Neighbourhoods in Planning: Times Past, Lost and Future

Efforts to mobilise local people to plan for their own neighbourhoods has a long history and in the UK recent formulations have included statutory and non-statutory ‘experiments’. Those experimental policy forays have left us with a store of experience and considerable evidence. There is also a legacy of unresolved issues. Since the 2024 general election there has been a great deal of activity to re-rescale planning and until very recently little word on the role of the neighbourhood. The talk will reflect both on the past decades of neighbourhood planning activity, ongoing research exploring neighbourhood planning in deprived areas and look forward into the emerging neighbourhood governance agenda being constructed. What have we learned, what is being applied and what is being lost?

Speaker Information 

Gavin Parker is Professor of Planning Studies at the University of Reading. He has authored eight books and around 150 research outputs. Gavin maintains a range of research interests that centre on people, planning policies and tools and the politics of planning. He has been actively researching neighbourhood scale planning for 20 years. This has included extensive work on English Neighbourhood Planning (since 2011) and prior community-led planning activity. Gavin is currently examining the response to neighbourhood scale planning efforts across the UK, focussing on areas objectively assessed as deprived.