This research is led by Christine Camacho as part of her PhD Fellowship. For more information about Christine, please check our PhD Fellowships page.

 

 

What are we trying to do?

The definition of community resilience is how a community uses the resources available to it to respond to, and recover from, adverse events. This PhD study is looking at how community resilience is measured.

 

 

Why is this important?

Currently, there is no agreed method of measuring community resilience in England. However, it’s important to develop this because a standardised method of measuring community resilience would allow fair funding decisions to be made, making sure that no communities are disadvantaged by unequal levels of funding.  

 

One of the main aims of the UK Government’s Levelling Up strategy is to reduce place-based inequalities, so it’s important to calculate whether those aims are being met.  

 

 

How are we doing it?

This PhD study began with a review of the existing literature around measuring community resilience. A framework called the Baseline Resilience Indicators for Communities (BRIC) was identified, which was the most well-used internationally, with 32 studies identified in total. But none of these studies had measured community resilience in the UK.

 

Following on from this literature review, we are using a number of quantitative methods to explore and understand how to measure community residence in England, including:

 

• The use of an economic resilience index (for England) to test whether the UK Government’s Community Renewal Fund (CRF) had been allocated according to need.
• The social patterning and socio-economic determinants of Deaths in Despair (in England) – Deaths in Despair is a collective term for deaths from alcohol, drugs and suicide

 

 

Findings so far

The UK Government launched a Community Renewal Fund (CRF) in 2021. The fund is part of the UK Government’s ‘Levelling Up’ agenda to address place-based inequalities. The CRF, which was a cornerstone of the government’s ‘Levelling Up’ agenda, was established to address regional inequalities through investment in place-based initiatives.

However, the findings of our work suggest that the current method for CRF allocation runs the risk of widening existing inequalities rather than ‘levelling up’.

 

Using an economic resilience index for England to test whether the fund had been allocated according to need, we found:

• Nationally, there was no significant correlation between regional economic resilience and funding allocations.
• All regions in the North of England received less than their expected share of the flagship ‘levelling up’ fund.
• The least resilient region in England – the North East – received £13.4 million less.
• By contrast, the South West was awarded £9.9 million more than their expected share.

 

The full paper has been published in Regional Studies, Regional Science and is available below:

• Camacho C, Webb R.T, Bower P & Munford L., (2023) Levelling up or widening the gap? An analysis of community renewal fund allocation in English regions using an economic resilience index. Regional Studies, Regional Science 10:1, 496-505

 

 

Downloadable resources

 

• Publications
  • Christine Camacho, Peter Bower, Roger T. Webb, Luke Munford (2023). Measurement of community resilience using the Baseline Resilience Indicator for Communities (BRIC) framework: A systematic review. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction.
  • Camacho C, Webb RT, Bower P, Munford L (2023). Levelling up or widening the gap? An analysis of community renewal fund allocation in English regions using an economic resilience index. Regional Studies, Regional Science.

   

   

• News stories
  • Northern regions received £21m less from flagship ‘levelling up’ fund (published May 2023)
• Blogs
  • Levelling up or Widening the Gap by Christine Camacho and Dr Luke Munford (published May 2023)

 

More information

 

 

Christine Camacho

PhD Fellow, Public Health Registrar
christine.camacho@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk