Introduction

This chapter explores how community-based planning and localism are evolving differentially in the devolved UK. Devolution in the UK has been seen as integral to the government's attempts to modernise the ways in which the public sector is organised and managed (Peel and Lloyd, 2007). However, it has been introduced in a relatively piecemeal manner, with reforms addressed to different purposes in separate parts of the UK, and with a subsequent differentiation in institutional governance arrangements (and associated executive, legislative and financial powers) that drew upon distinctive administrative practices that had previously accumulated in each territory (Pemberton and Lloyd, 2008). In this context, the chapter initially sets out a framework to understand the differing nature of community-based planning arrangements evolving in the UK. In particular, it places such changes within a broader context of the rescaling of the state and the importance of the changing institutions and geography of the state in shaping the governance and policy arrangements for community-based planning. Subsequently, a comparative analysis is undertaken of the arrangements emerging, and the implications for wider debates concerned with planning and governance are discussed.

Community-based planning and the rescaling of the state

Given that the UK model of devolution is permissive of divergence in policy design and implementation (Jeffrey, 2007), it is perhaps unsurprising that community-based planning has been socially constructed and implemented differently across the devolved UK (Gallent, 2013). Indeed, while there have been convergent paths towards community-based planning, divergent forms have subsequently emerged. For example, in terms of convergence, there have been ongoing and long-standing concerns across the UK with securing the effective engagement and participation of local communities in planning processes or planning at the local level (Skeffington Committee, 1969; Sarkissian et al, 2010), as well as the involvement of communities in designing, developing and implementing local plans focused on reshaping the local environment (Kelly, 2009). However, divergent forms of community-based planning can be identified.

Of particular note in this respect has been the emergence of neighbourhood planning in England. The Localism Act 2011 provided the opportunity for local communities/neighbourhoods to develop neighbourhood plans, as well as to take responsibility for designing, developing and delivering local services (DCLG, 2011).