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Community Planning

Knowing Your Place document front cover Knowing Your Place document front cover

Community-Led Plans are grass-roots initiatives by local people planning for the future of their village, parish or neighbourhood. They do this by producing a common vision of how their community should look or develop in the future and working together to achieve this through the planning system and other means.

Community-Led Plans originated in the countryside, through Village Appraisals, Village Design Statements and Parish Plans. Similar initiatives were subsequently developed in urban areas though town and neighbourhood plans and design statements and market town health-checks.  Through its Localism Bill the Government now plans to give renewed impetus to community-led planning through a new generation of Neighbourhood Plans.

English Heritage believes that a community's heritage is fundamental to its individuality, its sense of identity and its future prosperity. Our ambition is to see all Community-Led Plans harness the power of this heritage to benefit local people.

In March 2011 English Heritage in partnership with Action with Communities in Rural England (ACRE) produced Knowing Your Place: Heritage and Community-Led Planning in the Countryside to help rural communities that are producing, reviewing or updating their plan.  

The guidance has been produced in partnership with ACRE, and is supported by the Association of Small Historic Towns and Villages (ASHTAV), Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE), Civic Voice, Council for British Archaeology (CBA), Country Land and Business Association (CLA), European Council for the Village and Small Town (ECOVAST), and National Association of Local Councils (NALC).

The guidance is designed to complement and add more detail on heritage to the community planning toolkit provided by ACRE, available online at www.acre.org.uk.  It is available as web-based resource and downloadable PDF.

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Community-led Planning Case Studies

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What's New?

  • National Planning Policy Framework
    The National Planning Policy Framework was published on 27 March 2012, replacing all the previous Planning Policy Statements, including PPS 5, as well as various other planning guidance. Its central theme is the ‘presumption in favour of sustainable development’, set out in twelve core land-use planning principles which underpin both plan-making and decision-taking.
  • Reducing Heritage Crime - ARCH Awareness - Policing the Past: Protecting the Future
    These events are aimed at local authority staff (such as archaeological and conservation officers), elected members of local authorities and parish councils, member organisations of Community Safety Partnerships, community groups and voluntary organisations working within the heritage sector and wanting to learn more about the Heritage Crime Programme and Alliance to Reduce Crime against Heritage.
  • English Heritage are holding NPPF Discussion Sessions
    Free half day sessions will provide an opportunity to discuss English Heritage's interpretation of the NPPF in order to promote understanding of NPPF, its implications for the management of heritage assets, and its use in plan and decision-making. The session will explore the language and terminology used in NPPF and how this differs from the PPS5.