Somers Town, June 2024
Trees not Towers
“We believe health is a human right not a privilege”
Somers Town, June 2024
Planning is…
“Planning is a process of human interaction, creating shared meanings and shared commitment to action” Patsy Healey
Content review: What Plans to consider?
Content review: What Plans to consider?
Our content review is well underway now. The sample of plans selected are made up of under-represented places in the UK’s four constituent nations. The aim is to assess the coverage of issues in existing plans and identify and understand key issues and policies as developed by communities.
So far, the review process has involved two stages:
Stage 1: Sift
This is where the scoping and nominating areas formed the first stage or Local Authority ‘sift’. We adopted a slightly different approach for the four nations. This was a necessary and pragmatic approach given the scale of CLP activity across England, the smaller number of Local Authorities across Wales, NI and Scotland means we have had the capacity to assess all local authority areas in the stage one sift.
For England, in addition to the IMD data, we drew on the work by OCSI and Local Trust (2019) who identified 225 left behind neighbourhoods (wards) in England – although such categorisation is imperfect and a wider debate over contested framings of ‘left behind’ places (Natarajan and Cho, 2022; Pike et al., 2023) is recognised. We created a long list of Local Authorities that feature LBPs, as well as the top 20% of IMD areas to ensure that the review stayed in scope and was made manageable, this created a list of 98 Local Authority areas We additionally searched for any NDPs beyond that sift which overtly discussed social / spatial (in)justice questions (see WP1a/b).
Stage 2: Sample
The initial preparatory work gave an initial estimate that the number of Plans to be reviewed in total (stage 3) across the four nations with around 45 in England; 25 in Scotland; Wales around 15 and a similar number in Northern Ireland.
For stage 2, the intention was to identify neighbourhood planning activity within the most deprived Local Authority areas across England. For England, there were up to 49 eligible LPA areas who fitted the criteria of recorded disadvantage and who had been engaging in neighbourhood planning. All 321 neighbourhood areas participating in NP in those LPAs were identified and correlated with the IMD LSOA data. Those that featured an LSOA which was located in a 10% (decile) or 20% (quintile) most deprived areas, were identified and this led neatly to the 45 plans to review.
The sample across the other nations are:
- All Local Place Plans in Scotland (with a latter focus on the highest 20% of SIMD (2020)
- All Place Plans in Wales (with a latter focus on the top quintile according to WIND data)
- All 11 Local Authority areas in Northern Ireland (producing Community Plans), and particularly focusing on ‘Place Plans’, and a spot check sample of Neighbourhood Renewal Area (NRA) Plans.
Warwick Regeneration
Protest, graffiti, art
Just Neighbourhoods – first advisory group meeting
In February 2024 we held our first project advisory group meeting, it was a great opportunity for everyone to introduce themselves and for us to provide an introduction to the project, including the aims, objectives and research design.
We are delighted to have such an experienced advisory group contributing to the project.
More detail is on the project website under ‘Advisory group’ and we captured everyone’ happy smiley faces in the picture (consents duly sought and secured!)
We shared information about the four work packages that will be completed by April 2026:
- WP1 a,b,c (framing and scoping) and see our working papers here
- WP2 a,b,c,d (primary data collection and discussion)
- WP3 workshops and synthesis
- WP4 write-up stage plus a symposium and other dissemination activity
In the meeting we discussed the communications plan and six key audiences (and how we will reach out):
- Participant neighbourhoods
- Policy makers
- Professional planners
- Voluntary community sector (intermediaries)
- Research and academic communities
- Underrepresented neighbourhoods across UK and NI
There will be a variety of activities and outputs towards the end of the project, highlights are workshops (WP3), symposium (WP3), a ‘living power’ toolkit and published work including papers, book and blogs. Meantime we are producing working papers – the first two are already out here.
Team meeting: What Plans to look at?
After completing the WP1a Theoretical Framework and WP1b Literature Review, the team met to discuss and make progress on WP1c – the initial sample and content review. We decided on a change of scenery this time, given we are located in four different places, and so we met at the Friends Meeting House near Euston, which was an ideal spot for us to unpick the complexities involved with the next two stages of the content review, particularly as there are slightly different approaches required for each of the nations.
We considered the criteria to be used to select which plans we will review, particularly how to select what ‘left behind’ area CLPs in England, and what ‘plans’ we will look at in Scotland, Wales, and NI. Ultimately, we will be able to include around 100 plans to review and identify where CLP activity responds to social and environmental justice – a core part of the research. This process will then help us determine which neighbourhoods we will look to work with more closely during 2024-2025.
It’s not all work though as we then decided to pay a visit to another community asset, the Euston Tap! To conclude our deliberations for the day.
Stanwick Lakes Yule ceremony
Located at Stanwick Lakes, at dusk, people are gathered by a ceremonial yule log in preparation for a theatrical performance. This included a gathering of over 200 people to celebrate Yule.
John Clare the poet, Helpston
John Clare the poet statue located at John Clare Cottage and museum in Helpston
Dec 2023 Update
As of December 2023, the project team met in London for a pre-Christmas update and get-together. We have spent the first few months of the project working on various things, with the literature review the biggest task. A huge quantity of new academic papers is published every year on a wide range of topics, and even focusing on community-led planning as we have been doing reveals new and interesting perspectives. Between us, we are reading around 400 papers, identified through a careful search and sorting process undertaken by Tessa and Matt. This has been a very interesting task, exposing us all to a range of literature that we might otherwise not have been aware of. We are now synthesising the sources we have read under a series of themes, to identify the most important findings for us and to shape the next stages of the project.