Community Engagement in Local Development Plans

Mhairi McVicar, Professor in Architecture at Cardiff University

‘For many of the people who approach me, their Local Development Plan is too remote and too technical for them to engage with. When they want to get involved at the [Planning] application stage, it is too late.’ (Future Generations Report, 2020)

Addressing planning as an area of focus, The Future Generations Report 2020 identified challenges for planners and residents alike in achieving citizen involvement in Local Development Plan processes. The complex, long-term and often abstract nature of planning can lead, the report suggests, to citizens seeing ‘local planning as a system which results in things happening to communities which they are unable to influence or control.’  Recommending ‘considerable cultural change’ through training, support and leadership to move beyond traditional consultation techniques, the report proposed a mindset change from ‘consultation to involvement.’

Progressing from consultation to involvement was a core aim of our research partnership for Community Engagement in Local Development Plans. Led by Cardiff University, our partnership brought together community organisations, Cardiff Council, Planning Aid Wales and an emerging advisory network to exchange knowledge, skills and resources for community engagement in planning. Responding to Cardiff Council’s Replacement Local Development Plan Preferred Strategy’s (2023) commitment to address inequalities concentrated in Cardiff’s Southern Arc, we partnered with Common Wealth, Splott Community Volunteers, Grange Pavilion CIO and Youth Forum, and Action in Caerau and Ely (ACE) as locally trusted place-based organisations, and with Privilege Café as lead community consultant.

Our previous research identified that, far from being ‘hard to reach’, people actively choose to step away from ‘tokenistic’ consultation. To address long-held mistrust, we recommended that consultation should share power and co-create skills for people to lead engagement within their own local areas. Community Engagement in Local Development Plans developed a Community-Council-University partnership to exchange knowledge about Local Development Plans and approaches to community engagement. The project created an experimental space through which each community organisation led engagement activities specific to their local context, using their own ways of working. Our co-created aims sought a ‘ripple effect’ of awareness-raising and training, emphasizing skills-swopping, trust-building, relevance, adaptability instead of a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach, and supporting big ideas and ambitions for quality with pathways for tangible actions. ‘Engagement actions’ were developed by each community organisations and launched in September 2024.

Splott Community Volunteers’ Splott Bus Tour was inspired by the tradition of a working-class community bus trip. Cardiff Council representatives joined Splott residents in visiting well-known and less-well known areas of Splott, with memories, conversations, observations and ideas shared on route and collected on printed route maps.

Building on existing relationships and priorities created through previous listening exercises for the Ely and Caerau Community Action Plan, ACE’s engagement action focused on connecting local residents and organisations already active in greening and growing to map current uses, strengths, challenges and aspirations for local green spaces, identifying immediate community-led actions as well as longer term development considerations.

Common Wealth held conversations with St Mellons residents through a garden party gathering and individual interviews, and adapted the conversations as a performance script. Professional working-class actors performed How to Build A Town as monologues, dialogues and poetry at an open space evening in St Mellons, with provocations and discussions facilitated by Common Wealth’s resident Sounding Board.

Grange Pavilion CIO and Grange Pavilion Youth Forum collaborated with local filmmakers and animators to create a short film explaining the Local Development Plan in their own words (see title image). The film, launched at a community meal and workshop with leaders from local groups and youth forum members, provoked conversations about what Local Development Plan themes mean for the area.

‘It was so powerful to be in a space with everyone to just share those ideas and share best practice.’ (Community Organisation partner, 2024)

As well as exchanging local knowledge on each area’s strengths, initiatives and visions, the engagement actions were described as mobilizing community action, enhancing connections between each community organisations, and deepening understandings of their own areas.

‘It started a conversation that is long overdue about social capital, civic mission, community wealth in terms of knowledge, skills, [and] resource capacity. Understanding this is looking beyond the local development plan. This project is the seed of a much, much bigger ambition that has come to light.’ (Community Organisation partner, 2024)

In Stronger, Fairer, Greener (2022), Cardiff Council committed to ‘work alongside citizens and communities to unlock civic action’ and to provide support for community-led initiatives. In an economic context of austerity, it can be tempting to act cautiously to avoid raising expectations local authorities may not be able to deliver on. Developing proactive collaborations and building trust between community organisations and local authority representatives led not to unrealistic expectations, but instead affirmed the presence of collective skills, resources and willingness of local communities to, as the community organisations summarised, take the next steps from ‘being listened to’ towards ‘taking action’ – from consultation to involvement in planning.

Community Engagement in Local Development Plans project report is available at: https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/174711/

Community Engagement in Local Development Plans is an ESRC Impact Acceleration Account funded project. The research partnership included Prof. Mhairi McVicar, Dr Neil Harris and Dr Neil Turnbull (Cardiff University); Simon Gilbert, Stuart Williams, Helen Williams and Richard Butler (Cardiff Council Planning); Mymuna Soleman (Privilege Café); Rhiannon White, Chantal Williams and Camila Brueton (Common Wealth); Lynne Thomas and Richard Powell (Splott Community Volunteers); Abdi Yusuf, Nirushan Sudarsan, Shoruk Nekeb (Grange Pavilion); Dave Horton, Becky Matyus (ACE); Mark Jones (Planning Aid Wales). This research developed from recommendations from AHRC funded Community Consultation for Quality of Life (PI Flora Samuel), Community Consultation for Quality of Life (CCQOL) - QOLF. 

Image credits:

Grange Pavilion: Efa Blosse-Mason and Paolo Russo

Splott: Mhairi McVicar

ACE: Mhairi McVicar

Common Wealth: Photographer Jon Poutney, Actor Kate Wilson