How to

Community Led Planning is a guided process that takes up to 18 months to complete.  It begins with interested residents taking on the challenge of overseeing the plan’s development and accessing the skills, partners and additional resource material needed to deliver an effective community plan.

The ‘9 step process’ structure sets out the main milestones to be achieved.  The network of practioners that have supported delivery of most of the community led plans in existence across the country have together developed a comprehensive Community Led Planning toolkit. This provides a framework that is then supplemented by additional resource material and appropriate support and guidance, depending on how the community is developing its plan.  The complete version of the toolkit is made available to the facilitators, who use the relevant resources from it to support the community’s progress.

Part of the process is to undertake detailed consultation with residents, usually through a formal questionnaire accompanied by events.  Advice on how to manage the production and analysis of the questionnaire is available in the toolkit, but any other type of consultation approach can be included.  For instance, communities could also draw on the advice on running consultations and events on public websites such as the advice pack on
http://www.communities.gov.uk/publications/communities/communitypowerpack

However, this is only one part of the process.  The value of Community Led Planning lies in what is being learned about the way the community works, the involvement of relevant stakeholders from outside the community and how individual community groups and residents debate, contribute and build the eventual action plan.  This is what turns engagement into empowerment. 

If engaging with young people is a problem, help is on hand to advise with innovative ways of gaining their interest and participation. If one section of the community finds it difficult to appreciate the problems experienced by more marginalised groups, methods are suggested for increasing mutual understanding.  If transport or access to social care is an issue, the appropriate local government or public service officers can be invited to discuss potential options for improving services. The facilitation that guides community led plans ensures that credible evidence is accessed from public sources and collected from the community itself. All the evidence collected can contribute to creating the ‘place survey’ now required in developing local government’s Sustainable Community Strategy.

All communities undertaking community led plans are encouraged to spend time considering all aspects of life in the community, individual residents often come forward with priority interests and issues that they wish to pursue.  In this way, small subgroups spin off from the main plan process to explore the potential for a specific project and gather new like-minded volunteers to help progress it.  Every plan therefore follows its own pathways, drawing in the necessary specialist advice and support along the way.  The local steering group maintains an overview of progress and coordinates the bringing together of all the individual activity and proposals. 

The additional resources that can be made available to communities cover a wide range of different topics from a variety of sources, according to the particular issues that arise during the plan development.  Separate guidance and specialist advice is available for instance on:

• Maximising the use of community facilities
• Ideas for community action to address climate change
• Undertaking a housing needs survey