The key findings of the research were:

• few organisations used the term ‘community empowerment’
• it is not possible to tell if an activity is a community empowerment one by name alone, you need to look at the outputs and outcomes that it delivers
• there is no shared understanding of what community empowerment means across the region
• many factors work together to create effective community empowerment
• badly delivered empowerment activity is worse than delivering none at all.

The report made a number of recommendations; the three main ones are that the Regional Empowerment Partnership should:

• identify a shared meaning for community empowerment
• develop a quality assurance model for empowerment activity
• build upon the ‘Conditions of Successful Community Empowerment’ matrix to develop a tool to assist the success of empowerment work.

The research was commissioned by the Regional Empowerment Partnership and was undertaken by Ove Arup and Partners.