Can ‘Pride in Place’ revive neighbourhoods in the East of England?

The Government’s Pride in Place strategy is a major new neighbourhood-renewal policy designed to give communities sustained investment, control and pride in their place. Up to £5 billion is being committed, targeting around 250 areas across the UK that meet criteria of disadvantage, and weak social infrastructure.

What it means for the East of England

Across the east no fewer than 20 neighbourhoods have been included in the programme so far. Funding is being delivered through two distinct streams: the Impact Fund and the Larger Capital Fund.

1.    Pride in Place Impact Fund

This is designed to deliver early, visible improvements in local neighbourhoods, helping to build momentum and trust ahead of larger regeneration projects. Funding allocations of around £1.5 million per area (2025–27) will focused on community-led quick wins: repairing parks, improving public spaces, refurbishing community centres, or restoring heritage features.

Delivery will be managed by councils in partnership with newly established Neighbourhood Boards. Activity is intended to demonstrate early success while those boards co-design ten-year plans for long-term investment. Examples include:

• Great Yarmouth: £1.5 million to support town centre improvements, public realm works and community asset renewal

• Fenland: early projects focusing on high street improvements and youth facilities

2.    Pride in Place Capital Fund

The Capital Fund underpins the main phase of regeneration, financing major infrastructure and social investment over a ten-year period. This will allocate up to £20 million per locality focused on structural change — new housing, town centre regeneration, green infrastructure, and employment-linked development.

Capital projects will require full business cases developed by Neighbourhood Boards in partnership with councils and the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government. Projects must align with local economic strategies and demonstrate long-term community benefit. Examples include:

• Ipswich: town centre renewal, integrating skills and housing

• Peterborough: community-led regeneration in neighbourhoods adjoining the city’s growth zones

• Coastal and rural areas: addressing deprivation, housing, and infrastructure needs

In each case, the programme requires the establishment of Neighbourhood Boards made up of residents, local businesses, community organisations and stakeholders. These Boards will co-design ten-year regeneration plans, decide on priorities and oversee delivery.

Learning from the past: what must change

Previous place-based programmes offer important lessons. Schemes such as the Levelling Up Fund, Coastal Communities Funds, High Street Funds, and older initiatives like the New Deal for Communities, often show a pattern: bold design, well-intentioned plans—but limited long-term community ownership, frequent project-level siloes, and weaker alignment with local economic strategy.

To succeed, Pride in Place must address the recurring issues:

• Avoid one-off projects and instead build long-term programmes with resident governance and sustained funding

• Ensure community ownership of assets, rather than “drops of money” from above

• Link place improvements to economic and social strategy, not just streets and facades

• Support neighbourhood boards with real power, resources and capacity—not just consultation

• Ensure procurement and delivery involve local businesses and SMEs, building the local economy rather than bypassing it

The role of communities and business

Communities: The neighbourhood boards provide a genuine channel for local voice. Residents must not only be consulted, but must help set budgets, choose priorities and monitor outcomes. Key early decisions include: what assets to refurbish or transfer to community ownership, high street or green-space projects that matter locally, and the kinds of partnerships with business or social enterprises needed. The success of the programme in places like the East will depend on this bottom-up activation.

Business: Local enterprise has a vital role. Businesses can support place-making by investing in high-street renewal, apprenticeships or community-run assets. They can partner with boards to offer expertise, sponsorship, workspace, and long-term commitment to their neighbourhood. In the East of England—with clusters in logistics, offshore energy, agri-tech and tourism—businesses operating locally should see Pride in Place as an opportunity to align place renewal with employment, skills and supply-chain investment.

The next steps for the local areas will include:

1. Support Neighbourhood Board capacity – training, governance and delivery support

2. Identification of pipeline projects that can scale from Impact to Capital funding

3. Engagement of business partners through chambers of commerce and local enterprise forums

4. Evaluation of early pilots (e.g. Great Yarmouth) to inform the rollout across the region

Conclusion

Inevitably there will be neighbourhoods and communities that will miss out on the opportunity to benefit from this approach. Criteria for area-based initiatives are imperfect, and localised interventions are by design, limited in their geographical focus and lack completeness. Success for ‘Pride in Place’ will depend on whether it escapes the pitfalls of past programmes to empower communities and involve business in a meaningful way. It must move beyond one-off regeneration schemes toward a longer-term vision that links physical renewal with social and economic strategy. If it does, then neighbourhoods across the East of England may finally gain the sustained investment, civic ownership and pride that they have long lacked.

Figure 1: Pride in Place Capital Funding in the East of England

County	Local Authority	Neighbourhoods	Funding
Cambridgeshire	Peterborough	Orton Malborne & Goldhay	Up to £20m
Cambridgeshire	Peterborough	Paston	Up to £20m
Cambridgeshire	Fenland	Wisbech	Up to £20m
Essex	Basildon	Chalvedon	Up to £20m
Essex	Basildon	Laindon Central	Up to £20m
Essex	Colchester	Greenstead	Up to £20m
Essex	Southend-on-Sea	Shoeburyness	Up to £20m
Essex	Castle Point	Canvey Island	Up to £20m
Essex	Tendring	Clacton-on-Sea	Up to £20m
Essex	Harlow	Borough wide	Up to £20m
Norfolk	Norwich	Bowthorpe & West Earlham	Up to £20m
Norfolk	Norwich	Heartsease & Pilling Park	Up to £20m
Norfolk	King's Lynn	Town centre, Riverside	Up to £20m
Norfolk	Breckland	Thetford	Up to £20m
Suffolk	East Suffolk	Lowestoft Central	Up to £20m
Suffolk	East Suffolk	Felixstowe West	Up to £20m
Suffolk	West Suffolk	Lakenheath	Up to £20m

Figure 2: Pride in Place Impact Funding in the East of England

County	Local authority	2025-2026 allocation (£)	2026-2027 allocation (£)	Total (£)
Bedfordshire	Luton	750,000	750,000	1,500,000
Cambridgeshire	Fenland	750,000	750,000	1,500,000
Cambridgeshire	Peterborough	750,000	750,000	1,500,000
Essex	Thurrock	750,000	750,000	1,500,000
Norfolk	Great Yarmouth	750,000	750,000	1,500,000
Suffolk	Ipswich	750,000	750,000	1,500,000