Neighbourhood planning projects

Our neighbourhood planning programme is helping communities and local authorities across England put good design into the heart of their neighbourhood plans.

Neighbourhood planningOur support includes:

  • training communities on master-planning and design
  • helping people to map out ideas, needs and priorities for their neighbourhoods
  • providing support with policy-making to turn evidence and aspirations into viable neighbourhood plans.

We are delivering support through our network of professional enablers. Our enablers are technical experts including architects, planners and urban designers. They are providing one-to-one hands-on support tailored to the needs of each neighbourhood plan project.

A major part of  our programme is collecting information about how local authorities and communities can work together to make neighbourhood planning effective. We intend to use what we find out to develop good practice and share it with you.

If you are involved in neighbourhood planning and interested in our work programme, please get in touch. We are always keen to hear about activities across the country.

A selection of our neighbourhood planning projects are listed below.

Broadland District Council

Neighbourhood(s): Aylsham, Hellesdon, Salhouse, Sprowston, Strumpshaw, Thorpe St Andrew

Location: Norfolk

We are providing enabling support to a group of six town and parish councils in Broadland, each of whom is doing a neighbourhood plan. The plans cover villages, built-up areas on the edge of Norwich and a market town. It is anticipated that the plans will deal with a diverse range of issues, for example identifying sustainable sites for development, providing new homes and employment sites, protecting areas of environmental importance and exploring opportunities for renewable energy generation.

Dacorum Borough Council

Neighbourhood(s): Grovehill

Location: Hertfordshire

Regenerating the neighbourhood shopping centre, improving existing housing stock and building new homes are the main issues for this neighbourhood planning project in Grovehill, a community in Hemel Hempstead. Residents are very passionate about Grovehill and have been working closely with the Council for many years and are now looking to work up a neighbourhood plan for the area.

The aims that are emerging include; providing new and improved housing, improving the public realm, providing community facilities and supporting the local shopping centre. Our enablers will be working with Grovehill Future, the local neighbourhood forum on raising aspirations and awareness of what good design is, providing advice on housing matters, densities and design principles and possibly reviewing a draft of the neighbourhood plan.

Gedling Borough Council

Neighbourhood(s): Newstead

Location: Nottinghamshire

Newstead is a former mining village near Nottingham which suffers from significant levels of deprivation. It has a very active community. Neighbourhood planning could have an important role in improving the economic, environmental and social well-being of the village. Challenges include increasing the number of family homes in the village, improving the condition of existing housing, tackling anti-social behaviour, providing a good range of community facilities and creating a more cohesive and vibrant village centre. We will be contributing to the initial launch event and helping them assess the issues and options for the village.

London Borough of Sutton

Neighbourhood(s): Hackbridge and Beddington Corner

Location: London

Hackbridge wants to be London’s first sustainable suburb. The local authority and the community, represented by the Hackbridge and Beddington Corner Neighbourhood Development Group, see neighbourhood planning as a way to help achieve this. Hackbridge will be using our support to get good design quality into the heart of their neighbourhood plan.

Rushcliffe Borough Council

Neighbourhood(s): East Leake

Location: Nottinghamshire

East Leake is a village of about 7,000 people between Nottingham and Leicester. Residents have lots of positive ideas for how they want East Leake to develop. They see neighbourhood planning as a way to bring the community together. The group wish to develop a design statement to capture their ideas and aspirations to take the village from its current commuter/dormitory status into a more vibrant community. We are helping the East Leake Community Plan group to develop the statement.

Swindon Borough Council, in partnership with South Marston Parish Council

Neighbourhood(s): South Marston

Location: Wiltshire

Our client is the South Marston Village Expansion Working Party, a group comprised of parish councillors and local residents working together with Swindon Borough Council to set up a broad design framework for housing delivery and growth in the village of South Marston. The wider area of East Swindon is set for significant growth over the coming years which have been outlined in their emerging Core Strategy.

The residents of South Marston wish to see this growth shape the village in a positive way and help deliver the improvement and expansion of local infrastructure as well improve overall quality of life for residents. Our focus will be on helping the Working Party develop real design-led options for growth, looking at the pros and cons of each option and how good design principles can be embedded into a viable development framework.

West Lindsey District Council

Neighbourhood(s): Caistor

Location: Lincolnshire

Caistor is a small market town in Lincolnshire. The town has previously successfully embraced heritage grant and lottery funding to improve the historic fabric of the town. Nearby, there are several significant infrastructure developments in the pipeline based around the growth of the offshore wind industry. The residents of Caistor, together with the Council, are keen for the town to share in the benefits these developments bring. For example they would like to have a more vibrant, busy market place and seek to bring a number of historic empty building back into use. We are going to help the Caistor Neighbourhood Plan Steering Group develop a spatial plan and design policies.