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London Voices on Neighbourhood Planning

Submitted by Hannah Gibbs

Last Saturday 23rd June London Civic Forum held an event in collaboration with Just Space bringing civic groups together to share their experiences of Neighbourhood Planning so far.

The Glass-House was there to speak about the experiences we have had with groups working on Neighbourhood Plans over the last year and to explain the support we can offer.

There were plenty of common difficulties facing groups in forming Neighbourhood Forums or progressing plans. Interestingly, many of these chime with the initial concerns voiced at an event I attended back in January. Key concerns are:

• In large areas, the vision can be diluted and disintegrate into the small, individual issues that people are concerned with
• New groups who formed in response to Neighbourhood Planning have found it difficult to develop formal structures and ways of working. This is a shame as there are organisations out there who can help with this
• Some neighbourhoods cross ward boundaries or collide with other areas which have active and robust groups – causing administrative and management difficulties
• Some have found a total lack of information available or conflicting information about Neighbourhood Planning in their area
• Difficulties with getting young people involved as planning doesn’t seem like a real issue that will affect them and is viewed as boring
• The administrative and organisational structures in place don’t support this kind of work – some boroughs are unwilling to devolve responsibility to their communities

These groups felt strongly that further guidance was needed to allow them to progress such as:

• Templates to develop a plan –these could be put together through workshops with groups whose Neighbourhood Plans have started to take shape
• A framework or set of standards which indicate how a Local Authority can best support communities to produce Neighbourhood Plans
• A plain English community guide to the National Planning Policy Framework

This event highlighted to me just how much uncertainty remains about the future of Neighbourhood Planning. Many of the groups are progressing brilliantly: groups who have the full support of their local councillors and Local Authorities seem to be the ones making the most headway; but it has not been easy and there is still a long way to go. While The Glass-House believes the open process and lack of guidance represents an opportunity to be creative and for communities to truly shape their places it is clear that more support is necessary to achieve real progress with Neighbourhood Plans.

Participants at Eden Planning Camp earlier this year getting to grips with Neighbourhood Planning during our 'Design by Consensus' workshop.

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The Glass-House workshop at LFA 2012

Submitted by Louise Dredge

We're very excited to be hosting an event as part of this year's London Festival of Architecture (23 June - 8 July 2012) which will bring architects and communities together to examine how we can make London a better place.

The theme of the festival this year is 'The Playful City' in response to the hosting by London of the Olympic and Paralympic Games.

The Glass-House will present the 'Playing Perspectives' workshop on Monday 25 June from 2-5pm to explore how engaging people in designing buildings, spaces or indeed whole neighbourhoods can lead to more playful, creative solutions and more delightful and sustainable places.

We believe that playful cities are those that allow all those who move through them to engage with their city’s delights, nuances and quirks. This hands-on workshop will actively involve all participants in thinking creatively about place and exploring the playful side of participatory design.

You can sign up for this free event via the LFA website

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Marple Wharf - revitalising the waterfront

Submitted by Maja Jorgensen

Over the past few months we have supported the Marple Civic Society and Marple Vision Partnership to develop their plans to bring historic Marple Wharf back into community use. Building on their work to create a vision for the town, the group wanted to draw on local knowledge to inform the future of the wharf and approached The Glass-House for support.

View towards the warehouse on Marple Wharf

We put together a three-day programme of support to enable everyone who was involved to contribute their knowledge and ideas, be inspired by other projects and build their understanding of design and ways to deliver it.

First up we delivered an evening session, which brought together a broad range of stakeholders including young people from the local school, local authority officers, residents and representatives from a variety of groups and societies. Working in groups, participants mapped the town of Marple, thinking about aspects such as community spaces, open spaces, heritage, movement and transport, and then related these to the wharf site and looked at how to improve connections between the site and the rest of the town. 

One of the sub-groups maps out open spaces in and around Marple

Some of the tourism group's observations on Marple's strengths and weaknesses

Young people from Marple Hall School show their map on Community Spaces in Marple

A few weeks later we visited the Hollingwood Hub in Chesterfield, developed and managed by the Chesterfield Canal Trust. 

The Hollingwood Hub

Robin Stonebridge and Rod Auton from the Trust and Geraint Cole from the Chesterfield Canal Partnership spoke about the process of developing a derelict canal and lock house into a well-used recreational resource and thriving community hub. Thinking creatively about how to regenerate the area, the Trust has developed training and employment opportunities for local people, whilst delivering physical change. Our talk and tour of the building provided plenty of inspiration on how to ensure social change through physical regeneration, how to keep the community involved in the whole process and about the design and physical development of a community facility.

Finally, a full-day workshop brought everyone together again to apply learning from both the study visit and the first workshop to the wharf project. Glass-House Enabler Caroline Fraser brought her experience of heritage architecture to the table, in particular about the process of working with an architect and with the local community to develop the building. 

Glass-House Enabler Caroline Fraser facilitates a discussion on potential uses of the Wharf

The group consolidated and checked the emerging ideas and began to prioritise them by looking at the financial costs and community benefits of each. We then explored design options through maps and 3-dimensional models.

A sub-group explores options for refurbishment and re-use of the warehouse on Marple Wharf

A simple model brings the spatial challenges and opportunities to life

The on-going work of the group is supported by Andrew Stunnell OBE MP, patron of Marple Civic Society and Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at Communities and Local Government, who spoke at the final workshop about the value and importance of the community’s work to develop the historic wharf and buildings into community facilities.

At the end of the process participants told us that they had “learned to look with fresh eyes” at their project and ways of engaging their community in the design process. They now plan to investigate whether developing the project through a social enterprise financing model would be a viable option. 

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