Introduction

Whether the state strategy of localism delivers on its promise of empowerment depends on the extent to which it devolves effective instruments of policy to citizens and communities. The devolution of localism is commonly conveyed by invitation to citizens to join local governance structures or be included in neighbourhood management projects (Lowndes and Sullivan, 2008). Citizens seldom acquire the right to make decisions as a collective, and it is rare for statutory power to be designed to be wielded by public participants rather than public officials (Bradley, 2015). This chapter examines the use of statutory planning powers to effect spatial change by neighbourhoods in England. Neighbourhood planning is unusual in that a tailor-made set of statutory powers was devised and offered to communities to give them distinct rights within the development planning framework. Where much research on neighbourhood planning, including in this book, has focused on its impact on community governance and the management of place, this chapter is concerned with the implementation of a set of spatial practices, and the use by neighbourhoods of a specific, and quite limited, framework of land-use planning to achieve their goals.

Neighbourhood planning emerged as the new and most local scale of the planning system in England in a series of reforms intended to overhaul the process of land-use allocation in order to liberalise the regulation of development markets. The concern of the planning system to adjudicate on questions of the public good in land use was rhetorically redirected towards a presumption in favour of sustainable development. Neighbourhood planning was presented to communities as the power to align the imperatives of economic growth with the requirements of social and environmental sustainability (DCLG, 2011a). This chapter reviews the spatial practices that have emerged as a result and discusses the extent to which communities have been able to use neighbourhood plans to achieve their aims in balancing economic, social and environmental sustainability. It begins by addressing the approach taken by neighbourhoods to the key challenge of housing supply; then, it reviews the use of planning policy to highlight the goals of social sustainability in regeneration and public infrastructure, and considers the environmental measures and low-carbon alternatives promoted in neighbourhood plans.