The Independent Commission on Neighbourhoods (ICON) today launches its Neighbourhood Policy Green Paper, Delivering Neighbourhood Renewal: Proposals for Change.
At a time when the government is conducting the Spending Review, the outcome of which will be published in Summer 2025, we hope to make a positive contribution to discussions inside and outside government as to the future direction of neighbourhood policy.
This Green Paper draws upon research commissioned by ICON and produced by Frontier Economics, which synthesises national and international evidence on how targeted interventions at the neighbourhood level can improve outcomes for communities facing deprivation. This was published by ICON in March 2025.
We also carried out a two-day policy consultation with St George’s House in February 2025 supported by ICON to identify the challenges facing neighbourhoods in England and the history of policy interventions to improve outcomes.
A two-day policy workshop was held in April 2025 by ICON. A longlist of policy options was circulated ahead of the workshop with attendees, with the longlist ‘stress-tested’ by attendees over the two days. In addition, over forty pieces of evidence submitted by organisations in response to ICON’s initial call for evidence. Where useful, we have also carried out additional desk-based research and evidence analysis. We want to hear from interested stakeholders about their views and ideas in response to or in addition to the ideas outlined in this Green Paper. We have outlined several questions that we are interested in for each proposal in this document. We are now consulting publicly on the proposals in this Green Paper, encouraging consultation responses by Friday 25th July 2025. You can provide a consultation response here.
ICON’s final policy recommendations will be published in Autumn 2025.