Delivery of affordable housing should not be at the expense of social infrastructure, Local Trust warns

As the Planning and Infrastructure Bill enters its commons committee stage, Local Trust was called to give evidence to the Housing, Communities and Local Government (HCLG) select committee on its proposals. Head of policy and communications, Madeleine Jennings, outlined to MPs how the government risks failing the very communities it was elected to help if the current proposals don’t change.

At the HCLG Committee hearing on 29 April, Local Trust argued that while the aim of the Planning and Infrastructure Bill is to speed up and streamline the delivery of new homes and critical infrastructure, the current proposals don’t offer any new ways for communities to influence planning decisions. In fact, they may well take away from the existing – though imperfect – mechanisms, such as neighbourhood plans.

Madeleine highlighted that disadvantaged areas are much less likely to have a neighbourhood plan because they lack civic and social infrastructure, and because of this neighbourhood planning is crucial:

“The important aspect of the Bill is neighbourhood planning and how the national scheme of delegation will support neighbourhood planning and ensure it’s expanded to areas that currently don’t have the capacity to do it. The current Bill doesn’t suggest any new ways for communities at the hyper local level to influence planning decisions. The national scheme needs to commit to expanding neighbourhood plans so that more diverse communities can take part in them.”

How to involve communities in planning

Madeleine gave the example of Arches Local in Chatham, as the gold standard for this. They have chosen to focus at least part of their resource and attention on supporting their communities to have greater say in planning matters. They established a Neighbourhood Forum to take through a Neighbourhood Development Order that includes sustainable new homes and social infrastructure. These types of plans can be a ‘gold standard’ for involving community voices in the planning process because they allow communities to set the rules by which decisions can then be made.

Additional key points that Local Trust made were:

• Strengthening the government’s neighbourhood planning scheme is crucial to unlocking the system’s potential to involve more diverse communities in planning
• Communities must be aware of and be able to engage with plans that affect them
• All around the country the outcomes in doubly disadvantaged neighbourhoods are far worse than in equally deprived areas with strong social infrastructure. Current proposals risk building the next generation of doubly disadvantaged neighbourhoods if further thought is not given to community engagement and the provision of social infrastructure.

You can watch the full select committee appearance here.

For more information or to arrange interviews, please contact ben.jackson@localtrust.org.uk