Pride of Place: Norwich
We have brought businesses, voluntary organisations and local authority together to tackle Norwich’s challenges collaboratively. Our work has used leadership to drive momentum, galvanise action, amplify Norwich’s story on the national stage and to drive lasting social change.
Business in the Community’s Place Programme brings together business, civic leadership and communities to create long-term, transformational change in communities. We work with places to build and deliver a vision for their future that serves everyone. We provide sustained resource, advice and support to motivate and empower local stakeholders so that each place can identify its own challenges & innovate its own solutions.
Why Norwich?
Norwich is renowned for its idyllic charm and its reputation as one of the friendliest cities in the UK, but it faces significant challenges that hide beneath this. The city’s social mobility ranks in the bottom 10% nationwide, with disparities in life expectancy of up to seven years between different wards. One-fifth of Norwich is considered among the 10% most deprived areas in the country.
By harnessing the collective power of businesses, local authorities, and community organisations, we aim to create sustainable growth and elevate outcomes for every member of the Norwich community.
Strategic Priorities
Improving financial resilience and well-being to reduce food and hygiene poverty
Raise aspirations and unlock potential to improve life chances and social mobility
Build a sense of community, and local pride so people feel they belong and are supported
Our impact to date
Since we started working in Norwich in 2020, our leadership board, chaired by Aviva, has brought together senior leaders to facilitate long term-transformational change. Together, we have successfully delivered over 200 events and activities to upskill and connect residents in partnership with Norwich City Council.
In our deep dive neighbourhood of Earlham, we listen and learn about the need of the community. Early actions include recruitment of volunteers to support a community clean up, support for a Social Supermarket, facilitating free community dinners, numerous donations of hygiene products for the children of Earlham and an opportunities festival held at the local community centre bringing doorstep activity to the community.
“Engaging with other committed colleagues from a wide range of organisations within the city to harness our individual expertise, resource, and capacity to work together with communities to affect real change is inspiring. The challenges are deeply engrained within communities and it’s going to take the combined effort of local government, public, private and third sectors working with communities to make lasting change. “
Julie Schofield
Associate Director of Business Partnerships, University of East Anglia“BITC has given us the opportunity to look at ways of bringing about sustainable social change and mobility. The ethos is very much a ‘do with’ rather than a ‘do to’ which is critical and should always remain central to all plans made.”
Jade Hunter
Head Teacher, West Earlham Infant and Nursery School“BITC has amplified the debate about our social issues, often championed by the voluntary sector. We’ve had the opportunity to highlight our own charity mission and values to other local organisations and joined many partnership initiatives that have changed people’s lives and delivered strong social return. Combining energy and resources has helped influence local policy – and long may it continue.”
Dan Skipper
Chief Executive Officer, Age UK NorwichCase studies from Norwich
Supporting The Feed
The Feed is a social supermarket that offers a wide range of affordable groceries to help people eat well despite rising cost of living.
During the Seeing is Believing event The Feed’s CEO, Lucy Parish, highlighted that having a guaranteed regular supply of food was becoming a real issue and at times the shelves were empty. This really impacted Jeremy Chew, Operations Director for Boparan Private Office, and within a matter of days, Jeremy had sourced regular delivery of frozen cooked chicken into The Feed’s social supermarket. It doesn’t stop there, Jeremy is also providing Nourishing Norfolk (a food hub that supplies food to rural communities across Norfolk) a regular supply of Frozen poultry goods.
Dental Hygiene Drive
To build trust and engagement in the community of Earlham, we sought to provide dental hygiene products to every child attending school in Earlham.
In April 2024, a team of 9 dedicated volunteers, including Marsh and Saxon Air employees, and the Place lead embarked on a mission to collect donations of toothbrushes and toothpaste from Norwich City supporters. The response we received was truly overwhelming.
Throughout the afternoon, over 1,500 items were donated and over £150 was raised on our JustGiving page.
Earlham Opportunity Festival
A priority of our Place work in Norwich is improving social mobility by way of access to job opportunities and skill development. With this, our focus has been on providing opportunities in the community that assist in employability, upskilling, and additional support.
In April 2024, we ran our first employability and wellbeing event at Cadge Road Community Centre in Earlham. The event brought together various providers covering employment opportunities, housing, and wellbeing support services. We had 19 different providers who shared their expertise and resources with the community,
In moving forward, we hope to replicate and adapt this programming to give similar resource access and support to schools and families in the community.
Norwich Leadership Board
Our work is led by our local Pride of Place Partnerships – a cross-sector senior leadership board which sets the strategic direction for our work, mobilises their workforce to support with delivery of activities and acts as an advocate for the programme both regionally and locally. The Norwich Leadership Board is chaired by Andrew Dernie.
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