Community engagement

Community engagement is an integral part of the spatial planning system. Good community engagement provides opportunities for people to shape the place in which they live, creating better and more sustainable communities.

Local authorities need to engage with the community at every stage of plan making. Early and effective community engagement will enable people to participate in identifying key local issues and determine ways to address them. If we get this right, we get better plans. 

The PAS LDF community engagement support can help you to do this.  You can have the support delivered by PAS or download the advice note below.

This support demonstrates that engaging communities doesn’t have to be difficult. It helps build capacity and confidence in delivering community engagement programmes that work. 

Please note: These materials were produced prior to the current round of planning reform. You should be mindful of:

• the introduction of neighbourhood planning
• the removal of the regional tier of planning
• any further government announcements

• Advice note
• Workshop
• Additional consultancy support
• Costs
• Contact us

Advice note

Community engagement in plan making (PDF, 80 pages, 1MB) 

This document provides advice to help you develop an appropriate, effective and efficient approach to engaging your communities. This document is a revision of the original advice note and benefits from the experience and lessons learned over a year of providing direct support on community engagement to over 25 authorities. It includes good practice we’ve seen and is structured around the key challenges councils face.

The advice note covers:

• the minimum requirements for engagement, reflecting the changes to regulations in 2008
• what makes a good statement of community involvement
• the key elements of an effective engagement process
• what this means for preparing your plans.

It also provides examples of appropriate and effective approaches to engaging communities and how these can be delivered in a resource-efficient way.  It concludes with action-planning steps that will help you determine the key challenges specific to your authority and how these can be addressed.

Workshop

We can provide experienced facilitators in the field of community engagement to deliver the workshop with you within the context of your current programme of document preparation.

The workshop is delivered as a one-day session in two parts.

The audience for the morning should be a group of up to 15 people involved in community engagement. This might include representatives from a range of council departments, the LSP, community organisations and adjoining authorities.

The afternoon session is for planning policy officers. The different components of the support module can be tailored to meet your specific needs.

Additional consultancy support

We offer up to 5 days follow-up support to help you to address your key challenges. This will be agreed based on the outcomes from the action-planning session.

This could include, for example:

• further practical training in facilitation or event/activity design
• support developing effective engagement plans that optimise value from available resources
• targeted support for improving engagement with specific groups/ regarding specific (particularly more complex/controversial) issues.

Costs

The cost of direct support is subsidised by PAS. Many authorities will be eligible to receive the support free of charge.

Contact us

Please contact us on 020 7296 6184 or email pas@local.gov.uk to find out more or discuss specifics.