This is a website for local leaders and others who are interested how neighbourhood planning can be used in practice to make better urban neighbourhoods. It aims to act as a toolkit with information and links so you can find out about a range of tools you can use – including neighbourhood planning – to make better places to live.
On the website, when we talk about neighbourhood planning, we mean the statutory process set out in the Localism Act 2011. This enables parish councils and neighbourhood forums to develop spatial plans for their localities. Even before the Localism Act gave communities the right to lead the development of local spatial plans, however, communities and local authorities had a range of tools for improving neighbourhoods. These include:
- community planning – tools the community and the agencies which serves them can use to bring people together to plan ways of improving the way neighbourhoods are served etc
- working with the council – local council responsibilities and powers which can be used to look after and improve urban quality of life
- influencing public services – police, schools, health services and others and getting oublic service providers to work better together through, for example, neighbourhood management
- using the local planning system – the range of other measures that can be influenced by communities as well as neighbourhood planning.
- This website is a toolkit for integrating the statutory neighbourhood planning process with wider community planning and working with the council to make better places to live.
In this toolkit, you will see some interviews with people from different communities and local government in Birmingham. They are talking about their experience of neighbourhood planning and forming supplementary planning guidance for their neighbourhoods in:
- Balsall Heath – an inner city neighbourhood with a mixed community and a proud history of community-led regeneration in the Hall Green district of Birmingham
- Moseley – a suburb known for its pubs, independent shops and vibrant community life also in the Hall Green district of the city
- Jewellery Quarter – an historic area bordering the city centre which is home to thriving industry, shops and a rapidly increasing population of residents
Their experience has been that neighbourhood planning needs to be integrated with wider community planning approaches and with regulation etc that can be applied sensitively be communities work with their local council. The hope is that the toolkit will be particularly useful to local leaders and others who want to integrate neighbourhood and community planning in cities and towns in England. We hope you find it interesting, wherever you live.
To start exploring the toolkit, find out about local:
This toolkit has been written mainly by Paul Slatter of Chamberlain Forum – an independent and non-profit organisation based in Birmingham which helps communities and the people who serve them work together to make better places to live. He was helped in particular by Tony Thapar and Fiona Adams of Moseley Community Development Trust; Abdullah Rehman and Dr Dick Atkinson of Balsall Heath Forum and Joe Holyoak who worked with them; Matthew Bott and Nicola Fleet-Milne of the Jewellery Quarter Neighbourhood Planning Forum; Neil Vyse and Karen Cheney of Birmingham City Council; Councillors Tony Kennedy and Claire Spencer of Birmingham City Council; and Meena Bharadwa of Locality.
