EUKN - United Kingdom - Making it meaningful: involving communities in community planning

Making it meaningful: involving communities in community planning

Introduction

This learning point aims to give guidance on meaningful community engagement in community planning. Partners shared their knowledge and best practice to see what works and what could be improved.

Problem

Issues addressed include:

effective engagement,
meaningful involvement,
knowledge sharing and networking to ensure that practitioners are fully able to effectively engage with communities.

Description

Looks at methods of engaging with communities - making it effective and meaningful. Also considers how knowledge can be successfully shared with other organisations involved in community planning.

Approach

A practice seminar held in 2004 invited participants to hear from national speakers, share their own experiences and attend an advice clinic and discussion. From this the learning point was developed

Results

Underlying principles for community engagement were identified including:

the community must be involved in all stages of planning, including development;
all sections of the community must be reached;
organisations must not work in isolation;
experiences and lessons should be shared.

Possible problem areas include:

funding structures,
lack of community involvement,
genuine engagement,
loss of consistency during change,
lack of capacity,
community voice.

Learning points include:

valuable insights into the key elements of a community plan,
how community engagement and involvement lie at the heart of a plan’s development,
capacity building is key,
need for consistency across the whole area.

Beneficiaries

Practitioners and the community.

Contact info

Communities Scotland
Anna Stansfield, tel. +44 (0) 141 419 1695

Project start date

//2004

Links

Visit the Communities Scotland website

Download the 'Making it meaningful: involving communities in community planning' Report (PDF, Eng, 587 KB)

Document type

case

Themes

Urban Policy

Keywords