Article
Character
Community
Economics
4 min read

Local businesses can love their neighbours, here’s how

The powerful partnerships quietly transforming Britain's towns
A knitted post box topper shows a group of people and the word powerhouse.
Celebrating Didcot's Powerhouse group.

In just three years, an Oxfordshire market town has cracked a code that's eluded community development experts for decades. The Didcot Powerhouse Fund has delivered £400,000 in grants to nearly 9,000 residents, proving that when local businesses and civic leaders work together, they can achieve remarkable results. 

Didcot's success is all the more remarkable given its context. Surrounded by world-class science campuses and the prosperity they bring, the town is simultaneously home to pockets of serious social and economic deprivation. This stark inequality demanded a fresh model for corporate giving – one that could bridge the gap between the wealth generated by cutting-edge research facilities and the struggling families living in their shadow. 

The fund's approach offers a blueprint for addressing one of Britain's most persistent challenges: how to harness private sector resources for genuine community benefit. Within five months of launching, it had generated £100,000 in grants. By year three, it had distributed 70 grants across Greater Didcot's 46,000 residents, tackling everything from domestic abuse support to youth skills training. 

What makes Didcot remarkable isn't just the money – it's the method. The fund, chaired by Oxfordshire Deputy Lieutenant Elizabeth Paris, doesn't simply write cheques. It convenes businesses, charities, local government and faith leaders in the same room, mapping community needs and systematically filling gaps. This year's annual impact event, hosted by the European Space Agency, drew 160 guests who would rarely otherwise meet. 

This model represents a fundamental shift from traditional corporate social responsibility. Rather than companies making isolated charitable donations, the Didcot approach creates sustained partnerships that leverage professional networks, legal expertise and grant-writing skills alongside financial resources. 

The success reflects a broader civic renewal happening across Britain, much of it led by the country's 5.5 million small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Across the UK, these businesses are showing what it means to contribute not just economically, but socially, to their local communities. They do so quietly — through their skills, relationships, and a belief in stewardship. 

Last winter, fuel-allowance reductions left many families wondering how to heat their homes. In East Yorkshire, a coalition of community groups supported by an SME mobilised at speed, distributing thousands of pounds in emergency vouchers. Similar efforts in Cambridgeshire and Nottinghamshire reached nearly 300 residents with targeted help. These acts made all the difference close to home. 

SMEs employ 60 per cent of the UK workforce, but their real power lies in their embeddedness within local communities. They understand local needs in ways that distant corporations or central government cannot. And SMEs, as groups of individuals united by a common purpose, have the unique ability to be good neighbours in the communities they serve. The most effective business leaders understand that creating real value comes from cooperation – from working alongside others to meet shared needs.  

Successful SMEs engage actively with their local communities because doing so helps them understand the people they serve, earns trust, and provides services that genuinely matter. This requires spending time with people, asking thoughtful questions, and recognising that local relationships are central to resilience.  

Through my role as Lord-Lieutenant of Oxfordshire, alongside our team of 40 Deputy-Lieutenants, I witness this transformation first-hand. We engage with tens of thousands of people annually and can report that this quiet civic renewal is both important and accelerating. 

From the Isle of Wight, where former vehicle technician Jan retrained as an energy retrofit assessor to help neighbours cut bills and carbon emissions, to East Yorkshire, where community groups and local firms mobilised to distribute emergency fuel vouchers, SMEs are proving themselves to be critical civic actors. 

The most striking example may be Inveraray on Scotland's west coast, where the historic Local Pier had been shuttered for a decade. A local charity, supported by regional SMEs, raised over £275,000 across seven funding bids. The pier reopened in April 2024, now hosting monthly farmers' markets. As Linda Divers, Chair of Inveraray Community Council, said at the ribbon-cutting: "That vote of confidence turned a dream into reality." 

This matters because trust – the foundation of effective community action – is built through personal relationships. A 2023 King's College London study found that 98 per cent of UK residents trust people they know personally. SMEs, rooted in their communities, are uniquely positioned to nurture and leverage this trust. 

Parliament is taking notice. The Business and Trade Committee has launched an inquiry into what small firms need to thrive, with Chair Liam Byrne calling them "the engine room of growth and our biggest employer." 

The potential is enormous. Imagine businesses helping food banks become comprehensive community hubs. Picture digital skills clinics helping charities navigate AI-ready grant applications. Envision hundreds more professionals like Jan, retrained into green jobs that serve both local communities and environmental goals. 

The Didcot model shows this isn't utopian thinking – it's happening now. What's needed is recognition that the story is changing: from businesses as standalone economic actors to businesses as community builders, aligned with local purpose. 

At its heart, this kind of community investment reflects a deep, shared commitment to neighbourly love – not as a sentiment, but as a practical responsibility. To be a good neighbour is to recognise the inherent worth in every person, and to act with generosity, care, and purpose.  

It even calls us to see one another not as strangers or competitors, but as people closely connected, each carrying something of the same human dignity and potential. This recognition demands action: to build relationships that endure, to work for the good of all, and to strengthen the ties that bind communities together. 

The work of SMEs and local leaders across the UK embodies these values, offering a powerful example of faith in action within public life. In an era of declining social capital and institutional trust, it offers hope that Britain's communities will continue to build themselves from the ground up. We should celebrate it – and help it grow. 

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Article
Character
Creed
Leading
Politics
5 min read

World leaders can learn a lot from Pope Leo

Graham Tomlin was at the Pope's inauguration in Rome. This is what he noticed.

Graham is the Director of the Centre for Cultural Witness and a former Bishop of Kensington.

A VIP couple stand and talk with the Pope.
Usha and J.D. Vance meet the Pope after his inauguration.
Vatican Media.

On Sunday morning, along with a host of bishops, patriarchs, priests and assorted others, I was led around the back of Peter's Basilica in Rome, into the cavernous spaces of that extraordinary building.

As we walked through the echoing church with the sunlight slanting through the windows like shafts of light from an angelic realm, our small group of Anglicans waited for our turn to walk out into the blinding sunshine. The names of the churches were ticked off like a game of ecclesiastical bingo: “Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria? OK.” Syriac Orthodox Church of Antioch? – This way please. “Armenian Apostolic Church – just wait a minute…” 

As we moved through the front doors of the Church, the first thing we saw was a crowd of 200,000 people stretching as far as the eye can see. Behind us was the imposing face of St Peter’s, that great monument to Catholic supremacy and authority. The world’s media looked down from the balconies above us. Opposite our seats were the rich red velvet chairs ready for President Zelensky, J.D. Vance, and the heads of state of numerous countries across Europe and beyond.  

As we walked out, I turned to a friend in our group, and instinctively said to him, “you'd need to be someone of remarkable humility not to let all this go to your head.” 

I couldn't help thinking of Robert Prevost, who was about to walk through these doors, a man who was made a bishop in 2015 - only became a cardinal two years ago, and was now to find himself the focus of rapt attention by this vast crowd and millions of others on TV, as the spiritual leader of 1.4 billion Catholics, catapulted from relative obscurity to being the most famous man in the world within a couple of weeks. 

St Peter’s is designed to impress. The piazza in front of the church is surrounded by imposing statues of apostles, saints, martyrs, and fathers of the church, all looking down on proceedings below. It was this church that inadvertently triggered the Reformation, as a fund-raising scheme for its construction involved selling some indulgences in Germany that raised Martin Luther’s fury. The frontage, with its soaring pillars, grand windows, sumptuous balconies and rich tapestries, is meant to overawe you. Inside, the space is huge, with vast windows letting in the light, stunning works of art everywhere. This was a display of the Renaissance papacy, leading into the Counter-Reformation, the confident Baroque spirit that announced the triumph of the Church over all its enemies. 

A Pope with a streak of vanity would be a dangerous thing. Everything points to the power of this position – the successor of Peter, the one on whom the rock of the Church was to be built; the leader of the largest body of Christians in the world; someone instantly recognisable across the globe, to whom world leaders have to come, cap in hand. No wonder some popes in the past have become political manipulators, vying with emperors and kings over who has more power.  

Yet these days, the Catholic Church sounds a humbler note. Pope Francis started the church down a line of ‘synodality’, inviting other voices into the church’s deliberations rather than just male priests. Pope Leo seems to want to continue down that line. 

Referring to his election he said: 

 “I was chosen, without any merit of my own, and now, with fear and trembling, I come to you as a brother, who desires to be the servant of your faith and your joy, walking with you on the path of God’s love.” 

The tone was not of self-aggrandisement, asserting the power of the position. There was no strategy to dynamically change the church and the world. No grand design to use the levers of power to shape society according to his vision. Instead, this was about unleashing a more elusive and uncontrolled force: the power of self-denying compassion.  

As Pope Leo put it: 

“The ministry of Peter is distinguished precisely by self-sacrificing love, because the Church of Rome presides in charity and its true authority is the charity of Christ. It is never a question of capturing others by force, by religious propaganda, or by means of power. Instead, it is always and only a question of loving as Jesus did.” 

Now that’s different from the way popes have sometimes spoken in the past. The Church has no power other than the power of love – the kind of self-sacrifice seen in the life of Christ. If the pope ‘presides’, as Presidents do, he ‘presides in charity’. A little different from some other Presidents I can think of.  

Admittedly we don’t know much about him yet, But Bob Prevost strikes you as a humble man. Someone who can turn down a place at Harvard Law School to go instead to serve the poorest communities in Peru for 20 years, sleeping on the floor of huts, travelling by donkey to remote villages, unnoticed and obscure, suggests a distinct lack of self-importance. You don’t canvas to become pope, announcing your candidacy, working your way up the ranks, arguing your merits to the electorate. Instead, you get on with what you do, and if the call comes, you follow it.  

As Pope Leo, he will need that humility as he takes on this role for the rest of his life. He will need it to resist the subtle lure of the deference others offer him, the adulation he will receive wherever he goes, the buildings he lives in, the magnificence of the popes who went before him, the way people will hang on his very word. The temptation to think that Bob Prevost is, after all, a mighty big fish, someone whose talents have got him to this point will be strong.  

But if he gives in to that temptation, he will slip back into the run of the mill way of the world, lording it over those he oversees. He seems aware of the slippery nature of such a position. Whoever was called to be the successor of St Peter, he said, needed to exercise oversight “without ever yielding to the temptation to be an autocrat, lording it over those entrusted to him. On the contrary, he is called to serve the faith of his brothers and sisters, and to walk alongside them." 

It was Jesus who said:

“Among the nations, their rulers lord it over them. But it is not so among you. Whoever wants to be great among you must be your servant.” 

Other Presidents, prime ministers and patriarchs could take a leaf out of that book.  

Celebrate our 2nd birthday!

Since Spring 2023, our readers have enjoyed over 1,000 articles. All for free. 
This is made possible through the generosity of our amazing community of supporters.

If you enjoy Seen & Unseen, would you consider making a gift towards our work?

Do so by joining Behind The Seen. Alongside other benefits, you’ll receive an extra fortnightly email from me sharing my reading and reflections on the ideas that are shaping our times.

Graham Tomlin
Editor-in-Chief