Digital inclusion is something that we feel passionate about at Digital Cheshire, particularly with more of everyday life happening online than ever before, from booking a GP appointment to managing your money and staying in touch with family. We want to help close the digital divide by building residents’ digital confidence, so that fewer people get left behind. That’s why from March 2025 to April 2026, we increased our digital inclusion activity and delivered free events across Cheshire East, Cheshire West, Warrington and Halton, meeting and helping residents with digital skills in their local areas. We’ve captured everything we learned in our Summary of Findings document which you can download below, but first, here’s the story behind it.

Over these 12 months, the goal was to understand the real-world barriers people face when trying to get online, to test a delivery model that meets them where they are and to support residents with their concerns or queries. During that time, we delivered 35 events, spoke with 597 attendees and signposted 121 people to relevant resources or support. And we didn’t do it alone; along the way we built partnerships with established organisations such as BT and the Carers Trust which allowed us to reach the right audiences and provide guidance straight from the source.

Some of our event highlights included taking part in Get Online Week (the Good Things Foundation’s annual digital inclusion campaign), where we ran at least one event every day. During the week, we hosted a collaborative event with BT, answering questions about the Landline Switchover. We also delivered a scam awareness talk at Springboard, a charity providing free training and employment support for adults. Another highlight was delivering two sessions on online safety at Petty Pool College for young adults with SEND. We used Widgit symbols to make the material accessible and had a series of interactive activities for the students. We received the following testimonial about this event from Mike Kirkman, Petty Pool College’s Curriculum Manager:

“Working with Digital Cheshire has been a fantastic experience for our college. They took the time to understand the specific online safety needs of our learners and collaborated with us to design a completely bespoke set of workshops that truly met our learners where they are.”

We created our Summary of Findings document to bring together everything we’ve learned so far. The document is an account of what it really takes to reach residents, to connect with them and to support them. Which topics did residents ask about most? What worked, what didn’t and how did we navigate the challenges? What do communities actually need next? We cover all of this, from resources we created and further event highlights, to feedback from partners and attendees, our key learnings, and our recommendations for what comes next. Download the document here.

Our digital inclusion support is ongoing.

• – The questions residents raised during the events shaped a series of free guides and factsheets covering the topics people asked about most. These are available to download here: https://digital-cheshire.co.uk/guides-and-factsheets/
• – If you’re part of a community group or charity, we can still come to you and deliver a session on whatever digital topic your group would find most useful. Tell us about your group here: https://digital-cheshire.co.uk/partner-with-digital-cheshire/