community planning

How to do a SWOT Analysis

SWOT analysis is a tool you can use to share ideas about the big issues affecting a place or an organisation – and to understand how they may be linked.

SWOT Analysis is a type of 'strategic analysis' - a way of working out what are the big factors affecting the goal you want to achieve; and what the relationships between them are.

If your goal is the improvement of your neighbourhood, then strategic analysis is a way of looking at what things might stop you, help you, help someone else to help you etc, affect the resources available? Identifying these things and relating them will help you work out what are the important things you need to achieve (these are called 'objectives') and ways of working you need to adopt (these are called 'policies').

This method sheet is one of three looking at simple, but very effective, types of analysis. If you use the three together and with a group of people who know the area but have different ideas about it, then you should - after a few hours - have a very good picture of what the strategic objectives and policies might be to enable you to make the neighbourhood a better place to live.

What you Need

You can do all three forms of analysis presented here on your own, but they are best done in a group of half a dozen people. If you have many more than that, you might want to split them into two or more small groups. Ideally, you want people from different backgrounds and with different skills and interests.

To do SWOT Analysis, you will need:

some large bits of paper (like a flip chart pad), a couple of packs of post-it notes and some pens.
a venue to meet in and a table for the group to sit around.
tea, coffee and whatever other refreshments seem appropriate should help.

If you use all three forms of analysis, you will need at least 2 hours of everyone's time. If you do only a SWOT analysis it can take less than an hour. It could, for example, be fitted in to a regular meeting or committee meeting.

How to do It

SWOT ANALYSIS

This is the form of strategic analysis in the toolkit with which most people are likely to be familiar or , at least, have heard of. SWOT stands for (your neighbourhood's):

Strengths - things that make it good
Weaknesses - things that make it bad
Opportunities - things that could make it better in future
Threats - things that could make it worse in future.

1. Take a large sheet of paper and draw a cross on it so it is divided into 4 areas. If you are artistic, you could draw a picture of the neighbourhood in the middle, otherwise just write its name. Put an S in one of the areas; a W in the next going in a clockwise direction; then an O in the next; and a T in the last area.

2. Give everyone a stack of post-it notes and a pen and put the large sheet of paper on the table.

3. Group leader starts off by saying they have come up with one strength, one weakness, one opportunity and one threat (from talking to people, going through the minutes of meetings or just from their own head) and they stick a post-it note with a few words or a picture on to recall each of those four in the appropriate areas

4. Passing clockwise round the table, the next person adds a strength, weakness, opportunity or threat OR gets to tick one that has already been put done to show they agree with it. This process continues for 10-15 minutes or until people have run out of steam.

5. The group leader then asks four participants to take charge of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats respectively. Their job is to sort them out into groups so that related things are bunched together. They can use a bit a wall to do this if they want. Other participants join whoever needs a second opinion. They can agree to set aisde any that they think are in the wrong area. This part takes about 5 minutes.

6. The group re-convenes to look at the groups of post its that have been put together. Go round the table to set if people agree the groupings (a grouping could be a single post-it or several that are closely related). Write the names of the groupings on the sheet of paper in the appropriate area. Top of the list should be the post-it grouping with the most post-its and ticks added together. This takes10 minutes.

7. The group leader then suggests one link between two of the groups in any area of the sheet. Everyone can comment on this suggestion; the group can reject or approve the link. Indicate an agreed link by drawing a line and writing the nature of the relationship on a post it next to the line.

8. Pass clockwise around the group adding links in the same way until there are about as many links as there are titles on the sheet or everyone is done. This takes about 15 minutes.

9. You now have an agreed picture of the current and likely future strategic factors (or issues) facing your neighbourhood and the links between them. You can use this as the basis for a plan or you as an input to firther strategic analysis (see Gap and SHEEP analysis, for example). If you can, put a version of the finished diagram on your website so that everyone can see and comment on it.

10. If you aren't doing any more analysis then you can use your completed diagram as the basis for the strategic objectives and policies in your plan. Policies will tend to be made in responmse to a SWOT factor and objectives will often come out of the relationships between SWOT factors. But there are no hard and fast rules.

Examples and Case Studies

Checklist

SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (current things, future things, positive and negative).

In the case of a community neighbourhood plan you are listing the SWOTs for your neighbourhood. Be honest - don't try to make everything sound positive (or negative). Every neighbourhood has a mixture of both.

As well as listing the SWOTs, the analysis is about drawing relationships between them. You should see after a while that threats can often be linked to strengths and opportunities to weaknesses in particular. But you can have links between factors in any area of the sheet.

The group leader leads by example and sets out a SWOT of each sort to get the group going. They also suggest a link at the start of the linking go around.

You need at least five people to work the SWOT group in the way suggested, but you can do it with 3-11 easily enough. You can do SWOT on your own or as a pair or in larger groups (with multiple tables) but you'll need to adapt the process accordingly.

The process can take just under an hour. But it can easily take 2 hours if you want to do it at a more leisurely pace. Alternatively, if you are rushed, you can do a SWOT analysis on your own in 10 minutes. It won't be as good as a group version, but it will still be useful.

Don't debate individual SWOTs (ones that no one else agrees with get voted to the bottom of the list anyway) and it is more important that everyone gets something down and takes part in the activity. But you should discuss the groupings and you should certainly be quite rigorous about making sure everyone is happy with the relationships between grouped terms. This is because a strategic factor is mainly important in relation to other things.

SWOT factors (agreed groupings of post-its around a certain subject) tend to suggest policies (ways in which you need to do things), eg: if you have a SWOT factor which is to do with local schools being a strength in your neighbourhood then you might derive a policy from that of keeping in touch with the local schools and making sure they are informed about what you are doing.

Relationships between SWOT factors tend to suggest objectives (things you need to do), eg if you have the SWOT factor above to do with schools related to another which might be, for example, the shortage of places to meet in your neighbourhood, then that might suggest an objective of getting one of the schools to act as the base for your community planning meetings?

BIRMINGHAM COMMUNITY PLANNING TOOLKIT METHOD 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: 2016-07-24 17:35:53

by: admin

status: f published

Community Planning is based on the idea that the experts in an area – the people who live and work there – should be involved in planning and making it a better place…

Community Planning is based on the idea that the experts in an area - the people who live and work there - should be involved in planning and making it a better place...

In more detail

Community planning is planning carried out with the active participation of groups of people with shared interests in a service or a place. It might involve local spatial planning (to do with the use of the space we share). It can also involve how places are served and how the communities which share a place work together (and with the agencies which serve them) to make it better to live and work in.

Scope

Community planning and design could apply to anything which needs planning and design: a project or a service; a site or an organisation. This toolkit is about community planning of neighbourhoods. That is, working out how to improve the places we live and work with the active participation of the people with the biggest stake in them. Neighbourhood planning is part of that (bear in mind that formal neighbourhood planning only covers spatial issues – this toolkit is concerned with community planning applied to all sorts of neighbourhood issues). In community planning for a neighbourhood, your focus is the place and its people, not a process or set of outputs to do with the local planning framework.

Where you do it – it’s nearly always best to be ‘on site’, that is in the neighbourhood itself. Partly, being there makes it accessible for the people you want to take part. Partly, being there means people can make easier reference to things that are important and more easily show each other what they mean. Sometimes there is a case for getting away from the neighbourhood, however. You might find things like prioritisation, dealing with conflict and other tasks for which you need objectivity can be done well away from the neighbourhood.

How you do it – a lot of community planning works through dialogue: that is conversation, not consultation. You generally sit in a circle rather than have everyone facing a ‘top table’. You make sure you use words most people understand and avoid jargon and abbreviations wherever possible. You create lots of ways for people to take part – we don’t all work the same; some methods work well for some and not at all for others. You use lots of visual methods – pictures, graphs and maps (but the maps don’t always have to be to scale or to show every feature) – because these make sense for a lot of people. You live with difference – not everyone has to agree all the time. Your objective throughout is to enable variety – of voices and views; of methods; of channels of communication; and of conclusions. Unlike in industrial processes where quality is based on conformity, the quality of community planning depends a lot on enabling and drawing value from diversity.

Who does it – the most important participants are the resident experts – the people who live or run businesses in the place and who have the local knowledge on which the plan depends. You will need external experts: and, respectfully, keep them ‘on tap, not on top’. You will need to listen to people from the area who aren’t normally heard including: young people; newcomer communities; disabled people; minorities; people from the less well-off parts of the place. Their voices matter because they see your place from a different angle and may know different things about it. And although you want as many people involved as possible, remember: there’s no point waiting for people to step forward: you – and other individuals - will have to take a lead from time to time; and community planning isn’t a numbers game. You want quality, not quantity of responses.

When you do it –you will probably want to get on with community planning; but you probably also know that – as with most projects – time spent preparing beforehand is rarely time wasted? The thing to bear in mind is that planning is a process and preparation is an essential part of it. So, don’t regard preparatory work – like talking to lots of other people and local agencies about what you want to do; or setting up a local website to publicise it and get people talking – as time wasted. If you are doing those things, you’ve actually made a start on community planning.

Why you do it – community planning is action-planning. The product at the end of it is an action plan which should have actions people and organisations – including developers - can take to make the neighbourhood a better place to live and do business. This sounds obvious, but remember that some of the people you will be working with are a lot more used to ‘inaction’ plans – that is the sort of plan that takes so long to produce and is all about the problems of doing anything that producing it becomes an alternative to taking action. But community planning isn’t all about the end-product, it is about the process you follow too. The process of coming together to take part in planning adds value. It should be: a learning experience for the people involved; enjoyable and rewarding; and it should leave more capacity (skills and connections) behind in the community to carry on planning in future.

Key Facts:

Community Planning means the communities with an interest in a place being involved in, and leading, planning and making it better. Neighbourhood planning is a specific example of community planning which deals with spatial planning issues. The idea behind this toolkit is that communities in urban neighbourhoods in particular are likely to benefit from looking at how to use other tools - including wider community planning - alongside neighbourhood planning.

Page Links from here

The Community Planning website by Nick Wates has lotsof information on tools and techniques

Community Planning Toolkit by Community Places in Northern Ireland

Community Planning in Scotland

ACRE guidance of Community Planning in rural areas

And on this site, see

What is a Plan?

Neighbourhood Statements and Policies

Civil Society

Community

Improving Communication

Neighbourhood Planning

Real Time Community Change

Community Dialogue

Participatory Appraisal

OR you can use the navigation menu above right to look at other parts of the toolkit.

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: 2016-07-22 10:17:25

by: admin

status: f published

Systems Thinking

Neighbourhoods are complex things made up of many interdependent parts. Typically neighbourhoods are part of larger urban areas – cities and conurbations – rather than existing in relative isolation. Systems thinking is a useful way of understanding neighbourhoods and approaching community planning of them.

In more detail

Systems Thinking is a way of understanding complex things by looking at the links and interactions between parts and systems rather than studying those parts in isolation from each other. Instead of breaking something down into its parts in order to understand how each might work, systems thinkers try to identify patterns and cycles in the way parts relate to each other. So, for example, systems thinking could involve:

Taking a step back from something to see the ‘big picture’ – like seeing what things make by how they fit together rather than trying to understand every individual piece of a puzzle
Looking at how things might behave over time – like seeing things as a moving film rather than relying on snapshots of them. Spotting trends and directions being taken.
Looking for patterns - asking what else a thing looks like.
Looking to see how change affects the things that caused it and not expecting change to carry on at the same rate
Understanding that the angle you look at something from changes how it looks. Consciously looking at things from different points of view
Looking for pressure points – critical times and places where a relatively small effort could lead to big improvements or changes in the way the system works
Distinguishing between stocks and flows of resources – not just seeing how much there is of something, but asking what it is for.
Distinguishing between ‘hard’ systems (easily measurable things like structures) and ‘soft’ systems (hard to predict things like human behaviours) and understanding that the two continually interact.
Seeing ‘infrastructure’ not just in terms of physical things – like roads and railways – but also in terms of social infrastructure – made up of links and interactions between people.

A systems view of urban neighbourhoods suggests that community planning of them should be effective: it enables different points of view and consideration of soft systems which tend to be ignored by expert-led planning. To be effective, however, neighbourhood planning needs to be holistic and focus on the links and interactions between people and physical structures.

Key Facts:

Systems thinking is an approach to understanding and imporving complex things which feature a lot of inter relationships - like neighbourhoods. Using a systems thinking approach can make it easier to spot patterms and key aspects of the neighbourhood which need attention. Community planning is well suited to a systems approach.

Page Links from here

Community Planning

OR you can use the navigation menu above right to look at other parts of the toolkit.

created: 2016-07-16 14:32:21

by: admin

status: f published

Freedom of Information

Freedom of information means that recorded infromation held by public authorities is generally presumed to be publicly available, but there are exceptions and limits…

Freedom of information means that recorded infromation held by public authorities is generally presumed to be publicly available, but there are exceptions and limits...

In more detail

Anyone can make a freedom of information request of any public authority in England . About 120,000 requests are made each year – mostly by private citizens and community groups; but the law is also used extensively by businesses, charities and journalists and media organisations.

Freedom of Information Act 2000

The Freedom of Information Act 2000 is based on the principle that people have a right to know about the activities of public authorities unless there is a good reason for them not to. The law gives the public access to information held by public authorities through:

the publication of certain information by authorities
information requests made by members of the public.

The Act applies to any ‘recorded information’ (in the form of documents, computer files, letters, emails, video and sound recordings and photographs, diagrams and maps etc) that is held by a public authority in England. That includes: government departments, local councils, the NHS, state schools and the police. The Act does not necessarily apply to every publicly-funded organisation that receives public money. Most organisations which receive grants from public bodies and businesses which do work on contract for public services are not subject to freedom of information (although they may have requirements to make information publicly available written into their grant agreements and contracts).

Principles

Public authorities have a duty to provide information, unless they can show there is a good reason not to, regardless of who you are (you don’t have to be a British citizen, have any special qualifications or be a taxpayer) or what you want it for. You do not have to say why you want the information when you ask for it. An authority must consider your request impersonally – that means they can’t turn your request down because of who you are; but they also can’t accept your request because of who you are or why you want the information.

Notes and Limitations

The law sets out a legal minimum. Authorities may disclose more information as they see fit. Which means, for example, that you might get two different responses to the same request to two different local councils.

The law is designed to provide openness about the work of the public sector, not the private sector. GPs and other health practitioners, for example, only have to give information about their NHS work.

Where local councils transfer responsibility for services to a company which is owned by the council (like an Arms Length Management Company in social housing), the company is subject to the terms of the law as if it was still part of the council.

MPs and councillors are not public authorities and are not covered by the act. Neither they, nor the public authorities who may store some of their recorded information (in email accounts etc) have to provide information that belongs to them. Authorities do not have to supply information they store on behalf of other individuals (like personnel records) or organisations (eg the files of a voluntary organisation which are held on the council server).

The law covers all documents held by a public authority. That includes, for example letters and emails sent to it and its officers by other members of the public – although the council might say there was a good reason for not releasing these. Information that is in the heads of officers is not recorded and so is not covered. Where the information is stored does not affect whether it is covered.

Public Interest and Exemptions

In general, an authority must consider whether releasing information under the Act is in the public interest and may withhold the information is it decides it is not. This is the ‘public interest test’ Certain types of information are exempted, however. There are 8 absolute exemptions, regardless of public interest:

Information that is accessible by other means
Information relating to or dealing with security matters
Information contained in court records
Where disclosure of the information would infringe parliamentary privilege
Information held by the House of Commons or the House of Lords, where disclosure would prejudice the effective conduct of public affairs
Information which the applicant could either obtain under the Data Protection Act (see below) or where release would breach data protection principles
Information provided in confidence
When disclosing the information is prohibited by an enactment; incompatible with an EU obligation; or would commit a contempt of court.

Information may also be exempted, subject to a public interest test, if it:

Is intended for future publication
Does not deal with security matters but is a matter of national security
Relates to current investigations and proceedings being undertaken by a public authority
Relates to the formation of government policy etc
Has to do with communications with members of the Royal family, and conferring honours
Would affect disclosure of environmental information under the Environmental Information Regulations
Is information covered by professional legal privilege
Constitutes trade secrets

Or would be likely to prejudice defence; international and diplomatic relations; the economic interests of the country; law enforcement; the auditing functions of any public authorities; or commercial interests – or endanger health and safety or the effective conduct of public affairs or free and frank provision of advice and debate.

Vexatious Requests

A public authority is not obliged to comply with a request for information if the request is vexatious. A vexatious request is one which is ‘obsessive or manifestly unreasonable’, harasses the authority or causes distress to its staff, imposes a significant burden, or if the request lacks any serious value.

Data Protection

The Data Protection Act 1998 set out rules for organisations to use in handling personal information. It gave people the right to see what personal information, organisations of all sorts hold about them. It also required businesses, public authorities and voluntary organisations to take steps to safeguard personal information and protect people’s privacy.

Data Protection and Freedom of Information can be in conflict. If, for example, the release of information held by a government agency relating to benefit claims could be used to identify who in a neighbourhood was claiming benefits, then it would be against the data protection law to release the information under freedom of information. In this case, the agency would take steps to anonymise the data before releasing it.

The same regulator - the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) – applies in regulating the terms of the Freedom of Information Act and the Data Protection Act.

Key Facts:

Freedom of information applies to recorded information held by public agencies and some organisations acting on their behalf. Although there is a general preseumption in favour of disclosing information, public bodies have to apply a public interest test to the decision. There are specific exclusions and the council and other bodies can turn down a request that is 'vexatious'. Data protection laws mean that information derived from personal data must be made anaonymous before it is released.

Page Links from here

Information Commissioner’s Office Guide to Freedom of Information is aimed at people who work in public agencies and are responsible for ensuring freedom of information

See in the toolkit:

Open Data

Data Geography

Making a Freedom of Information Request

OR you can use the navigation menu above right to look at other parts of the toolkit.

created: 2016-07-05 14:35:00

by: admin

status: f published

What is a Plan?

Local spatial plans are public, shared plans which aim to enable a place to develop to benefit the people who use it and live there (or might use it or live there in future). A neighbourhood plan is a kind of local spatial plan. But local spatial plans are not the only plans which affect the future of a place…

In more detail

A plan is a detailed proposal which sets out a model view of how a place or a project could be, or will be, developed. Plans can be: private or public; owned by an individual or shared by many people and organisations; prescriptive (say what will be) or enabling (say what could be). Local spatial plans – which include neighbourhood plans – are public. They are shared by everyone with an interest in a place. They aim to balance those interests so as to describe how the land can be developed to benefit everyone with an interest.

Plans are, however, never entirely neutral – they are always written from a particular point of view of how things should be. So, for example:

an engineering plan details a designer’s instructions about how a part or an assembly of parts is to be machined and assembled to make a product
a business plan sets out a business owner’s view of how a business idea or enterprise will develop in future
a site plan might set out an architect’s model of how a site will be developed
a local plan presents a framework agreed by the local authority of how a locality (which could be a village or a neighbourhood, or could be a whole city or conurbation) will develop.

Other Plans Matter...

Everybody makes plans and every active organisation produces plans, in some form. It is hard for a person to achieve much without a plan. For an organisation, or for group of people and organisations, it is impossible. Very small organisations with a simple purpose might rely on verbal plans, but most community groups, voluntary organisations, social enterprises and charities will have some kind of written idea of what they want to achieve and how they plan to do it. Most small businesses will have to produce a plan in order to borrow capital. All larger businesses produce plans – often at different levels: for shareholders, managers, departments, products, markets etc. In public sector organisations - like councils, the police and the NHS - plans are particularly important because these organisations tend to receive and spend resources on the basis of plans, rather than by marketing goods and services.

Weigh Up The Alternatives

A local spatial plan for your place can be a powerful way of setting out a shared vision for the future. It is not, however, the only important plan which affects your locality. It may be that you can improve the place you live or work by: influencing the plans of other organisations, like the council or the local police; working together to deliver existing plans more effectively; or by planning and doing things directly as a local community. A neighbourhood plan has the advantage that it is legally binding – it makes part of a thing called the local planning framework. A neighbourhood plan, however, can’t make things happen by itself and, because it forms part of the local planning framework, there are lots of things it cannot be used to say.

The aim of this toolkit is to help you think through whether neighbourhood planning might work for your place; to look at the alternatives; and, if a neighbourhood plan is right for where you are, to take on planning with confidence and approaches that will work.

Key Facts:

A neighbourhood plan is a local spatial plan: a public, shared document that says how your place should be developed. How your locality actually develops, however, depends on the plans you make and those made by other organisations - which you can influence. This toolkit will help you look at alternatives and to make a success of community planning - including neighbourhood planning.

Page Links from here

In this toolkit see:

Spatial Planning

Community Planning

Life Cycle of a Plan

OR you can use the navigation menu above right to look at other parts of the toolkit.

created: 2016-06-21 05:23:20

by: admin

status: f published

Designated Bodies

The ‘community rights’ in the Localism Act can be exercised by certain designated groups on behalf of the community…

The 'community rights' in the Localism Act can be exercised by certain designated groups on behalf of the community...

In more detail

The Localism Act 2011 designates which sort of community organisations can take on and lead the exercise of the various 'community powers' it sets out.

Neighbourhood Planning/Neighbourhood Development Orders

Neighbourhood planning (including neighbourhood development orders) must be led by the local parish council if one exists. In places where there is none - as in most urban neighbourhoods - then neighbourhood planning may be led by a 'neighbourhood forum'. The law says: forums must have at least 21 members; have membership which os representative of the area they cover (including business and public sector representatives); and have a written constitution. These requirements apply to existing bodies as well as to bodies formed for the purpose of neighbourhood planning. So, you may find that existing residents' groups and even bodies called neighbourhood forums and accepted by the council as such, do not qualify as designated bodies. In which case, you will have to set up a new body or change the constitution etc of an existing body in order to have a suitable body to lead on neighbourhood planning.

Assets of Community Value/Right to Bid

Any eligible community or voluntary organisation can nominate land or buildings to be included on the register of assets of community value kept by the council for the purposes of 'Right to Bid'. To be eligible, groups most be either an unincorporated association (like most residents' associations) with at least 21 members in the council's area; or a parish council, registered charity, indistrial and provident society (which is a form used by cooperatives), a company limited by guarantee or community interest company or a local neighbourhood forum as defined above. Neither the council, nor profit-making businesses may nominate assets for the register.

When land or buildings which are listed on the register of assets of community value is put up for sale by its owner, then suitably qualified 'community interest groups' have a six month window of opportunity within which to submit bids offers to buy the asset before the landowner is allowed to sell it on the open market. To be eligible as a community interest group, you must have a local connection with the asset and be: a parish council, a registered charity, a community interest company, a company limited by guarantee or an industrial and provident society. Neighbourhood forums (unless they are also one of the above) and unincorporated bodies can nominate assets for listing, but cannot exercise the right to bid.

Right to Challenge

Voluntary and community groups, charities, social enterprises, parish councils, local council and fire and rescue authority staff can express interest in running local council services where they believe they can do so differently and better. If the council accepts the written expression of interest (and if it doesn't, it must explain why), this triggers a procurement exercise in which the interested group may take part alongside any other organisation, including profit-making businesses, that are fit to deliver the service. So, businesses, which cannot trigger the challenge, can nonetheless bid to run the service if the challenge is accepted by the council.

Key Facts:

Parish councils and neighbourhood forums that have been constituted according to a legal minimum can exercise powers relating to neighbourhood planning. Parish councils, neighbourhood forums and a wide range of other non-profit groups can nominate assets of community value, but neighbourhood forums cannot exercise the subsequent righ to bid if and when it arises. Parish councils, a wide range of non-profit bodies and groups of staff who work for the council or the fire and rescue service can use the right to challenge the way a public service is run. All suitably qualified bodies, including profit-making businesses may take part in any procurement exercise arising from a successful challenge.

Page Links from here

In this toolkit:

Neighbourhood Planning

Neighbourhood Development Orders

Who Leads on Neighbourhood Planning?

Community Right to Bid

Parish Council

Community Group

OR you can use the navigation menu above right to look at other parts of the toolkit.

created: 2016-06-07 09:53:35

by: admin

status: f published

Life Cycle of a Plan

We mainly think of plans as documents that sit on a bookshelf or a computer server drive. But plans – like butterflies – have a life cycle during which they change shape. The life cycle of a plan is made up of three main stages.

We mainly think of plans as documents that sit on a bookshelf or a computer server drive. But plans - like butterflies - have a life cycle during which they change shape. The life cycle of a plan is made up of three main stages.

In more detail

Plans exist:

As drafts – dealing with possibilities and alternatives. Draft plans are used to engage other people with a stake in the place or project being planned. They enable the people making the plan to keep track of ideas and other factors affecting the place or the project. Draft plans facilitate conversation (which is open-ended and aimed at getting ideas and factors identified) and consultation (which is a more formal dialogue aiming to test commitment to particular proposals), a draft plan reaches completion and agreement

As complete and agreed plans – dealing with complete views of future development and what to do about contingencies (which are things which might happen, but may not). Agreed plans act as records. They let everyone with an interest share the same view of what has been agreed in terms of priorities. And everyone can see the evidence that they have been made on. Agreed plans provide means of: communication (a plan gives a clear and comprehensible picture of what has been agreed); and coherence (an agreed plan makes clear why it has been agreed and therefore how the plan holds together and makes sense in itself and in relation to any other relevant plans).

As working documents in use– plans are tools. They define limits and tolerances (which is the leeway around a limit that is acceptable). Plans describe the way people will behave in terms of a place or a project. They say what we think we will do in response to contingencies and unknowns. At this stage, plans enable : comparison (we can compare what the plan says should or might take place and what actually happens); and control (we can take action in response to contingencies).

Looking after a Plan

The form the plan takes and the skills and relationships needed to use and develop it successfully can vary during its life cycle, for example:

During the drafting stage, a neighbourhood plan needs to be open and fluid, growing more formal as it develops so that there is solid evidence to explain why it should be agreed.
Before agreeing a neighbourhood plan there needs to be some technical skill and knowledge involved in working out how it fits together and checking it neither contradicts itself or other plans of which it forms part.
Agreeing a neighbourhood plan involves a formal process – there needs to be a chance for everyone with a legitimate interest to formally say whether, or not, they agree it.

Using a neighbourhood plan as part of the local planning framework requires professionals with technical skills to make judgements, but it also needs the engagement of the people and organisations that are working within it and decisions on the part of their elected representatives, local councillors.

Key Facts:

Plans are like butterflies - they go through several stages in their life cycle. The 'six Cs' they need from birth to maturity are:

Conversation and consultation are the key-words when drafting a plan.

Communication and coherence are the key things when agreeing a plan.

Comparison and control are important ideas when using a plan in practice.

Page Links from here

In this toolkit:

OR you can use the navigation menu above right to look at other parts of the toolkit.

created: 2016-06-05 10:28:01

by: admin

status: f published

Neighbourhood Statements and Policies

Communities, businesses and public agencies have been drawing up policies and plans for imrpving neighbourhoods since before the Localism Act set up a statutory neighbourhood planning process. What your neighbourhood needs might be a plan of how these different groups will work cooperatively to make a better place to live and work?

In more detail

Neighbourhood statements andpolicies can describe how local people and business want to see the area develop in terms of social, environmental and economic well-being. They can cover what you want and be much broader than the statutory neighbourhood plan, which deals with how local land is used. Unlike a statutory neighbourhood plan, it will not be legally enforceable and will not bind newcomers to the neighbourhood, but it could be even more influential.

Neighbourhood policies might cover things like:

Keeping local services and facilities open despite reductions in funding
Community-led initiatives and projects to improve the neighbourhood
Attracting businesses and enabling business growth
Helping local businesses to create apprenticeship and employment opportunities
Getting public services to work better together and avoid duplication
Setting up a neighbourhood company
Forming an inter-faith forum to enable different communities to appreciate each other
Improving the image of the area
Looking after isolated older people in the neighbourhood
Steps to reduce vehicle crime
Enabling ‘social prescribing’ by the local health service
Attracting charitable funding for local projects
Road safety
Getting local schools and youth services to work together better
Organising local festivals and promoting live music and drama in the neighbourhood
Care and play facilities for disable youngsters
Busting local litterers and discouraging dumping
Helping local food businesses to recycle surplus food
Promoting local shops and traders by developing a community currency.

The content depends on the opportunities and threats your neighbourhood faces and the strengths your communities, businesses and local agencies bring.

Title and status

You might already have a neighbourhood development plan and it might be called something else. In country areas, it might be called a Parish Plan and be led by a parish council. If you set up a community council in your area, the neighbourhood development plan would be its priority list. If you produced a neighbourhood development plan across a whole city it would do what a thing called a ‘Sustainable Community Strategy’ was supposed to do. These are documents which no longer exist, but which councils used to have to produce to explain how they would meet the brief of improving local economic, social and environmental wellbeing.

Neighbourhood policies and development plans are unlikely to be adopted by the council as a local planning document because it will cover such a wide range of subjects which are not related to local land use. However, in producing a neighbourhood development plan, you will inevitably produce statements about how land should be used. If your plan is a serious, balanced document setting out an achievable set of actions (rather than just a wish list), these statements will form a coherent set of land use policies.

Having made a neighbourhood development plan, you could extract the land use policies and implications from it and present them to the council as a local planning document (which they could adopt as part of the Local Planning Framework). Or, more likely, you could integrate the production of a community-led (non-statutory) neighbourhood development plan and a (statutory) neighbourhood plan: do both at the same time.

Key Facts:

Voluntary neighbourhood policies, statements and plans do not have statutory power and do not bind organisations and people who do not sign up to them (including, for example newcomer communities or developers moving into the area). They can, hwoever, be written how you want and apply to exactly the issues you want to cover. They can be useful ways of focusing on the common good and cooperative working. It could be that you produce a set of community policies relating to the way the area is served; the way communities can work together etc. as you make, and alongside, a statutory spatial neighbourhood plan.

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created: 2016-05-06 12:58:07

by: admin

status: f published