Greater Manchester Driving Change

Greater Manchester Driving Change through the Power of Big Local Community

On Thursday 5 June 2025, Andy Burnham, Mayor of Greater Manchester, was hosted on ‘Driving Change: The BIG GM Live Well Bus Tour’, highlighting the amazing work of big local local community organisations across the city region, and the crucial role they play in shaping a happier, healthier and fairer future.

The tour led by Local Trust, showcased tow big local areas. Little Halton Big Local and Sale West Big Local. These are pioneering big local community-led spaces in Greater Manchester, improving communities and tackle in health, social and economic inequalities.

Grounded in the learning from Big Local and the We’re Right Here campaign, insights from the tour will inform the future development of Live Well centres, spaces and offers, and ultimately shape how Greater Manchester (GM) can become a pioneer in growing community-led approaches in local decision-making nationally.

Recent research has shown that, across the UK, people feel shut out of decisions that shape their neighbourhoods. Polling commissioned by the We’re Right Here campaign found that 84% of the UK feel they have ‘no or not much’ say over the important decisions that affect their areas, while a groundbreaking report by Local Trust and Manchester University showed that almost a quarter of young people in Greater Manchester’s doubly disadvantaged neighbourhoods feel they can’t trust people in their local area.

To learn from some of the region’s community-led spaces, senior leaders from across Greater Manchester’s health and community sectors as well as national policymakers, travelled together on a specially commissioned Bee Network bus. They visited Lille Hulton Big Local and Sale West Big Local. These are places where local communities have been and remain at the heart of shaping their neighbourhoods, creating welcoming, community spaces that are delivering meaningful, everyday support with, not to, local people.

At each stop, attendees experienced how local communities have shaped – and continue to shape – the support and opportunities available in their neighbourhoods. Whether it’s helping someone into work, offering debt advice, creating spaces of belonging, or reimagining local life, the visits showed the vital role communities play in tackling health, social, and economic inequalities.

The spaces visited have either received Big Local funding, are Locality / We’re Right Here Campaign members, or are Live Well Accelerator sites funded through the National Lottery Community Fund strategic Live Well programme:

• Sale West Community Centre (Trafford)
• CommUNITY Little Hulton and Peel Park Pavilion (Salford)
• All Souls (Bolton)
• CommUnity Corner (Wigan)

At each local area, participants saw the outstanding work these communities are doing and had the opportunities to listen to the experiences of volunteers, community leaders and residents who use these spaces and helped bring them to life. From mini tours to green spaces, citizen testimony, bike workshops, art and digital exhibitions on citizen voice, public living rooms, advice hubs and litter picking, the tour showcased the many ways our people and communities can be supported to live well.

• Andy Burnham, Mayor of Greater Manchester, said: “Community-powered spaces like those we visited today are redefining how we put meaningful, everyday support back at the heart of every neighbourhood. “They’re showing what’s possible when communities are empowered to lead.”
• Rachel Rowney, CEO of Local Trust said: “Sale West and Little Hulton Big Locals are great examples of the impact communities can have when given the tools to make the changes they want to see in their neighbourhoods. We know that long term, flexible funding which places trusts in residents to make decisions on resources results in healthier and happier neighbourhoods.”

During the journey, attendees chatted with friends from Chatty Bus, an initiative that helps to reduce loneliness felt in communities recognising that 1 in 3 individuals get the bus for social interaction. They also took part in learning and reflection with Local Trust and the We’re Right Here campaign. These conversations will deepen our understanding of what it truly means – in policy and in practice – to be community-led and system enabled. To listen to, invest in, and work with communities differently, so everyone across Greater Manchester can Live Well.