Clackmannanshire Council won the community involvement category at the LGC Awards 2026. Here is an edited version of their winning submission.

The LGC Awards 2027 are moving from June to March, with an earlier entry deadline of 16 October. Explore the categories here and submit your entry here. 

In 2020, we established a new approach with a bold ambition: nothing short of a fundamental redesign of public services in Clackmannanshire.

The need for such a change had been clear for some time. In our part of central east Scotland, we have faced the challenges of entrenched intergenerational poverty, inequality and overstretched services. Our traditional service models were failing to successfully prevent such issues, and weren’t successfully empowering communities either.

As the smallest local authority in mainland Scotland – we have a population of around 51,000 people – it was easy for staff working in the community to see the impact of such challenges. But our small size also means those staff could get close to our families, communities, partners and colleagues to get a detailed sense of what was going on, and draw up a new approach.

At Clackmannanshire Council, the leadership team believes solutions to many social problems lie with those who have direct experience of them. While traditional co-design approaches might support residents to create the services they need, control of the funds for those solutions rarely lies with them. That limits empowerment.

The Family Wellbeing Partnership (FWP) is our response to that issue, and to the challenge of redesigning our public services. Founded as a collaboration between Clackmannanshire Council, the Scottish Government and charity The Hunter Foundation via social enterprise The Social Innovation Partnership (TSIP), it seeks to enhance wellbeing and to empower the local community to create the services they need.

Crucially, the approach goes beyond consultation and co-design. Via the FWP, communities have been given influence not only over service design but over strategic funding.

The most ambitious embodiment of that is the Transformation Space. A new funding model in which residents, funders and services share decision-making, it celebrated its first anniversary in June 2026, and has now moved beyond its initial funding round. At its core is a panel of local people with lived experience. Together, members define the challenges that need to be addressed locally and oversee funding.

Solutions to many social problems lie with those who have direct experience of them

The first area in which this funding model was used was homelessness. The call for project proposals was entirely defined and shaped by the panel, who then chose which would receive funding. Ultimately nearly £300,000 – resources pooled from public, private and third-sector partners – were awarded to five community-rooted initiatives.

This marked a major shift: residents now shape investment as well as services. Importantly, resources are aligned to joint priorities rather than organisational silos – allowing for a joined up approach. Meanwhile a partnership with community foundation Foundation Scotland provides independent fund management, ensuring transparency and removing bureaucratic barriers.

It is not the only example of residents taking control of the purse strings. Under the What Matters to You initiative, the Family Wellbeing Partnership funded five community-led groups – which then in turn allocated funding to neighbourhood ideas. Over £14,000 was awarded to projects chosen by the community, moving residents’ involvement from feeding back on ideas to making decisions on investment in them.

Through the FWP, we are embedding community voices at every level. Lived experience has shaped our family support strategy and commissioning decisions; our local children helped design a charter for school-aged childcare; and we’ve delivered coaching to enable residents to pitch and lead wellbeing solutions.

All of this has only been possible because of underlying changes, creating the environment in which FWP and its associated projects can flourish. We needed to create “cover” so that people felt able to work in a different way and to take risks, which we did through having both senior officers and elected members fully engaged in the project. It was necessary to create a shared purpose and vision for the FWP among the communities of Clackmannanshire and those working within them, which we did by running values based leadership programmes for staff and for residents. We needed to give our residents a sense of agency, and encourage their voices. That we did in part by running entrepreneurship events which were targeted primarily at those residents who had already been through the value based leadership course. Through these events, residents had the opportunity to pitch their ideas and apply for funding to progress them.

We are embedding community voices at every level

By integrating lived experience into funding decisions and service design, we can more accurately target resources, reduce duplication of services and held build preventative approaches that save costs and improve long-term outcomes. We strongly believe that FWP demonstrates the power of shifting governance to citizens, who co-create prevention-led and community rooted solutions.

An evaluation of the FWP, conducted by Horizons Research and commissioned by the Scottish government, suggests it is a model which could valuably be considered elsewhere in the country.

“The Family Wellbeing Partnership approach holds important lessons for other communities across Scotland, in designing a wellbeing approach that is flexible, preventative, integrative and multidisciplinary.”

Ultimately, we think it offers a blueprint for change.

The LGC Awards 2027 are moving from June to March, with an earlier entry deadline of 16 October. Explore the categories here and submit your entry here.