What makes a good plan?

Avoiding risks

Embarking on developing a Community Led Plan is not without risks, whether the impetus comes from local government or from the community itself.  A community led plan is a process, not a document, and it is the process itself that delivers the full benefit of outcomes listed on this website.

When communities rush the process, they often fail to access the evidence required for the action plan to have credibility, fail to reach more marginalised sections of the community and fail to build, along the way, the skills and commitment needed by the community to implement any proposals.  Such community led plans tend to be just wish lists that wield little influence with funders, service providers or decision-makers.  

A second risk is that community activists leading on the plan fail to involve those that will be crucial to implementing many of the actions – the elected members and representatives of local government and agencies that provide local services.  Spending time and effort in establishing and brokering the required relationships as part of the plan process is crucial to its eventual success. 

A third risk is that the resulting action plan is not adequately followed through and progress is not monitored by either the community or relevant statutory agencies.  Arrangements need to be put in hand at an early stage to ensure how the progressing and monitoring activity takes place and how the new relationship between the community and local government can be sustained to deliver continued mutual benefit.

Lastly, communities left to their own devices tend to debate the ‘here and now’ issues rather than attempting to look at a sustainable future for their own locality.  In a world dominated by external economic and environmental influences, the development of the plan should take account of that longer term vision and look at the barriers and opportunities that may arise for individual residents, local community groups and external service providers.  

Quality plans

Years of experience of facilitating Community Led Planning shows that the most successful plans are those that adopt some basic quality criteria.  The development phase should be rigorous, inclusive and based on hard evidence, not just opinion.  The actions in the resulting action plan should be realistic and achievable and should demonstrate adequate commitment from the community where it is required.

The quality criteria below have been developed from the accumulated best practice from practitioners who have supported community led plan development and the local authorities who have engaged with the process.

A high quality Community Led Plan should:

• Benefit from independent facilitation to support and challenge communities, to broker the required external involvement and relationships to achieve the plan’s aspirations

• Consider and explore the full range of social, environmental and economic issues relevant to quality of life in the community

• Demonstrate inclusivity within the community, using different approaches with different target audiences

• Involve dialogue with a relevant range of local government officers, service providers and stakeholders as part of the development of the plan

• Be forward looking in defining the community’s vision, anticipating likely changes caused by external influences

• Access credible evidence on which to develop the actions in the action plan

• Be realistic in identifying actions, expectations and timescales in which they can be achieved

• Have arrangements in place for monitoring implementation of the action plan and providing the community with external expertise and skills to deliver on those actions on which they lead.

Those local authorities and independent facilitators that have invested time and resources in working to deliver Community Led Planning are now developing systems, policies and protocols to govern the mutual expectations of the different partners.  Examples of these are given in the case studies and research section.