Introduction

While neighbourhood planning is still emerging as an active component of planning practice and as part of the wider project of planning reform taken up by the UK government since 2010, it is revealing to narrate how it has been designed and responded to. The political and theoretical implications of neighbourhood planning are clearly important to understand and reflect upon (see Bradley, 2015; Davoudi and Madanipour, 2015; Parker et al, 2015; see also Chapters Two and Nine), but this chapter focuses on how, where and on what basis this non-mandatory, voluntary approach to statutory planning has been taken up by communities over the first four years or so of its operation.

Alongside the take-up (and non-take-up) of neighbourhood planning, the basis for engagement with planning issues offered by neighbourhood planning and the conditions and capacities existing across the thousands of very different ‘neighbourhoods’ in England provide just some of the cleavages likely to affect engagement with this set of planning tools. This is true not only of communities, but also of the different attitudes and responses from local authorities that have been produced given their statutory role as partners in neighbourhood planning (Smith, 2014). Moreover, the resource and control implications felt by at least some local authorities appear to be affecting the progress of neighbourhood planning. Thus, there have been issues identified in terms of the unevenness of take-up and equity concerns, the terms of engagement offered (which act to shape the ‘possibilities’ of neighbourhood planning), and the level of burdens shouldered by participants (see Gunn et al, 2015; Parker et al, 2015).

An overview of the evolution of the neighbourhood planning initiative in England, including the location and types of active areas, is outlined here to provide some empirical perspective on the first period of neighbourhood planning on the ground. The ‘user experience’ of neighbourhood planning research (see Parker et al, 2014) and subsequent consideration of how communities have operated (Parker et al, 2015) are drawn upon in the narrative, along with some contemporary critique and additional material relating to the socio-economic status of active neighbourhood planning areas. A brief contextual precis is set out before detailing the profile of neighbourhood planning activity in England during 2011–15. The chapter concludes with a short critical assessment.