Evaluation of Newham’s ‘People Powered Places’ Participatory Budgeting Programme

This project aims to research the impact of Newham’s ‘People Powered Places’ Programme, which is people-centric and respond to the place-based challenges.

This project evaluates the impact of Newham’s ‘People Powered Places’ Programme using co-design methods to capture diverse lived and unlived experiences as data. Focusing on three pilot neighbourhoods, it maps how the programme influences community participation and empowerment, identifying both short- and long-term outcomes. The project engages local stakeholders—including the council, councillors, voluntary organisations, and residents—to ensure legitimacy and relevance. It will produce a model for evaluating the full programme and support future collaborations through an open-source co-design toolkit. Anticipated impacts include enhanced community engagement through creative practices, improved hyper-local policy design, and educational transformation by involving students as co-producers. The project also strengthens interdisciplinary collaboration between UCL academics and local government, laying the groundwork for future research grants. Success will be measured through a robust evaluation framework, community feedback, and dissemination via workshops, policy briefs, and academic outputs, contributing to innovative, socially impactful knowledge exchange.