Paddington Development Trust

Paddington Development Trust is a community-led organization advancing urban regeneration by empowering local residents to drive social and economic change in deprived neighbourhoods. Founded on the ethos of 'communities in control', it embodies values of local power, equity, social justice, self-sufficiency, environmental sustainability, and asset-based development, rejecting top-down interventions in favour of grassroots innovation, cross-sector partnerships, and resident co-production. Its impact approach centres on building neighbourhood resilience through capacity building, unlocking investment for infrastructure, and catalysing collective action to address root causes of deprivation, believing sustainable transformation arises from trusting local leadership and amplifying community strengths.

It prioritizes poverty relief via food banks and emergency aid tackling food insecurity and financial hardship for families in crisis, employment training and skills development for unemployed young people aged 16-25 and adults facing barriers including youth unemployment and long-term joblessness, upskilling programmes offering work experience, apprenticeships, and enterprise support for BAME communities and marginalised groups, youth work through after-school clubs, mentoring, and community champion initiatives fostering civic engagement and democratic participation, family support services including health advocacy and wellbeing activities for vulnerable families, elderly care addressing isolation via befriending, day services, and cultural events, health and wellbeing interventions like digital inclusion training and peer support groups combating social isolation and health inequalities, cultural inclusion projects uniting diverse faith communities through heritage restoration and participatory events, and environmental action responding to climate challenges with green infrastructure and sustainability training. Supported models emphasize community-led outreach, preventative early intervention, holistic person-centred approaches, therapeutic cultural activities, and advocacy for neighbourhood governance.

It excludes non-local or top-down projects, national initiatives without hyper-local ties, and activities ignoring entrenched urban disadvantage from austerity or economic shocks. Distinctive for hyper-local focus on Paddington and Westminster's deprived wards, it prioritizes grassroots groups serving BAME families, unemployed youth, isolated older people, and faith-led resident associations, valuing lived experience leadership, innovative partnerships, and evidence of place-based impact in social inclusion, participatory democracy, and climate-resilient regeneration.