Relational local action: Welsh community groups’ engagement within networks of public service provision

There has been a long debate in the literature on whether local community action can work with public service provision without becoming ‘co-opted’ or ‘filling gaps’. Research shows messier possibilities, where community action can complement, challenge or demand state responsibilities, while sometimes also assuming and fulfilling them. This article contributes by highlighting how such possibilities are influenced by community action’s spatial dynamics – how it interacts within wider networks of public service provision to meet wellbeing needs locally. We examine these using storytelling interviews carried out with 53 Welsh community groups during the Coronavirus pandemic. This highlights possibilities for local community action ‘on the ground’ being materially supported by digital engagement within wider networks of public service provision (complicating ‘gap filling’), while strengthening these networks by retaining local specificity (complicating ‘co-option’). We draw on geographical spatial theory to make sense of where and how this ‘relational local action’ emerged, in turn contributing to limited research on how theoretical concepts of ‘relational space’ might look in practice. This helps to articulate possibilities for community-state interactions beyond co-opting local action or filling gaps in public sector provision.