Enhancing community resilience and inclusion in cities and towns

June 2025 – June 2027
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Overview

Migrant integration and inclusion are crucial to overall consent for migration and strengthening belonging; yet, in the UK, questions of integration and welcoming are often of relatively low salience compared to migration governance.

However, shifts in UK policymaking, particularly concerning the UK’s devolution agenda and upcoming cohesion and communities strategy, signal a window of opportunity for change. Alongside this, there is growing innovation in cities and towns as a result of their expertise developed through crisis mobilisations supporting arrivals from Ukraine, Hong Kong, Afghanistan, and others, alongside an increasing role for other actors, particularly combined and strategic authorities, as a consequence of the devolution white paper.

Integrated settlements (newly active in Greater Manchester and West Midlands) and due to expand to West Yorkshire, North East, Liverpool and South Yorkshire in 2026 will draw together diverse policy areas in a ‘Total Place’ model. This could allow for significant additional capacity for innovation – for example, in drawing together work focused on climate resilience and integration, and in developing work in relation to local industrial strategy and skills planning. These areas often share aligned aims, but there is little existing policy crossover. This work will draw on local action in developing climate resilience through community development and explore how this interacts with local action to support newcomer communities, some of which have direct experience of climate displacement.

This project aims to draw on the innovation happening within local and regional government, and to identify and shape the spaces for central government action in order to strengthen and enhance community resilience and inclusion in UK towns and cities.