Local Renewal Guide

Your area haslevers too.

Every kind of place that has struggled has a route back, and somewhere in Britain has usually walked it already. Pick the sort of place you know. See the levers most likely to work there, a real turnaround that used them, with its result and its honest caveat, and where to look up the numbers for your own area.

Figures checked 27 Sep 2026Case studies from the Renewal MapSources

What kind of place is it?

See it

The picture, and a place that turned it around

Understand it

Why places get left behind

● Policy, not fate

Places decline when an industry leaves and nothing is put in its place, when investment and decisions are pulled to the centre, and when the transport, skills and institutions a place needs are starved. Those are choices about where money and power sit, made over decades.

The causes are levers, so recovery is a matter of pulling the right ones. The places on the Renewal Map were written off in their time. What changed was a decision, and the evidence on each one, good and bad, is on the page.

Fix it

The levers most likely to work here

Check your area

The official numbers for where you live

ONSExplore local statisticsJobs, pay, health and more, for your council area, against the rest of the country. Nomis · ONSLocal labour market profileEmployment, earnings and the industries people work in. MHCLGEnglish Indices of DeprivationHow every neighbourhood in England ranks on income, jobs, health and more. ONSHouse prices against payThe affordability ratio for every local authority in England and Wales.

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Sources and method

The Renewal Map: every case study below, with its full sources.
Centre for Cities · BBC move to Salford (10 August 2017): 4,600 jobs at MediaCityUK, 2011 to 2016; about 0.3% added to Greater Manchester employment.
University of Liverpool · Impacts 08 (16 March 2010): 9.7m additional visits in Capital of Culture year.
Centre for Cities · Manchester's urban renaissance: city-centre population up 149%, 2002 to 2015.
Preston City Council · The Preston model and CLES (May 2019): anchor spend kept in Preston rose from £38.3m (5%) in 2012/13 to £112.3m (18.2%) in 2016/17.
BALTIC · Our history: more than 10 million visitors since 2002.
Historic England · Park Hill case study and list entry 1246881: 995 flats, listed Grade II* in 1998.
Centre for Cities · Learning from King's Cross (October 2022): jobs in the area rose from 8,000 in 2011 to 27,000 in 2019.

The place types are broad descriptions, and a real place is often two or three at once. The levers are the ones with the strongest record in places like it; the evidence for each is on What Works. Each case study is one example of the lever at work. None proves the lever will work everywhere, which is why every case carries its caveat.