The Commission on the Future of Local Infrastructure has published its final report ‘Change for Good’ today at a Parliamentary launch hosted by Nick Hurd MP. The Commission has made 19 recommendations, as well as an overarching recommendation that local infrastructure needs to be redesigned and creatively resourced to meet future challenges.

The Commission was set up by NAVCA in response to rising concern that its membership could be left behind by the quickening pace of social, political, economic and technological change. The 20-strong Commission was chaired by Sara Llewellin, Chief Executive of Barrow Cadbury Trust, and contained independent members from the private, public and voluntary sector, and included rural, urban, city and regional perspectives. It met between April and December 2014 and took over a quarter of a million words of evidence from local groups, infrastructure organisations and national experts.

The starting point for the Commission was how local infrastructure will meet the ever-growing demand for support with shrinking resources.   The Commission found that infrastructure will be needed in some form as long as people come together to form voluntary organisations and community groups. But the Commission concluded that the infrastructure of the future is likely to be a much leaner enabler, broker and catalyst rather than necessarily a deliverer. A key message from the Commission was that if the message to funders is to invest, the message to infrastructure has to be to change. This must be a ‘something for something’ deal.   Read the full report.  Read a four page summary