Levelling up neighbourhood planning in London

Neighbourhood planning aims to allow London’s communities to come together and draw up their own plans for their area has become part of the capital’s statutory framework.

The London Assembly has been following the progress of neighbourhood planning in London since its introduction in 2011, and the specific barriers facing their adoption in the capital.

Outside London, plans are made by parish councils, but there is only one of these in London. This means communities must form a neighbourhood forum in order to create a plan, making the process more time consuming and costly.

Since its last investigation, the London Assembly Planning Committee has found that neighbourhood forums have sprung up across London, demonstrating that communities from all backgrounds have an appetite to use the process.

However, in many cases they struggle to overcome challenges such as recent changes to the amount of funding provided by central government to support neighbourhood planning.

The London Assembly Planning Committee has published a report on neighbourhood planning in London and made a number of recommendations on how the process can be improved, including:

• The Mayor of London should explicitly support neighbourhood planning and convene volunteer neighbour planners with local boroughs to develop a programme for accelerating the delivery of neighbourhood plans.
• The Mayor should support action in the nine boroughs, where neighbourhood planning is non-existent.
• The Mayor should support and contribute to resourcing a neighbourhood planning process in Strategic and Local Areas for Regeneration.
• Central government should reinstate the additional grant support to neighbourhood forums for delivery of their neighbourhood plan.

The report was authored by Deputy Chair of the Planning Committee, Nicky Gavron AM, who said: “Neighbourhood planning should be an integral way to capture the voices of local people in an area, so that they can shape their neighbourhoods. But there are a number of practical steps the Mayor, local boroughs and central Government need to take, in order to level up neighbourhood planning, so that Londoners can benefit from the process to the same extent as the rest of England.

“We heard from passionate and dedicated Londoners, from diverse backgrounds, from Tooting to Stratford and Deptford to Harlesden, that neighbourhood planning can be a great way for communities to provide crucial local knowledge and experience to best shape development for an area’s needs.

“Currently, proper resourcing from all spheres of Government is lacking; with it the neighbourhood planning process can drive community engagement and bolster cohesion. Moreover, it is a key conduit between communities, local authorities and City Hall, and a vital tool to ensure that the future growth of London is inclusive.”