Localism
What Big Society looks like
Big Society has now been adopted by the Coalition government. In their document outlining the case for the Big Society, Building the Big Society, aims to foster higher levels of personal, professional, civic and corporate responsibility in a society where people can come together to solve problems and where social responsibility, rather than state control takes hold.
Big Society is a bid to put more power and opportunity into people’s hands and the government wants to give citizens, communities and local government power to solve the problems that they face in order to be bigger and stronger than ever before.
The building blocks for the Big Society are:
- Giving communities more power
- Encourage people to take an active role in their communities
- Transfer power from central to local government
- Support co-ops, mutuals, charities and social enterprises
- A Big Society bank
However Big Society isn’t a formulaic approach or a one size fits all, it is about supporting local communities using those building blocks to meet local needs.