Planning Collective
Nour Al Ahmad, Walid Bhatt, Sarah Cummins, Chris Laing, Chris Scarffe, Rachel Waller
Our proposal is concerned with the current planning process, and how we believe it is not a collective, knowledge just, transparent, equitable, or sustainable, model. Our solution, the Planning Collective, aims at resolving these issues through radicalising and empowering community input — or, put simply, by democratising engagement.
The Planning Collective is a national independent body, funded by not for profit grants, investments into planning, and tax revenue. It proposes two main interventions within the planning network and system.
The first part of the proposal is the creation of an independent advisor role for the community, the planning mediator. The planning mediator acts as the intermediate body between local authority and the community. Their role is to advise the community, and the local authority, on each other’s thoughts and queries surrounding projects and feedback. They would also attend events, such as public consultations, as mediators in order to ensure helpful discourse is had; this mediator would also take minutes to upload to the project’s planning portal in order to keep those in the community who could not attend up to date.
This role would be assisted by the Planning Collective’s online resource facilities. These would include: a database of the current available resources, and an online resource publication explaining the planning process and pertinent planning laws in standard terms. The standard terms publications would also be available physically within relevant planning and council buildings.
The second part of the proposal is the inclusion of a community assembly within the public consultation process. The community assembly is a pool of individuals from the local community, representative of the community demographic. Their role is to organise the community’s response, and consult with stakeholders and the local authority. The community assembly would be considered as a service to the local government, similar to jury service, and the individuals would be compensated for their time, and assigned as a rotation.
With the addition of these interventions, the planning network and the wider community would be able to have more meaningful conversation and debate, and the non-professionals would also be able to understand how their concerns might be relevant, and be able to articulate them more clearly. Through the planning mediator, education, and/or translation, the public would also be encouraged further to participate, allowing for more representation within the process. Through the community assembly, a more equitable community voice could be reached; voices that might be currently unheard or pushed down by a privileged majority could be able to represent themselves and the issues they face.
