The plan

St James Street Big Local is a resident-led community organisation investing more than £1 million in the St James Street area of Walthamstow.

The Big Local began in earnest in 2016, and will run until 2026. Roughly every three years, we produce a plan explaining what we intend to do next. This is the third plan, which looks at what we have done so far, considers what residents have told us they’d like to see more of, and lays out our ideas for the next few years.

As it is our final plan, we also consider our legacy - what we would like the long-term impact of our work in the St James Street area to be.

Background

The Big Local programme is an experiment in resident-led decision making. It gives 150 communities in England at least £1 million each, and allows them the freedom to decidehow the money is spent…

action plan

The majority of our work can be divided into four themes: People, Places, Charities, and Business. However, in our final plan we have decided to merge Charities into People, reducing this to three themes.

our impact so far

St James Street is quite a different area in 2022 to how it was just a few years ago. A car park that felt unsafe for many residents to walk through at night has been replaced by CRATE …

consultation

In April 2022, we launched a six-week consultation to find out what residents thought our priorities for the area should be…

  • Over the next three years, we will work with support from the Local trust (the charity which oversees the Big Local) to gain a better understanding of how our work is making a difference in our local community. This will involve in-depth interviews with our grant recipients, and surveys of local residents.

  • We would like to thank all residents who have served on our committee over the past three years and contributed to our work, including: Heather Alcock, Shehnaz Awan, Nikki Bigmore, Mel Brown, David Bryan, Amber Donovan, Pete Farnham, Thilini Gunaratna, Mia Johnson-Hall, Martha Lawson, Libbi Lee, Laura Marmion, Jacqueline McManus, Bel Meharry, Sophie Nellis, Vivienne Perry, Sebastian Salek, Linda Sansum, Jacqueline Sheehy, Dan Smith, and Joanna Wilson.

    We are also grateful to all of the residents who took part in our consultation, as well as all of our volunteers and partners, including our locally trusted organisation, CREST, and Gayle Wallace, whose guidance as our rep has been invaluable.

    We would particularly like to thank our programme manager, Rachel Carder, for her tireless work to put our ideas into action.

    If you live in the St James Street area and are interested in joining the partnership, please email stjamesbiglocal@gmail.com