal awareness.

Tackling hate, discrimination and antisemitism

The plan also sets out substantial work on hate crime reporting, protective security funding for faith communities, and specific measures addressing antisemitism and anti-Muslim hostility, including new definitions and dedicated funding. This work sits mostly with community safety and equalities teams rather than comms, but where councils communicate local responses to hate incidents, tone and speed matter: transparent, prompt, non-defensive communication is consistently what builds resident trust back up after a tension event.

• Pride in Place gives Neighbourhood Boards, not councils or central government, control over up to £20 million per area over ten years.
• Government has published specific, named best-practice principles for community engagement that every Board must evidence.
• Reaching residents who don’t respond to standard consultation methods, and following up to show what changed as a result, are treated as essential, not optional.
• MHCLG requires ongoing evidence of engagement, not just a one-off submission when the Plan is first agreed.
• Spending isn’t limited to a fixed list, provided a Board can evidence the case from genuine community engagement.

Much of what government expects from Pride in Place engagement, reaching underserved residents, running repeatable and comparable consultation, and evidencing feedback loops over a ten-year programme, is exactly what Orlo’s Community Engagement Platform is built for.

• Reaching residents who don’t respond to standard consultation. Surveys and multi-channel engagement tools help Boards reach beyond the residents who already show up to public meetings.
• Closing the feedback loop. A single, timestamped record of resident input and Board responses makes “playing back” progress straightforward, not a retrospective scramble.
• Ongoing sentiment tracking. Social listening gives Boards visibility into how the wider community feels about the Plan between formal engagement events, not just at them.
• MHCLG-ready evidence. Every interaction logged through Orlo builds the kind of ongoing, evidenced record MHCLG expects to see, both at Plan submission and through the life of the programme.

Over 400 public sector organisations use Orlo, including local government and central government bodies working on place-based programmes like this one.

If you want to see how Orlo can support your Neighbourhood Board’s engagement work, take a look at our local government solutions, or a demo is the fastest way to see it in your context.