In this opinion piece, Head of Business Services, Alison Brown, sets out why Community Hubs should be treated as core rural infrastructure.

 

For over a decade, public policy has recognised the need to move from crisis response to prevention. Yet the funding system continues to operate on short-term cycles that reward reaction over resilience.

Community Hubs and Village Agents demonstrate that this gap is no longer theoretical. The model is already delivering measurable, preventative outcomes at scale across rural Cambridgeshire. The question is no longer whether it works – but whether funding frameworks are structurally capable of sustaining it.

 

A proven model, constrained by an unstable funding system

In 2025–26 alone, the Community Hubs network hosted 32,317 visits across 41 locations, supported by over 260 volunteers and complemented by Village Agents assisting 745 residents with income, health, housing and digital access needs.

This is not pilot activity. It is established, high-demand infrastructure embedded in communities, with:

• consistently high engagement – 84% of attendees come weekly
• demonstrable outcomes – including income maximisation, crisis prevention and improved wellbeing
• strong trust – 100% of Village Agent users rate support good or excellent

Despite this, the model remains dependent on short-term or annually renewed funding streams. That creates three structural problems.

 

1. Short-term funding structurally biases systems towards crisis, not prevention

The Crisis and Resilience Fund explicitly calls for a shift to prevention, with multi-year investment in person-centred, “no wrong door” support.

However, short-term settlements undermine that intent in practice:

• Preventative work requires consistency and trust, which are built over years, not funding rounds
• Early intervention depends on stable, visible access points – not services that may disappear after 12 months
• System partners cannot integrate effectively with services that lack funding certainty

Community Hubs operate as a “front door” where issues surface early – from benefits and energy to housing and mental wellbeing – allowing escalation to be prevented.

If funding remains short-term, the system is effectively paying to dismantle and rebuild this front door repeatedly. Given the maturity of the Community Hubs Network (now in its fourth year), this repeated ‘re-testing’ becomes inefficiency rather than rigour.

 

2. Instability erodes the very outcomes funders seek

The value of Community Hubs is cumulative. Their impact depends on:

• trusted relationships with residents
• embedded volunteer networks
• consistent presence in local venues
• ongoing coordination with statutory and VCSE partners

These are not outputs that can be switched on and off annually without loss. For example:

• 81% of residents supported by Village Agents say they would not have known where to get help otherwise
• the contribution made by volunteers totalled nearly 20,000 hours, equivalent to over £367,565 in value

These outcomes rely on continuity. Funding volatility risks:

• volunteer attrition
• loss of local trust
• fragmentation of referral pathways
• reduced ability to deliver partner “clinics” and integrated services

In effect, short-term funding introduces avoidable system fragility. Whilst some local goodwill and infrastructure would persist if funding was removed, evidence suggests that coordination and facilitation – the funded elements – are what turn latent community capacity into active delivery. Without that, the system likely reverts to lower-impact, informal support.

 

3. Year-on-year funding blocks system integration and value for money

Community Hubs already function as a platform for integrated delivery:

• over 30 organisations delivered services through Hubs in a single year
• Village Agents coordinate across councils, NHS, DWP and utilities

This is precisely the “joined-up” system that policy repeatedly calls for. However, integration requires:

• aligned planning cycles
• shared data and monitoring
• co-commissioned services

These are difficult to achieve when core delivery is funded on a short-term basis.

There are clear upstream savings potential – through reducing repeat demand, avoiding crisis presentations and improving benefit uptake. Yet these savings accrue over time and often to multiple parts of the system. Short funding cycles:

• prioritise immediate outputs over long-term savings
• disincentivise cross-agency investment
• fragment accountability for outcomes

This leads to a familiar paradox: systems continue to fund crisis response because prevention cannot demonstrate its full value within annual funding windows.

 

Moving from programme to infrastructure

The evidence suggests Community Hubs and Village Agents are no longer a discrete programme. They function as local welfare infrastructure in rural areas – particularly where access to services is constrained by distance, transport and digital exclusion.

Infrastructure warrants a different funding approach. Mainstreaming would mean:

• multi-year settlements as the default, not the exception
• commissioning aligned across local welfare, health and prevention agendas
• recognition of Community Hubs as core access points, not optional add-ons
• stable investment in coordination, not just activity

True mainstreaming would embed this model within long-term local system funding.

 

Conclusion: a policy and funding misalignment

There is a growing alignment in policy around prevention, dignity and resilience. Community Hubs and Village Agents operationalise those principles on the ground.

The misalignment lies in the funding model. Short-term, year-on-year funding:

• constrains preventative impact
• erodes system capacity
• reduces value for money over time

If the policy objective is genuinely to reduce crisis demand and build resilient communities, then funding approaches must catch up with delivery realities.

The evidence now supports a shift: from projects to provision, from pilots to infrastructure and from short-term grants to mainstreamed investment.