The LEC

The LEC is the revenue-generating arm of NCSUN, designed to provide strategic partners (local authorities, service providers, and businesses) with genuine, verified community intelligence.

By integrating anonymised data and enabling our Lived Experience Experts (LEEs) from The NLEH to contribute to specific projects across Norwich, we provide unique, trauma-informed insights to:

  • De-Risk Policy: Identify systemic flaws in services, businesses and local and statutory policy before and during implementation.

  • Target Spending: Ensure resources allocated to community services directly address community-identified gaps.

  • Build Trust: Enable businesses, civics, service providers and others to authentically engage with the most vulnerable residents likely to benefit the most from Norwich-based projects.

Our model mandates an ethical 50/50 fee split for businesses and providers who have a fee budget: 50% directly compensates project-specific LEEs for their expertise, and the remaining 50% is reinvested into the self-sustaining NCSUN community infrastructure.

When you consult with the LEC, you are investing in ethical, enduring social change across Norwich and its surrounding areas.

The Policy Gap: Why ‘Lived Experience’ Often Fails

Traditional consultation models often lead to “consultation fatigue,” where the same group of vulnerable people are repeatedly asked for input without genuine change or compensation. This is often experienced as being “passed from pillar to post,” forcing residents to repeat their trauma over and over again.

Drawing on over four decades of lived experience in and around Norwich, our Founder understands that this fragmentation results in policies designed in a vacuum, leading to service failure, wasted budget, and a deep loss of community trust.

The LEC solves this by providing strategic, verified intelligence, mitigating the risk of policy failure and ensuring your service design is grounded in authentic, first-hand experience from a diverse, ethically-compensated pool of residents.

We translate complexity into actionable insights.

Learn more about Consultation Fatigue here

Our Methodology: Neuro-Affirming Intelligence

We don’t offer generalized advice. We offer precise, targeted data and consultation driven by our neuro-affirming framework:

  1. Targeted Query: We work with your team to define the specific policy or service gap you need to understand.

  2. LEE Match & Dynamic Consent: We pull anonymised data from The NLEH, and/or match you with a select group of Lived Experience Experts (LEEs) whose experiences directly relate to your challenge, using dynamic consent protocols.

  3. Ethical Delivery: LEEs are ethically compensated via our 50/50 Fee Split and the Nobody Is Out of Pocket (NIOP) Principle, ensuring their time and expertise is valued and removing financial barriers to their contribution.

  4. Actionable Output: We deliver a trauma-informed report with clear, implementable recommendations and policy templates ready for adoption.

Click here to learn more about ECC, our grassroots foodbank installed in June 2024.
Click here to learn more about our Mentorship projects, ongoing since January 2025.
Click here to learn more about our Partnership projects, reciprocal agreements business-to-business, ongoing since April 2025.

Proof of Concept: Intelligence in Action

The LEC & NLEH framework is already delivering results across Norwich:

  • LEC Projects: We facilitated and are actively supporting a key Lived Experience Experts (LEE) team for a large local project, funded for a year, aimed at tackling food poverty before an individual is in crisis. This is one of three individual LEC projects ongoing through 2025.

  • Grassroots Validation: Our core NLEH data asset is built upon insights from grassroots initiatives like our Easton Community Cupboard, and our long-term Mentorship and Partnership projects, linking hyper-local experience to individual positive outcomes and strategic city-wide policy recommendations.

Ready to Embed Ethical Intelligence in Your Organisation?

Policy failure is costly, but service designed from Lived Experience is an investment in community trust and financial efficiency.

We invite all partners—from local businesses to community leaders to residents across Norwich and its surrounding areas—to work with us, turning the challenges faced by the local community into policy that works for everyone.