Stainforth: when doing everything ‘right’ is not enough
Stainforth is often framed in terms of deprivation. Yet this framing feels partial when you spend time there.
What becomes more visible is the depth of care people have for the place. Its past, its future, and what might still be possible. This is not a passive community, but a community shaped by attachment, memory and ongoing effort.
The headstocks offer a useful way to explore this. Positioned on the edge of the town, they remain a prominent and tangible connection to Stainforth’s mining history. For many residents, they carry a significance that extends beyond heritage, acting as markers of identity and continuity in a place that has undergone considerable change.
Through the Just Neighbourhoods? research, Stainforth became one of the locations where the realities of community-led planning were particularly clear.
Over several years, residents worked alongside a local charity leader and the Town Council to produce a neighbourhood plan. This required sustained effort, including time, coordination, and persistence, and resulted in a document that articulated locally grounded priorities. It also contributed to securing £21.6 million of Towns Fund investment. Viewed in these terms, the process appears successful.
However, the story is more complex. Alongside the formal plan, residents developed proposals that reflected how they understood the value of the headstocks: as a shared space that could support a country park, an educational and heritage centre, and a hub for creative activity. These ideas were not abstract aspirations, but emerged from lived experience and local knowledge.
Instead, a large warehouse was constructed between the community and the headstocks. For some, this has taken on a significance beyond the immediate development itself. It is understood not only as a planning outcome, but as a form of separation, physically interrupting access to viewing a key site of local meaning from their homes, and symbolically reinforcing a sense of distance between community priorities and decision-making processes.
What becomes evident in Stainforth is not a lack of participation. Residents were engaged, contributed to the process, and invested time and effort in shaping a plan. Rather, the issue lies in the relationship between participation and influence.
This story raises a more challenging question for planning practice: What does it mean to engage communities where participation is present, but influence is limited?
Stainforth highlights a set of tensions that are not unique to this place: between economic development and locally defined value; between formal planning processes and lived experience; and between participation as a procedural requirement and participation as a meaningful contribution to decision-making.
You can read the Story of Stainforth here – Stainforth Neighbourhood Story