Neighbourhood planning: A new approach to consensus building?

The creation of a top-down planning system with the express purpose of delivering growth through housing development, and the loss of local control over development is a long way from the bottom-up, community-driven process originally envisaged in open-source planning. In contrast, the neighbourhood planning process offers local communities, working with local authorities and others, a genuine way of influencing and shaping their own future. Leeds has seen a particularly high level of interest in neighbourhood planning, in contrast with many other local authorities in the Leeds City region and beyond. This is probably due to the ambitious target for housing growth (70,000 new homes by 2028), well-organised parish and town councils and strong community forums, both within neighbourhoods and with the city council through previous work on supplementary planning guidance. Not surprisingly, initial interest came from the leafy, middle-class, parished suburbs, where there is a strong desire to manage and resist development, but the authors note that more deprived, inner-city communities are also embracing the opportunity to improve and develop their neighbourhood through local empowerment and meaningful involvement in the decision-making process. It is suggested that this has heralded a shift in approach from ‘doing to’ to ‘working with’. The paper focuses on two contrasting examples of neighbourhood planning work: Thorp Arch (rural locations with large industrial estate), and Holbeck (inner-city, deprived area). Thorp Arch is facing a large-scale housing development with supporting facilities and services, while Holbeck has a true bottom up approach with big ambitions and a desire for growth and investment.