Community engagement in spatial planning and community planning process is vital to achieving our vision of active and empowered communities. Here is more information on opportunities for local communities to engage with these planning systems, as well as changes afoot in the new Planning Bill which might impact on how this continues in the future.
Community Planning Partnerships
Community Planning Partnerships (CPP) are structures in each Council area that aim to help public bodies work together with local communities to design and deliver quality services, such as public transport, healthcare, social care, employment, skills and other community-based services. Each CPP must produce a Local Outcome Improvement Plan and they have the choice whether to produce locality plans for places where people experience inequalities. Further information on Community Planning Partnerships is available from each of the four Local Authorities that cover the National Park area (West Dunbartonshire, Stirling, Perth & Kinross and Argyll & Bute).
Community engagement in spatial planning is a key component of the current Local Development Planning system and there is a duty placed on planning authorities to engage communities. As a planning authority, we try to ensure a broad range of voices are heard and engaged in the development of our Local Development Plan. When preparing our current Local Development Plan, we invited community members, businesses, landowners and partner organisations to get involved in a series of events, workshops and three formal consultations to help inform the final document.
Planning is changing and introducing the right for communities to produce Local Place Plans. You can find out more about these in our recent blog.
Balloch Charrette event in 2016
Find out more about our journey to develop and deliver our Local Development Plan.
Since the Park Authority was established, we have supported communities to identify and deliver on their aspirations where they are consistent with the statutory aims of the National Park.
Over the past several years, we have helped to facilitate community-led action planning by providing funding to the Community Partnership. The Community Partnership is an independent charity that brings together community groups across the National Park, to work with communities to develop Community Action Plans (CAPs). CAPs set out a vision for sustainable, quality places to live, work and visit. They provide evidence that can be used by communities, public agencies or others to understand local priorities, attract funding and deliver services and spatial developments. These plans have helped to deliver a multitude of community projects within the National Park. Find out more about the projects we have supported.
We think CAPs are a really valuable tool to help communities articulate what’s good and bad about the places that they live and work and to help identify and implement actions to improve these. However, due to changes included in the Planning (Scotland) Bill which is currently making its way through the parliament, including the imminent arrival of Local Place Plans, we are reviewing how we support community action planning. As a part of this review, we want to ask you about your experiences of community action planning by taking our short survey.
While we are completing our review we are encouraging our communities to use the Place Standard engagement tool in any community action planning.
The Place Standard is an engagement tool developed to help people understand the key issues affecting a place and to explore aspects of a place that may not have previously been considered. It helps people think about the physical element of a place, like its buildings, spaces and transport links, as well as the social aspects, such as whether people feel they have a say in decision making or if they feel safe. It also allows data to be compiled to construct an all-round view of how people feel about their community, how much room for improvement there is and what areas need most improvement.
The Place Standard methodology provides a ‘spider map’ which provides a visual reflection of these discussions and can provide a baseline to monitor improvements in the quality of a place over time. The data can also be filtered to analyse a specific issue, such as a demographic feature, postcode or age range.
Click on the Place Standard Tool image above to enlarge
Find out more about the Place Standard tool. Help and advice can be sought from the team here at the National Park Authority or the Community Partnership.
