Where are you in the Planscape?

Discussion - Getting Started

Now that you’ve decided that you want to make a community led plan about your place, discuss in your group:

  • Exactly what you want to use it for (e.g. demonstrate local needs, argue for better services, provide evidence for funders, coordinate your own activities, mobilise more active volunteers or activists in your community).

  • Whether you know of any other types of plans for your area, or places close by, that are trying to do similar things including Council led area plans, other communities’ local place plans, service plans that mention your area e.g. Children services plan

Someone, somewhere will be making plans about you

Services should be trying to work more closely together to meet needs in communities in a co-ordinated and complementary way and this has definitely happened more over the last decade. However real involvement of local community reps in the process has been much less frequent.

Community Planning Partnerships, for example, will have produced Local Outcome Improvement Plans and Locality Plans, sometimes known as area plans.  These plans are set out in legal duties and should be trying to ensure that your communities are fully involved in:

  • Assessing and prioritising local needs

  • Bringing a community and service user perspective to how needs are met

  • Where appropriate:

    • supporting the delivery of services in partnership with service providers

    • or developing community owned and run services.  These could be additional or alternative to public services

  • Reflecting on what is working, and what may need to change to be more effective

Discussion - So what do these plans mean for us?

If you're working with a local community worker or other support agency, they may be able to tell you whether or not other plans have been produced about your area. Alternatively, you may know from previous community engagement that the council or other organisation has produced a plan.  Ask members of your steering group to look at these plans and report back on whether they are relevant to your local community action plan.

Of the plans you identify about your area:

  • Were you asked to contribute to these?

  • How were you views used?

  • Are they helping drive practical change?

  • What were the positive aspects of how these were produced or the conclusions they reached?

Do these other plans matter?

Yes, they matter because:

  • Public services maybe using these to determine priorities for service delivery and investment locally.

  • Local people may already have been asked their opinions about what are in these plans, so they might contain useful information for your local action plan.

It is likely that these formal plans will cover an area larger than your neighbourhood or town, but it is important that you look carefully at what they're saying because

  • They could offer useful starting points for more detailed engagement in your area on things the wider plans do not cover 

  • They may say things about your community that you need to develop further, or in some cases challenge

Therefore, they are likely to influence the design of your plan.

Now decide what you think is the relationship between these plans and your plan.  For example, your plan could provide helpful detail for a smaller area within a locality plan, or it might provide a local perspective on service specific plans for children services or health and social care. This may help you reach agreement with service providers to work with you on implementing your plan

 
Local Place Plans & Community-led Action Plans
A comparison guide