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What is Big Society?

The Big Society is a society in which individual citizens feel big: big in terms of being supported and enabled; having real and regular influence; being capable of creating change in their neighbourhood. Does our society pass this test at the moment?

Well, only 4 out of 10 of us believe that we can influence local decisions. Only 1 in 33 of us attend public meetings. We feel anger and frustration at the recent behaviour of both the City and Westminster and relatively powerless to change them. We are often anonymous tax-payers without a real sense of how our money gets spent. Most of us try to be reasonably good citizens but our influence seems very small.

The Big Society is a powerful vision to change this, creating a nation of empowered citizens and communities. It has been articulated by Prime Minister David Cameron, but is linked to some of the best ideas across the political spectrum.

People have interpreted the ideas and vision in different ways, but we see the core of the big society as three principles:

  • Empowering individuals and communities: Decentralising and redistributing power not just from Whitehall to local government, but also directly to communities, neighbourhoods and individuals
  • Encouraging social responsibility: Encouraging organisations and individuals to get involved in social action, whether small neighbourly activities like hosting a Big Lunch to large collective actions like saving the local post office
  • Creating an enabling and accountable state: Transforming government action from top-down micromanagement and one-size-fits-all solutions to a flexible approach defined by transparency, payment by results, and support for social enterprise and cooperatives

Big Society Action

This is a bottom-up vision, not a government program dictated from the state to citizens. Big Society is about a cultural change where people  “don’t always turn to officials, local authorities or central government for answers to the problems they face but instead feel both free and powerful enough to help themselves and their own communities.”

As the Big Society Network, we are just one small component of the diverse range of local groups, social organisations and individual actions that define ‘big society’. There are 900,000 to 1 million community groups in this country and an estimated 238,000 social entrepreneurs. There are countless charities and voluntary organisations, many of which are small and local. These groups are the Big Society in action and have been for many years. Without their work, the UK couldn’t function, and we see the Network’s role as signposting, supporting and strengthening them.

Big Society Policy

The government has, however, articulated a range of policies to support this vision. Nick Hurd MP is the Minister for Civil Society and Lord Wei is the Prime Minister’s Adviser on Big Society.

Flagship policies include the Big Society Bank, which will help finance social enterprises, charities and voluntary groups; the training of 5,000 new community organisers; and the creation of a National Citizen Service program. Other key policy reforms include the Localism Bill, which will reform the planning system to empower neighbourhoods, and reforms to enable public service employees to form independent employee-owned co-operatives.

Note: The Big Society Network is not involved in the design or delivery of these policies; please contact the relevant government department for more information