Just Neighbourhoods? Final Report Launch
After extensive research across the UK, we are pleased to share the final report from the Just Neighbourhoods? project, funded by the Nuffield Foundation.
Across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, the project explored how neighbourhood scale planning operates in socio-economically disadvantaged neighbourhoods, and whether it is contributing to more just, place-based decision-making.
Why this research matters
There is a strong and growing consensus that issues of justice must be addressed in neighbourhoods experiencing disadvantage, but these are often the places where ongoing participation in planning is hardest to sustain.
What we did
To explore this, the research brought together multiple strands of evidence:
- A strong theoretical Framework
- A review of international academic literature on community-led planning
- An analysis of 107 neighbourhood-scale plans from some of the most deprived areas across the UK
- In-depth case studies in ten neighbourhoods, including qualitative interviews, alongside site visits, meetings and documentary analysis.
Together, these strands offer one of the most comprehensive pictures to date of how community-led planning operates in contexts of disadvantage.
Recommendations
The report sets out eight areas for recommendation, aimed primarily at national governments and local institutions.
At their core, these recommendations call for a shift in how community-led planning is understood and practised:
- Co-producing the terms of engagement
Plans should not be pre-defined by institutions. Communities should shape what is discussed, how, and why.
- Existing tools to be usefully amended or repurposed
As neighbourhood scale planning can develop objectives that are co-produced and help orchestrate actions that are understood and owned by all.
- Inscribe the issues being faced at scale and action plan
Ensure issues are actual written into policy and action. Clear communication back to communities about how institutional actors can respond should form part of the process.
- Giving greater status to co-produced plans
These should be treated as meaningful repositories of local knowledge, informing decisions, budgets and policy across sectors.
- Supporting quality participation properly via intermediaries
Communities need sustained, funded support to engage effectively, not one-off or uneven provision.
- Strengthening accountability and feedback
Institutions should clearly demonstrate how community input has influenced decisions and where it has not, and explain why.
- Recognising and supporting community leadership
Those who carry the work of participation need support and understanding.
- Exploring new models for deprived areas
Trialling special planning and associated institutional arrangements for deprived neighbourhoods.
You can read the Final Report here
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