Building Community Consortium selected to help communities shape local development

Planning Minister Greg Clark announced today that the Building Community Consortium has been selected as one of four partners to deliver the Supporting Communities and Neighbourhoods in Planning scheme.

The scheme aims to support local communities to take a more active role in place-shaping and the development of planning policies at local level to ensure they reflect local needs and aspirations.  It will offer expert advice, assistance and guidance from a range of specialist providers to encourage more people to participate in the planning process.

The Building Community Consortium is led by Locality in partnership with The Glass-House Community Led Design; The Eden Project, CommunityPlanning.net and a wider pool of experts and delivery partners.  The consortium combines the knowledge, reach, skills and expertise of each partner in supporting disadvantaged and marginalised communities engage with the built environment and navigate the planning system to better serve local needs.

Drawing on the experience of a collective network of over 1000 community-based organisations, the consortium’s approach aims to give communities the relevant skills, confidence and relationships to lead projects, be informed stakeholders and clients, and to find local solutions.

Steve Wyler, Chief Executive of Locality said: “We aim to offer an integrated package combining community-led planning, asset ownership, and enterprise creation, which taken together will help to create true community capability and true community self-determination”.

The consortium plans to develop a dedicated advice line and website that will respond to referrals and direct enquiries as well as offer relevant resources and guidance. 

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In partnership with:

Notes to editors:

Locality:

Locality is the nationwide movement of communities ambitious for change formed through the merger of bassac and the Development Trusts Association.

Members of Locality are community owned and led.  They include settlements, development trusts, social action centres and community enterprises and they have expertise in community asset ownership, collaboration, commissioning, social enterprise, community voice and advocacy. 

Locality helps people work together to create and capture local wealth.  We help people to set up local organisations for the benefit of their communities and we support existing organisations to work more effectively through peer-to-peer exchange and mutual support.

For more information visit www.locality.org.uk.

The Glass-House Community Led Design:

The Glass-House Community Led Design is a national charity working to help people make better buildings, spaces, homes and neighbourhoods. We provide independent advice, training and hands-on support to communities and regeneration professionals working together to bring positive and lasting change to their area.

For more information visit www.theglasshouse.org.uk.

The Eden Project

The Eden Project is an environmental education charity and a regeneration project.

The Eden Project seeks to promote the understanding and responsible management of the relationship between people and resources. We have developed a range of approaches for engaging the public with the issues and opportunities that a sustainable future presents.

Eden Project aims to inspire people to create a vision for the kind of future they want and help them understand how their daily lives are connected to a broader community of people locally and globally.

We believe that the best engagement processes are positive, inspirational, memorable, inclusive and fun. Much of our work is engagement by stealth, capturing the interest of people who think they aren’t interested.

For more information visit www.edenproject.com.

 CommunityPlanning.net

CommunityPlanning.net is the leading international good practice website on community planning. It provides practical advice on how to engage local communities in planning issues.

For more information visit www.communityplanning.net.