Social Return on Local Council Provision

This paper looks at how Woughton Community Council are working to find a simple, technology driven solution to assessing the wider social value of their services, addressing purpose, challenges and the achievements so far.

Local councils (town, parish and community councils) are the tier of government closest to the people. With over 10,000 local councils in England and around 100,000 councillors elected, the sector is a significant and increasing player in the delivery of essential local services and support.

Traditionally, this tier of government has been responsible for things such as allotments, dog bins and churchyards. As principal authorities have faced reductions in funding and in turn, cuts to frontline services, we have seen the local council sector step in to provide a far wider range of support. In Woughton, a wide range of services are provided that would fall under the umbrella of ‘social’ services or support; youth, community food projects, a wellbeing service.

This CCiN supported policy prototype aimed to develop ways of gathering data and then creating a technology based tool to deliver social values for services, with a longer term aim to ‘personalise’ this, to allow other local councils to tweak the tool to evaluate their services.