In more detail
The planning process has the same basic shape whether it is used to work through comple, or simple objectives. This is, more or less, what planning looks like whether you are preparing a business plan, a site plan, a personal development plan or a neighbourhood or wider community plan:
- Assessment – take stock of the resources and constraints you have available (money and material, people and skills, social capital and the physical environment); the success or failure of previous work; and you consider the directions you want to move in and/or the important objectives you want to achieve. You make a list of the additional information you are likely to need.
- Research - get information and evidence you need to fill in unknowns, find out what other resources you might be able to get hold of and how set the constraints are you face. Look into who else is doing what; and at the future to work out threats and opportunities that are likely to arise given what you have and where you want to get to.
- Strategy - put together the information about what you have, what you could have and what you want to achieve (which is all internal information) with the what you know other people are doing, threats and opportunities (external information) to identify aims and objectives (shorter term aims which are clearer and will help you reach longer term aims) and critical factors about how you are likely to get there (these are sometimes called policies). Balancing all of these - sometimes contradictory bits of evidence - is what produces your plan.
- Implementation – translate the aims and objectives, policies and sensitivities into a plan which enables different people at different times to carry out actions in a coherent way and which contribute to achieving your aims. You monitor and evaluate what happens as a result with the aim of judging whether things are working or not and learning from what happens either way.
- Review – pull together the results of monitoring and evaluation so that you can see what worked, what didn’t and why. This feeds into the next Assessment stage (return to stage 1 above).
Planning is a cyclical process. The results of the Review feed into the Assessment which starts of fresh round of planning. All that happens if you don’t move the planning cycle on to the next stage is that the current stage carries on. So, for example, if you don’t review progress, then things will carry on being implemented regardless of what has worked or not and what you have learnt about why. Whenever we plan, the temptation is often to rush to the strategy phase (which is the point at which the plan is produced) and think the job has been done.
The value of planning comes from doing each stage above and from keeping the planning cycle moving on. If you want to get good value from the time and effort you put into neighbourhood planning or wider community planning: don’t just see it as a one-off project. Your objective, after all, isn't to write a local plan, but to improve (and enable others to improve) your neighbourhood?
| Key Facts:
Planning is a process which goes through a cycle of: assessment; research; strategy; implementation; and review. Failing to plan means rushing straight to implementation. Seeing the plan as the end product means getting stuck at the strategy phase. For planning to work, you need to think about when to move it on to the next phase in the process. |
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BIRMINGHAM COMMUNITY PLANNING TOOLKIT DEFINITION SHEET This sheet may be reproduced in paper or electromic or any other form but please mention it was made by Chamberlain Forum Limited for Birmingham City Council supported by Department for Communities and Local Government.
| created: 2016-07-13 10:34:45 | by: admin | status: f published |