What do communities want from the local planning department?

The ground-breaking Skeffington Report, ‘People and Planning Report of the Committee on Public Participation in Planning’ was prepared by Arthur Skeffington MP and the Ministry of Housing and Local Government and was published in 1969. The Skeffington Committee was appointed in 1968 to assess how the public might become more involved in the creation of local development plans. This was in response to the belief, at the time, that the Town and Country Planning Act had created a largely ‘top down’ system. 50 years on many people still believe that public consultation is a gesture only. From a developer and local authority perspective, public participation poses its own challenges and care needs to be taken if advantages gained through expenditure on time and labour on public participation are not to be outweighed by harm resulting from an overly prolonged planning process. 50 years on from Skeffington, Civic Voice wants to understand why we are still having the same debate?

Civic Voice’s latest research states that communities still do not feel sufficiently engaged with developers and local authorities. 81% of respondents to our recent Building Better Survey said that they do not feel as though developers effectively engage with the community and 72% said the same about local planning authorities. This latest survey by Civic Voice wants to get a deeper understanding of the issues behind these results as we try to organise and support civic societies and other communities to engage more meaningfully in the planning system.
 
The results of this survey will be combined with Civic Voice's Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission Survey.