Portland Inn Project CIC

CASE STUDY

COMMUNITY HEALTH IMPACT ASSESSMENT

• Background / About

  The Portland Inn Project CIC is a creative arts project for a community in Stoke On Trent with an aim to achieve community cohesion, economic, social and cultural development by involving the community in development of a pioneering community space, cultural hub and social enterprise. The Portland Inn Project CIC has been cited as an exemplar project of people led change, in an underrepresented part of the city of Stoke-on-Trent.

  PIPCIC works with people locally to build confidence in the neighbourhood to make positive decisions and lasting change for the community. A Community decision making panel made up of local people and services meet bi-monthly to identify issues and concerns in the area, and plan together to raise resources and make the changes needed to improve the area for everyone living and working there.

Portland Inn Project outside the local derelict pub they took over to run as a community space

CONTEXT

Over the past few years the Portland Inn Project CIC (PIPCIC) have been working in the neighbourhood to write and now deliver on a 100 year plan for the area – which will ensure the community thrives, as well as contributing to environmental goals of supporting a developing nature recovery for the neighbourhood, and increasing biodiversity through a range of environmental interventions.

In recent years they have become more interested in local and national decision making which impacts on Communities and how they can better inform national policy. 

They state that their neighbourhood has suffered from negative perception and stereotyping for many years, perpetuated by being marginalised from decision making that affects the way residents live, and heightened due to a range of issues including insecure tenancies and poor quality housing. These living conditions have a significant impact on our physical and mental health.

They stated that they have consistently been met with resistance from private companies to recognise their responsibility in the health of our neighbourhood – including landlords and letting agents, property developers and the two neighbouring industrial factories.

PIPCIC have explored a variety of methods to connect with local and national bodies, and felt when joining that this programme would equip them with better knowledge and skills to be able to advocate from an evidence base for our community within these contexts. A number of times over the last few years, they said they have needed to connect to local government planning processes, and felt that the learnings from the first programme would help support them as a community to make the health case for or against decisions being made.

ACTIVITIES

As a result of the training and the toolkit provided PIPCIC implemented a process with neighbours involved in our Community Decision Making Panel, to first come together to agree how we would work together, to then define the health themes which the group wished to prioritise and to work together on defining a theory of change and then to undertake some local research, as a result of our identified priorities. PIPCIC arranged a number of workshops and walkshops to explore the themes in context.

A wide array of outcomes emerged from these working sessions. Issues such as absentee landlords, fly tipping, and air pollution were of focus. However, following a number of exercises, the group voted on which of the priorities to work on first, and noise pollution was chosen. In response to this, community members kept individual logs on noise happening in the neighbourhood, and have undertaken sound walks in the neighbourhood at different times of day to consider when noise is occurring and what the source of the noise is.

OUTPUT 

The group organised to share the findings from the CHIA at an all services meeting in November 2024 with the local authorities. The purpose was to share the CHIA process undertaken and the links between environmental and social factors and determinants of health, as a way to advocate for better support for the neighbourhood.

OUTCOME

• As a result of going through the CHIA course 6 members who joined PIPCIC’s workshops went on to register with local authority bodies as Community Health Champions. 

• They created a pamphlet which is a short one page version of the project’s summary to share with partners, and to communicate why the community deserves more support to improve health locally. 

• PIPCIC applied for additional funding to be able to continue the research in relation to air quality and absent landlords. We have also designed a project to directly challenge the impact of negative local media on health.

• From the young people workshops, they wanted to be part of a creative project to improve some of the derelict properties, hoarding and existing graffiti in the area. A key factor in this was in response to their neighbourhood being dubbed the ‘Grot Spot’ by a local paper.

“The Portland Inn Project seeks to do what we do best - lead on a collective narrative with our neighbours as part of the improvement of our area, and in doing so, challenge a negative stereotype.”

Downham Community Land Trust

CASE STUDY

COMMUNITY HEALTH IMPACT ASSESSMENT

• Background / About

  Downham CLT is run by Tim Oshodi. Tim has a deep and rich history to his work. He joined the Anti-Apartheid Movement as a student activist in 1985 and was Chair of the London School of Economics AA Group and took part in an occupation of the LSE to pressure it to disinvest from South Africa. He was a researcher for the AAM's disinvestment campaign, and a member of the AAM National and Black Solidarity Committees.

  Tim Oshodi has also previously been a Director of the National Communities Resource Centre which trained up to 100,000 people from low income neighbourhoods on how to achieve their vision of regeneration. He Project Manages community self-build schemes and continues to campaign and work passionately for social justice.

Tim Oshodi from Downham CLT at the Centre for Alternative Technology sharing insights from the history of Nubia Way, the UK’s first Black-led self build housing project | Photo credit: Angela Grabowska c/o Civic Square

“A healthy community isn’t one where there’s no illnesses. A healthy community is one where there’s a problem facing the community and they believe they have the capacity to bring about the change and they’re involved in that solution.”

CONTEXT

Downham is an area in South East London and has suffered from intergenerational poverty, race and health inequalities and institutional neglect for decades. The area has over 360 acres of green space which have been historically underinvested in. Tim Oshodi, c/o Downham CLT, has been campaigning to bring a strategy to Lewisham Council (who have not developed a strategy) on how to maximise the community wealth building potential of this land.

Tim works to bring together the community, the local authority, and other stakeholders to maximise the community wealth building impact of our green and blue spaces through a trauma informed approach to land use.

ACTIVITIES

As a result of the training and the CHIA toolkit, Tim brought forward a challenge to the local authority that their corporate agenda to tackle health inequalities was not going to work. Not only did he challenge their agenda on it’s lacking of a strategy that embodied principles of a HIA, but also how they had not considered how a health impact assessment would help determine the positive health impacts of equitable land use. Additionally, Tim brought forward learnings that a good HIA would also tackle the racial health inequalities so prevalent in the borough.

OUTCOME

• Tim was successful in the planning inspectorate recognising that the Lewisham Local Plan was not sufficiently addressing health equity and tackling environmental racism through its land use strategy. Lewisham Council were ordered to work with the Trust to modify the Lewisham Local Plan which is a significant achievement.

• Their next steps are to ensure that cabinet members and council leaders act upon the corporate priority of BLACHIR and follow the Institute of Health Equity recommendations on Structural Racism when they consider the plan's adoption. 

Support Staffordshire

CASE STUDY

COMMUNITY HEALTH IMPACT ASSESSMENT

• Background / About

  Support Staffordshire is the VCSE infrastructure organisation for Staffordshire. As well as supporting community and voluntary groups in their work by providing information, advice and guidance, they work in cross sector partnerships based around health (including health inequalities and social prescribing), community resilience, and environment/climate change.

  They have a strong understanding of the existing health inequalities in Staffordshire, which occur mostly in the most deprived and most diverse communities including Cannock, Stoke on Trent and Burton on Trent, and have dedicated projects to help drive systemic change to tackle these in the most affected areas.

  Support Staffordshire “take an asset based approach in all of our work, putting local communities at the forefront of everything we do”

The horizon of Stoke on Trent, a city that Support Staffordshire work within

CONTEXT

Joining the programme was relevant to two newer streams of work: building community resilience to emergency situations, and developing a Green Network to support community based climate action work, including creating a shared vision for the future to guide decision making with regards to sustainability. In applying to the course, they said that they “know from this work that communities in Staffordshire want support in advocating for themselves at the council and decision making level, and this programme will help us to develop our staff skillset in order to better provide this support.”

ACTIVITIES

4 workshops were held with two specialist groups Support Staffordshire wanted to engage in the programme. The aim of the workshops was to provide a space for communities to talk about health in a way which is meaningful to them, allowing the connections between the interlinking social determinants of health to be recognised (for example, employment, housing, transportation, food), as well as exploring the impacts of climate change on health.

Two groups were approached to be a part of this project, Burton Women’s Collective and the Neurodivergent community in Lichfield and Tamworth, with 2 x 2 hour evening workshops organised for each group. The workshops were not openly advertised to the public, as it was felt that the conversation would flow better if the participants were familiar with each other or knew that the other attendees in the workshop had similar lived experiences. These groups were approached due to their existing relationships with Support Staffordshire staff via the ‘Healthy Communities Alliance’ in South East Staffordshire.

LEARNINGS

1. Attendance was high and consistent for both groups (10 per workshop for Burton, 7 per workshop for Lichfield). This is highly likely due to the existing trusted relationships that the groups had with Support Staffordshire staff, which gave participants confidence that their needs would be met, and that the workshops would be a safe space where they could express their views openly and be listened to and understood by their peers.

2. One of the most powerful learning moments came at the very end of the final session with the neurodivergent community. When asked if they would have attended these sessions if it had been an open invite to the public, the answer was a unanimous ‘no’ , with reasons being that they felt they would be talked over or not understood. This demonstrates the importance of holding specific peer workshops with different audiences to gain a truly diverse variety of perspectives on intersecting topics such as health and climate.

3. Each group asked what would be done with the information gathered from these workshops, and the question was put back to them – what did they want to happen next? The answer came that they wanted the conversations to be shared widely, for the learnings and points raised to be used in other work and projects for the benefit of everyone. The conversations were powerful and meaningful, and they shouldn’t be forgotten or left behind in meeting rooms and in unread reports.

OUTPUTS

Two beautiful outputs were artist posters to be shared across local authority and VCSE spaces.:

An artists representation of people’s reflections from a workshop with a local women’s support network

The artists representation of reflections from workshop participants who are part of a local neurodivergent community group

OUTCOME

A summary document of the key insights were prepared by the Support Staffordshire team and have been included in preparatory notes for Local Authority project directors approaching new funded works, such as large scale urban projects or climate change related infrastructure projects. For Support Staffordshire this was a clear way in ensuring that elected officials and politicians address community health issues at the beginning of projects. This is a case of endeavouring to alter the behaviours in how politics and political institutions influence population health outcomes.

“The richness of the discussion and the vulnerability that people showed through the stories they told and personal insight they gave, came through in the copious notes recorded at the workshops. It was clear after the sessions that Health and Climate intersected the lives of people and they demonstrated this with multiple examples from their everyday lives. Co-production is often modelled, but sometimes lacks a true application, building on already existing trusted relationships made the space for these fantastic discussions and sharing.”

- James Flintham, supporting the Lichfield and Tamworth neurodivergent community

Northern Corridor Community Volunteers

CASE STUDY

COMMUNITY HEALTH IMPACT ASSESSMENT

• Background / About

  NCCV is a community led volunteer group protecting Greenspaces and community wellbeing in the 8 former mining villages of the Northern Corridor of North Lanarkshire. Many of the community members are unpaid carers.

CONTEXT

Despite years of the group interacting with the planning system, very few unwanted developments have been stopped, and the health of existing residents has been impacted by new housing, with no infrastructure delivered to support the existing or growing population. The group recognise that the Scottish National Planning Framework (Section 4) offers tools to protect communities but recognise that there’s a limitation based on an understanding in how to use them to full effect.

The current official statistics about the need for access and provision of good statutory health services in the former coal-mining community of Cardowan in North Lanarkshire do not reflect the lived experience. The community members described themselves as “living with long-term health conditions” and feel “powerless and ignored and frustrated and exhausted” by the “inadequate and inequality” of services in their area. 

A report from CommonHealth Catalyst stated that “in Lanarkshire an existing historical vulnerability has been made much worse by recent events” referring to the negative health impacts of de-industrialisation further exacerbated by recession, austerity, COVID-19 and the cost of living crisis.

The community wanted their “voices heard in the decisions being taken about our community” and “to engage and participate in taking high level action to make long-lasting change for ourselves, our families, and our neighbours”.

ACTIVITIES

From July to December 2024 the community used the CHIA toolkit with the aims of:

• Identifying where the current impact assessments are lacking;

• Sharing the outcomes of the CHIA community consultation;

• Providing actions for the community, partners, and for those with a statutory duty of care (including North Lanarkshire Council, NHS Lanarkshire, University Health and Social Care North Lanarkshire).

The team reviewed a number of existing guidance and reports from authorities who have a statutory duty of care for the area. These include Local Outcome Improvement Plan: Northern Corridor (North Lanarkshire Council, 2020); Northern Corridor Community Board Profile (North Lanarkshire Council); NL North Locality Health and Social Care Locality Profile (Health and Social Care North Lanarkshire, 2022); Our Health Together: Strategy 2024 – 2031 (NHS Lanarkshire, 2023).

A snapshot from NCCV’s feedback report on their CHIA grant usage

A snapshot from NCCV’s feedback report on their CHIA grant usage

OUTPUT 

Many of the documents they reviewed stated that health inequalities need to be addressed in North Lanarkshire but there is little detail on how inequalities affect people, and what is the coordinated activity and support to address them? A key weakness in the system was their observation that statistics lacked data relevant to the local community of Cardowan, and the distortion of what data there was led to “an ill-informed representation of the reality”.

Part of their investigation led them to note that despite the introduction two new higher value residential communities being developed around them that “in this period there was an active withdrawal of public amenities for the community of Cardowan: buses, post office, green space (via NLC planning consent), and no additional statutory services – health and social care in particular – were offered as the local population doubled in size. This data underpinned their perceptions of being let down by the services in their area leaving them “powerless and ignored and frustrated and exhausted”.

Their research concluded that the hard facts show that the access and integration of adequate statutory health services for people living in Cardowan is now severely lacking:

• There is still no statutory health provision of any kind in the community.

• The nearest GP practice is a minimum 15-minute walk away in Stepps.

• The nearest Hospital and Minor Injuries Unit is 3.2 miles away in New Stobhill Hospital.

• The nearest Accident and Emergency Department is 4.2 miles away in Glasgow Royal Infirmary.

They noted that at the time of research they haven’t seen the results of the mapping of “local services, challenges and opportunities" as described in the Local Outcome Improvement Plan for the Northern Corridor back in 2020. Discussions centred on how data dictates how resources are allocated to certain areas but others are ignored. This reinforced the proven principle that the data doesn’t reflect lived experience in Cardowan and saw the CHIA is an opportunity to gather and act on primary research: consulting with the community members and sharing our experiences and knowledge, both good and bad.

OUTCOME

• The value of local greenspace as a promoter of health and social capital was a clear response across all genders and demographics. This came through in-person evidence, testimony and the stories of its recuperative benefits on individuals beyond the focus group.

• It became clear that the purpose of this research should be to find better ways to evidence these issues, which are well documented already by statutory bodies and academia. But in a way which can be constructively used to protect community interests, and create a fairer more just community for all residents.

• This discussion continued exploring community empowerment and legislation such as the draft National Planning Framework 4. This involved having an understanding of the role of citizens in Local Development Plans. This led to the feeling that the community has no voice in legislation so the community members came up with the question: How are we here today with all this evidence they need to listen to and no voice in planning or service delivery?

• Ethical use of the data gathered from the community was proven to be an important element of the CHIA conversations. This was particularly relevant when exploring ways to move away from old repetitive patterns of giving information and/or energy and seeing no positive change as a result. It related to both the health and wellbeing of the community as well as the green spaces community members have been fighting hard to maintain as public amenities.

• In Spring 2025 NCCV were successful in getting funding to ask the wider community the question which they hopefully see as being a catalyst for real change in the Northern Corridor.

“Community-led action research is not research for the sake of it, to prove a theory or to satisfy the curious. It is about people asking their own questions about the issues they experience, getting the information, and evidence they need, and testing actions for change…This CHIA has demonstrated that individuals can come together to make change. It may not be in the prescribed format or language of statutory bodies but with trust it can work with the announced “community-led” strategies of those bodies.”

Paula Sharratt, Open City Design

• Background / About

  Paula is a long time community activist and proud working class resident of West Bridgford, Nottingham. Paula is actively involved in a patient participation group in her local area in which she challenges the way bureaucracy misrepresents people and the subsequent ways in which they are “treated”.

Skyline of Nottingham, Paula’s home city

CONTEXT

Following the crash of outsourcing firm Carillion, Paula set about understanding how supply chains, people and culture of the local area interacted.

Paula’s investigations have centred around how data tools are used to surveil, prejudice, misrepresent and depersonalise people in neighbourhoods. With an explicit focus on the widely used Experian Mosaic she sees how data generalises and stereotypes, creates social and economic exclusion, and misrepresents, enabling the ignoring and normalising the experience of harm. Different databases within the health service have recorded ethnicity, age, gender, sexuality in myriad and differing ways, making it hard to extract inequality data and hard to find out how many patients use services regularly. This fragmentation means that it becomes harder and harder for people to communicate their lived experiences and how their lives - and health services/outcomes - are being influenced by unjust systems rooted in exploitation and extraction.

ACTIVITIES

Paula’s work centred around producing a community health impact assessment of the impact of the routine use of quantitative data that isolates, divides, and abstracts communities and the neighbourhoods they live in. She was exploring the role of data in institutional activities.

• The intention of the work was to have the lives of social housing residents acknowledged and documented in a meaningful way. This was in contradiction to how local media increasingly focus on market driven segmentation, a financially driven way of making people visible/invisible/amplifying/silencing resulting in structures where social housing householders don’t see themselves well represented in local, regional or national media.

Using a grant provided by Centric Lab, Paula: 

• began relationship building with various stakeholders, such the local MP and the local council, 

• Began working with local patient groups and householders to understand the complexity of how they live and how they feel they are treated day to day. 

• Talked with householders and wrote stories of work, life and health and related it to the history and area, built on understanding within the housing association, and the GP practice and the wider community.

OUTCOME

As a result of her field building around supply chains and health, Paula has been asked to organise an event in the Future Health series for Rushcliffe in 2026 where one of the themes will be how a more visual culture can enable representation and participation. Paula is focusing on using the event as a means to increase social capital in the community by the connections individual neighbours and householders make around how their health is influenced by the systems around them and how they can contribute to shaping them.

• Paula noted back to us that following the various interviews with local residents they felt a sense of agency and freedom to contribute on matters about the supply chains that overrule their lives.

• From some of the research emerged the issue of low level racism in the neighbourhood being unaddressed by poor governance. It centred on the experiences of a Nigerian housing manager receiving racist abuse and other persons in their position leaving their job roles at the same time, resulting in inaction from employers and other systems.