Just Neighbourhoods? Policy Symposium:

Planning, Power and Justice at the Neighbourhood Scale

February 2026 

The Just Neighbourhoods? research team recently welcomed participants to the near project-end policy symposium to reflect on neighbourhood-scale planning in more deprived areas across the UK and Northern Ireland. 

The event marked an important moment in a 2.5-year research journey, see:  https://research.reading.ac.uk/justclp/  examining how place-based planning activity is undertaken in areas often described as “left behind”. The central question has remained consistent throughout the project: 

When communities plan, how is justice being advanced — and how? 

Across ten case study areas spread over the UK, the research has explored how neighbourhood planning and other forms of community-led planning operate in contexts of deprivation. 

Several themes have emerged: 

• Communities in more deprived areas are deeply attached to place and highly motivated to improve it. 

• Discussions of rather abstract “equality, diversity and inclusion” are often absent from plans; instead, communities focus on tangible, lived concerns — affordable housing, access to services, protecting valued landscapes, local pride. 

• There is a persistent tension between national planning policy frameworks and the everyday justice priorities articulated by residents. 

• Planning systems often struggle to recognise and support the relational capacity within communities — the ability to hold difficult conversations, manage difference, and build shared visions. 

Rather than a lack of aspiration, the research reveals a lack of alignment between formal planning structures and the forms of justice communities are actually seeking. 

The Symposium conversations 

The day featured presentations from the research team outlining the analytical framework used to review community-led plans across the four nations, followed by a panel discussion chaired by Prof Sarah Pearson. The panel explored what it means to talk about justice in planning, not only as a philosophical concept, but as something embedded (or absent) in policy tools, governance structures and funding regimes. 

Participants reflected on: 

• Whether neighbourhood planning in more deprived areas is set up to succeed. 

• How trust flows, or fails to flow, between communities and decision-makers. 

• The risk of participation fatigue where communities repeatedly engage but see limited structural change. 

• The difference between planning for communities and planning with communities. 

Breakout sessions invited attendees to grapple with a practical challenge:
How do we ensure planning genuinely shapes decisions and actions in ways that are thought through, relational and just?  

Conversations moved beyond procedural participation toward deeper questions about power. Who defines what counts as “evidence”? Who sets the boundaries of viability? Who decides which futures are realistic? 

Beyond Growth: reframing the purpose of planning 

A recurring theme throughout the day was the need to reconsider what planning is for in neighbourhoods facing structural disadvantage. 

Is it primarily a vehicle for growth and housing delivery? Or, perhaps fundamentally, a tool for improving the quality of life of those already living there? 

Participants noted the irony that in several case study areas, local plans emphasise protecting assets for future development while communities struggle to protect what they already value — sightlines, green space, social infrastructure, memory. 

If justice at neighbourhood scale is about dignity, stewardship and belonging, then planning must be attentive not only to outputs (housing numbers, economic uplift) but to lived experience. 

The research suggests that neighbourhood planning in more deprived areas is not failing because communities lack ambition. It falters where systems fail to: 

• Provide sustained support, 

• Recognise structural inequality, 

• Embed poverty reduction explicitly within planning objectives, 

• Or trust communities to lead. 

The future of neighbourhood planning may depend less on new tools and more on renewed clarity about purpose. 

If planning is to be part of a just transition, it must move beyond consultation toward co-production. It must examine distributional outcomes, not just procedural compliance. And it must be brave enough to ask difficult questions about power. 

As this work concludes, perhaps the deeper invitation is this: 

• What would it mean to treat neighbourhood planning not as a technical exercise, but as a democratic practice rooted in care? 

• What would change if poverty reduction were an explicit planning objective again? 

• How might neighbourhood planning look if it began not with growth targets, but with the lived realities of those already there? 

A longer write-up is on the project website as Working Paper #5. 

No Short Cuts – so, what kind of recovery? 

Just Neighbourhoods? research team  

February 2026 

The Independent Commission on Neighbourhoods (ICON) recently published its final report: No Short Cuts: Towards a National Strategy for Neighbourhood Recovery. It highlights how disadvantaged neighbourhoods in England have been left without sustained, coordinated, long-term support. The persistence of deprivation is not inevitable; it reflects a failure of national strategy.  

ICON calls for three things: 

• Targets — a clear pipeline for neighbourhood recovery 

• Strategy — a “Staircase Model” beginning with social infrastructure 

• System — institutional pillars capable of delivering long-term change  

The data presented in the report are stark: Mission Critical neighbourhoods face higher crime rates, poorer health, lower employment and significantly lower gross value added per person than the national average. The case for action is overwhelming. 

The turn to Social Infrastructure 

One of ICON’s most important contributions is its insistence that social infrastructure and social capital are foundational. 

The report distinguishes between social infrastructure, the physical and community facilities that bring people together, and social capital, the relationships and networks that enable collective action. 

It argues convincingly that neighbourhoods lacking pubs, cafés, community centres, sports clubs and informal gathering spaces struggle to build bridging and linking capital. The “Staircase Model” suggests recovery must begin by rebuilding these foundations before attempting sustained economic transformation. In this, ICON resonates strongly with what the Just Neighbourhoods research has observed. 

Across more deprived neighbourhoods undertaking neighbourhood planning, we repeatedly encountered communities trying to protect and restore exactly these forms of social infrastructure: 

• a threatened library hosting more than books, including a community museum, social hub and charity shop 

• an alleyway transformed into a shared garden, 

• a community-owned bakery and land trust rebuilding local pride, 

• volunteers holding together local services long after formal institutions withdrew. 

Justice, in these places, was rarely articulated in abstract policy language. It was expressed through stewardship, dignity and belonging. This signals how social capital matters.  

Recovery is also about power 

Where Just Neighbourhoods adds something further is in its attention to power. 

ICON’s pipeline model, 424 MSOAs supported over a decade, backed by £2–2.5bn annually,  is bold. It recognises the need for concentration of resources rather than spreading funding thinly. Yet the question that emerged repeatedly in our research is not simply whether neighbourhoods receive investment. It is whether they are trusted to make decisions and  how the spend is planned. Communities in more deprived areas often feel that: 

• growth strategies are designed elsewhere, 

• viability logic determines what is “possible,” 

• participation is invited but decisions are pre-shaped. 

Neighbourhood scale planning groups spoke about exhaustion and years of engagement without structural shifts in how decisions are made. ICON acknowledges the need for community-led approaches and warns against “doing onto” places. This  is an issue that has been known for decades, yet here we are again. Recovery cannot simply be delivered to neighbourhoods. It must be co-produced. 

The economic question 

ICON is candid that neighbourhood interventions cannot succeed without a broader economic strategy. It recognises that many disadvantaged areas were shaped by national shifts away from industry and production.  

This echoes a core insight from Just Neighbourhoods:
local planning can only do so much if structural economic forces run counter to community aspirations. 

We saw neighbourhood plans striving for: 

• affordable housing that is genuinely affordable, 

• protection of valued landscapes and heritage, 

• accessible local services, 

• small-scale economic opportunity. 

Yet these plans operate within national frameworks where: 

• housing targets dominate, 

• land value capture is constrained by viability, 

• industrial strategies favour sectors absent in the most disadvantaged areas  

The result can be regeneration without redistribution. 

ICON’s Staircase Model rightly argues that economic growth must follow foundational reform. But growth alone will not guarantee justice unless distributional outcomes are explicitly monitored. So, alongside fiscal metrics other key questions need to be addressed: 

• Who benefits? 

• Who gains access to new jobs? 

• Who is displaced? 

No Short Cuts — and no short memories 

One of the strengths of the ICON report is its refusal of quick wins. It is explicit, neighbourhood recovery is a decades-long project. Just Neighbourhoods has encountered the long memory of policy cycles involving:

• New Deal for Communities 
• Housing Market Renewal 
• Big Local 
• Levelling Up 
• Towns Fund

and now Pride in Place.

Communities remember when funding arrived, and most importantly when it left. They remember promises. Recovery requires patience and consistency. 

What would a ‘just’ recovery look like? 

Taken together, ICON and Just Neighbourhoods point toward a deeper proposition; that neighbourhood recovery is not only about infrastructure and services. It is about restoring agency. 

In the most powerful examples we observed in the JN work, change occurred when: 

• local leaders were trusted 

• institutions were rooted in place 

• external actors acted as enablers rather than directors 

• planning processes recognised lived experience as evidence  

• And political processes allowed for community voices to influence decisions. 

The future of neighbourhood recovery may depend less on inventing new programmes and more on embedding justice as an explicit objective. 

That means: 

• measuring distribution and changes in quality of life, not just output; 

• designing economic strategies that connect to neighbourhood labour markets; 

• aligning neighbourhood planning with recovery investment; 

• building relational capacity, not only capital assets. 

The next step is ensuring that recovery is not merely national strategy imposed locally, but a reshaping of how the planning, governance and economic systems recognise neighbourhood-scale power. 

As the Just Neighbourhoods? project moves into its final phase, we’re preparing to bring together practitioners, policymakers, and academics a dedicated conversation about what our research has revealed.

Across the past two years, we have been working with neighbourhoods in the UK and Northern Ireland to understand why community-led planning remains unevenly taken up, what supports or hinders involvement, and how communities experience justice, voice and value as they engage with planning systems.

What is becoming increasingly clear is that community-led planning (in its broadest sense) does far more than shape local environments, it exposes the deep relationships between place, power, opportunity, and (in)justice. It shows us what communities strive for, what they struggle against, and what conditions help people feel able to influence the future of their neighbourhoods.

To support reflection on these questions, we’re hosting a small, invite-only policy symposium. This gathering will allow us to:

• share our findings and tentative conclusions,

• explore their implications for planning practice and policy,

• consider what more equitable participation could look like, and

• connect with others committed to creating fairer, more inclusive neighbourhoods.

Although the event itself has limited capacity, we are keen to ensure that the learning reaches as widely as possible.

Over the coming months, we will be sharing insights, resources, and reflections from the project here on our website.

If you are interested in the themes of the symposium or would like to hear more about our work, please feel free to get in touch:
tessa.lynn@henley.reading.ac.uk

As the Just Neighbourhoods? project moves into its final stages, our focus is shifting towards sharing emerging findings and building conversations with a range of audiences. Over the coming months the team will generate workshops, insight sessions, and ultimately a policy symposium that brings together insights from across the UK and Northern Ireland and  feature our findings.

Throughout these activities, we will be aiming to test ideas, spark debate, and support learning across neighbourhoods, practitioners, policymakers, and academics. Here’s an overview of what’s happening:

JN Collaborative Workshops (Autumn 2025)

This autumn, we’ll be holding four online workshops with neighbourhoods in England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. These events will bring together participants from our case study communities to reflect on the realities of community-led planning (CLP) and to feed-back some initial thoughts and  findings.

These workshops will:

• Share emerging findings from our fieldwork.
• Explore the possibilities and limitations of CLP in addressing local injustices.
• Create opportunities for cross-country learning between communities.
• Invite participants to shape how project findings are disseminated back into neighbourhoods.

We hope that these discussions will provide invaluable feedback and help ensure that the project speaks directly to the lived realities of under-represented communities.

JN Practitioner Insight Seminar (January 2026)

Alongside the collaborative workshops, we are planning an insight seminar with the  UK and NI Planning Aid organisations. This will be an online event, which will record for wider access, aimed at professional planners and community development workers and  volunteers.

The seminar will:

• Present comparative findings from across the four nations.
• Highlight common challenges and opportunities for supporting underrepresented areas.
• Explore actionable policy recommendations.
• Open the door to possible cross-UK networks for knowledge exchange.

End-of-Project Symposium (February 2026)

In early 2026, we will host a policy symposium to share the final findings of the project. This one-day event will gather invited participants across our audiences, including policymakers, practitioners, academics, and support organisations.

The symposium will:

• Launch the project’s final report and associated outputs.
• Convene roundtable discussions on planning and social justice.
• Explore policy responses to the needs of underrepresented neighbourhoods.
• Provide space for dialogue across research, practice, and policy communities.

This event will mark an important moment for consolidating the learning from Just Neighbourhoods? and identifying where it might go next.

Stay tuned to our website and social media channels for updates, blog posts, and resources as these activities unfold and  our findings emerge.

Also published here: CPA Blog | Community Planning Alliance

Our latest article has been accepted—post peer review—for publication in Planning Practice & Research:

The paper draws upon a novel analytical framework to review a sample of community-led plans produced across the four nations of the United Kingdom. It explores how communities interpret issues of (in)justice and how they seek to address them. Focussing on plans produced by communities categorised as more deprived, the analysis shows that abstracted notions of equality, diversity and inclusion are almost entirely absent, with communities more likely to focus on tangible issues of local importance such as access to affordable housing, health and service provision. The paper concludes by exploring the implications of these findings for understandings of justice.

Keywords: Community-led planning, justice, equity, deprivation, inclusion.

Link to paper, coming soon.

The research team – Gavin Parker, Matthew Wargent, John Sturzaker and Tessa Lynn – penned a short response to the  recently launched ‘Plan for Neighbourhoods’  asking how people will actually be involved… Read it by clicking the link below

New Plan for Neighbourhoods_JN_comment_March2025

Think Neighbourhoods, the Independent Commission on Neighbourhoods’ interim report, argues that a neighbourhoods-approach is essential for delivering the change the country needs, including the government’s missions, and to restoring a sense of renewal and purpose to the country.

The Independent Commission on Neighbourhoods has worked with Oxford Consultants for Social Inclusion (OSCI) to identify which neighbourhoods are most at risk of not achieving the government’s missions.

In this report ICON explores attitudes in these neighbourhoods through polling done by Public First, arguing that a targeted approach is needed to improve disadvantaged neighbourhourhoods and achieve national renewal.

The report can be found here:

Download Report

A publication published in March 2025 by ICON combines the findings from the reviews that answers the following questions:

1. How should a neighbourhood and a neighbourhood intervention be defined?
2. Why do neighbourhoods matter?
3. How do people experience living in the most deprived neighbourhoods?
4. What are the interventions and/or delivery mechanisms that have had most social and economic impact at the neighbourhood level?
5. What does this mean for building an effective neighbourhood policy both nationally and at regional and local authority levels?

You can access there report here.

Launched in September 2024, the Independent Commission on Neighbourhoods will review the current state of neighbourhoods across England.

You can find out more here – Independent Commission on Neighbourhoods

The Planning and Infrastructure Bill, which was introduced to Parliament on the 11th March 2025 introduces measures in an attempt to speed up planning decisions to boost housebuilding and the delivery of vital developments like roads, railway lines and windfarms. The government aims to l boost economic growth, connectivity and energy security whilst also delivering for the environment, with this new Bill.

‘Biggest building boom’ in a generation through planning reforms – GOV.UK