Pooling Together: How Community Hubs have responded to the COVID-19 Emergency

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Trust has been undertaking a series of conversations with communities across the UK, exploring the changing relationship between local government, public services and communities. During these conversations, we’ve heard from several areas that community hubs were a critical part of the emergency response. In many cases, these demonstrated strong leadership, creative practice and partnership working. The Trust believes that these hubs could have a longer-term role in recovery from the pandemic, joining the dots between people that require support - connecting them to a range of services to promote individual and community wellbeing. Building on the learning from conversations with four areas, (North Ayrshire, Renfrewshire, Lancaster and Scarborough), our new report offers examples of best practice, challenges, opportunities and learning for the future.