Community Planning techniques

The following techniques may be appropriate for your village

Initial Village Plans

If your village has never done any Community Planning work before we can help you with an initial village plan. This would involve consulting with residents in a variety of inclusive ways, coming up with ideas for projects and publishing this in an action plan. There is funding available from DEFRA to help communities achieve this. We can help you with publicising and organising meetings, designing questionnaires, holding interactive open days and negotiating with local authorities and service providers.

Funding Workshops

With or without a plan, many village organisations have projects that they would like to undertake for the benefit of their community. There are many sources of funding that may be available, but individuals often struggle with the complexity of searching for and applying for funding. We can advise on a case by case basis. However, where several different community groups or villages would benefit from more general information we can organise local funding workshops in which main funding organisations, such as the Big Lottery or Heritage Lottery Fund, will attend to advise communities directly.

Community Forums

Communities often seek to influence local authorities and service providers. Research has shown that this has more chance of success when groups of villages work together to tackle issues that affect them all, such as access to services and transport. We can help community groups to jointly engage with local authorities and other statutory service providers to influence and participate in policy making and service delivery.

Spatial Plans

Development within the National Park is subject to the constraints necessary to protect this special landscape. Village communities play a unique and vital role in the conservation and management of the National Park. The Community Planning project offers villages the opportunity to learn more about these constraints and how they may affect development within their village. We can work with villages to draw up a spatial plan that shows how community aspirations may be considered alongside statutory planning constraints. In this way villages can learn about and become involved in the management of their own cultural heritage.