Planning for the community? The early experiences of the implementation of Edinburgh City Council’s Community Plan

Labour governments from 1997 to 2010 sought to promote joined-up thinking with the goal of ultimately improving governance and service delivery. It is within this context that this article analyses the emergence of New Labour’s Community Planning agenda in Scotland during the period 2003–2004. More specifically it focuses upon the early stages of the implementation of Edinburgh City Council’s Community Plan. An examination of the policy background to Community Planning is undertaken, presenting the key impacts of Labour’s modernisation agenda on local governance and democracy. Through the analysis of the implementation of Edinburgh City Council’s Community Plan, this article considers the extent to which the Community Planning agenda practically impacted upon public participation. It concludes by arguing that the South Edinburgh pilot demonstrated that some services can be delivered more efficiently and effectively, specifically those which are more responsive to local residents’ views and needs. This research argues that the implementation of Edinburgh’s Community Plan generated a new dynamism in local politics if only for a short period of time, most notably in local community willingness to engage with key issues which affected them. This approach resulted in tangible improvements within the public realm. There were also opportunities to use community plans to reinvigorate and restructure local governance in new and more democratically accountable ways. The case study also indicated some of the tensions and opportunities contained within the Labour Government’s modernisation agenda.