About

The aim of this online toolkit is to help communities – particularly in towns and cities in England – to make a success of local planning.  It is made up of materials and links we hope will make it easier to do Neighbourhood Planning so that it links up with wider community community planning:

• by ‘Neighbourhood Planning’, we mean the formal processes enabled by the Localism Act 2011 by which communities can take a lead in making a local spatial plan as an Supplementary Planning Document forming part of the Local Planning Framework.
• by ‘community planning’, we mean the much wider set of processes and approaches of varying degrees of formality that are used to engage and enable public and shared involvement in planning  and making better places to live.

This wider set of processes include: local service plans (NHS, police, local authority etc); neighbourhood management, ‘placeshaping’ and coordinated ‘neighbourhood working’ arrangements; plans made by voluntary organisations, local business associations and community groups; activities and initiatives led by ward councillors and other local leaders; the development of ‘community hubs’ and the work of ‘community anchor’ organisations; projects aimed at improving the relationships between communities in an area and community cohesion; local asset plans and local housing management; and community engagement.

Integrating the Neighbourhood Plan with wider community planning is likely to be a factor in the success of Neighbourhood Planning, in particular in urban neighbourhoods.  This is because, although a Neighbourhood Plan is a wide-ranging spatial plan, there are many other factors involved in the quality of life in a neighbourhood.  These include: the way local services are delivered; the way an area is managed and presented; and the relationships between communities which share the area.  These other factors are likely to be particularly important in urban neighbourhoods because, relative to rural settlements, they are more likely to have:

• complex and intensive public service delivery
• neighbourhood management arrangements and the need for coordination between different agencies
• more (and more diverse) local businesses
• contested local politics and a wider diversity of communities
• less clear cut boundaries and more issues that apply across and between local boundaries.

This toolkit builds on the experience and analysis of community-led local planning in Birmingham, in particular in Balsall Heath, Moseley and the city’s Jewellery Quarter.  It is currently in development and will be completed by the end of June 2016.