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Picking up the themes raised by the previous two chapters, this chapter focuses on the creation of neighbourhood forums as a product of the Localist Act (2011). New rights to neighbourhood planning have led to the creation of these new forums in urban areas where parishes had long been abolished. The chapter looks at the development of neighbourhood planning in Exeter St James (Devon), Holbeck (Leeds, Yorkshire) and Highgate (London). It outlines the community-led work that has been done by these forums, and the challenges faced where the community has limited capacity to act independently (in this case in Holbeck in Leeds). The research again highlights the importance of shifting the power relations between the council and the local community.

This chapter explores the role of planning's publics within the emergent technocratic landscapes of planning. It does so by drawing on ongoing research into the localism agenda in England and in particular on neighbourhood planning. Neighbourhood planning was introduced in 2011 as a ‘community right’ to draw up a statutory land-use plan. The chapter explores the extent to which technical and ‘expert’ knowledge and the power of public and private planners is being challenged or displaced by the knowledge, emotions, and actions of citizen planners. As such, the chapter shows that technocratisation is a more varied and complex process than previously thought and that these seeming spaces of de-regulation are not immune to forms of re-regulation which seek to re-create local knowledge to align with technocratic language and purposes.

Looks at the history of planning at a community scale in England and particularly at the use of parish plans in rural areas. It considers the use of these plans for communities themselves and for the policy process. It further examines attempts to integrate very local planning activity (informal) with the policy development of local government (formal), asking how integration can be achieved, if it is deemed desirable.

This chapter extends the idea of Britain being in a post-regeneration era by detailing key policies enacted by the UK Coalition Government, and governments in Scotland and Wales since 2010. A detailed exploration of what the Localism Act in England means for communities suggests that urban policy is increasingly leaving communities to fend for themselves. Neighbourhood Planning is more likely to be used by affluent communities to resist development, and deprived neighbourhoods are expected to manage their own assets. Local Economic Partnerships put city-regions in competition with one-another. Meanwhile the Connected Communities programme marks a break with the largescale social-science knowledge of communities created in the 1990s and 2000s, with new knowledge created from a plethora of different disciplinary perspectives. While policy might be leaving our most marginalised communities in a precarious position, new ways of doing research offer promises to give them a voice and be engaged.

This chapter examines the latest local government policy developments and roots them in a wider debate concerning the legitimate function of the state in respect of planning and service delivery. A spotlight is placed on government policy since 2010 and the meanings attached to ‘localism’ by the UK Coalition government;

This chapter details the mess of the current planning system and suggests how planning can win back a degree of legitimacy. Planning has become a battleground. The system almost ensures that participants take unreasonable positions. Conservationists and local people take up opposition almost in principle because they have no confidence in what will emerge from the process. On the other side, developers use their legal and financial power to intimidate weak local authorities who are desperate to meet housing targets to get what they want. If the public is losing belief in planning, the solution is not to depoliticise it by making it more responsive to market signals or putting ‘experts’ in charge. Part of the solution is to engage more people and get their buy-in. Neighbourhood planning is a good way of doing this. However, the planning system must also show that it can deliver.