Fourteen years ago, the National Lottery invested in a large-scale, national, resident led programme of change by creating the BIG LOCAL programme and the LOCAL TRUST organisation to lead it.
As one of 150 Big Local areas across the country, our Big Local North Cleethorpes programme delivered resident led community change up to the end of January 2025 when we formally closed our project.
Of course our local legacy lives on and we continue to support our local community from our Community Hub at 82 Grimsby Road, Cleethorpes, and through local projects which continue to carry the Big Local North Cleethorpes name.
But last week – the end of March 2026 – saw the final closure of ALL the Big Local’s across the UK. And in one more years time, the Big Local and Local Trust charitable organisations will both finally disappear.
Karl from VANEL was in attendance in Birmingham at the final We Are Big Local celebration event which said goodbye to the Big Local programme. It was a chance to reflect on the journey we’ve all taken.
It’s been a huge programme and has had a huge impact across the UK. More locally there has been a long-term impact in the North Cleethorpes area too.
VANEL was the LTO (the Locally Trusted Organisation) working alongside the Big Local North Cleethorpes committee. And we also hosted the Development Workers who put the resident led plans into action.
At the end of the programme the Community Hub at 82 Grimsby Road was transferred to VANEL to manage for future benefit of the community and we’d encourage you to connect with VANEL and the building to look back at Big Local and to see what we’re up to now.
You can still visit our website at www.biglocalnorthcleethorpes.org.uk and specifically our legacy website at https://biglocalnorthcleethorpes.org.uk/reflections/ to learn about our journey.
We produced a final video about Big Local North Cleethorpes in 2025. View it here or direct on YouTube here.
On the Local Trust website you can find out more about what Big Local was here.
Nationally, Big Local has assembled a website – Learning from Big Local – which shares the whole story from across the UK and across the years.
Start with the story here: https://localtrust.org.uk/we-are-big-local-a-legacy-of-resident-led-action/
And then visit Learning from Big Local here.
The CEO of Local Trust recently blogged about the end of the Big Local programme here.
The legacy page for North Cleethorpes is on the Learning site just here: https://www.learningfrombiglocal.org.uk/areas/north-cleethorpes
Back in North Cleethorpes in 2026 we continue to run a very active Community Hub and you can follow us online on Facebook on our BigLocalNorthCleethorpes Facebook page to see what we’re up to now. There’s also a page of information about the Hub online here.
We’ve started to publish a monthly newsletter about our Hub – view them on the VANEL website just here.
2025 was our first year of the Community Hub not being run by Big Local North Cleethorpes – read our ‘year in review’ blog article about the Hub here.
