AMT Public

Year 1 of the Empowerment Fund ends on 31 March 2010.  The key achievements are as follows:

Coordination of national community led planning development best practice advice

Aim – Work with ACRE, NALC, Carnegie, Urban Forum and other key partners to develop best practice advice on a coordinated and integrated national approach to Community Led Planning (CLP).

Achievements: The key partners with a role in CLP met to map out potential next steps in taking forward a joint approach to increase use of CLP in empowering communities.  The following roles were agreed where taking an agreed approach was considered useful:

- Advocacy role – including promotion of CLP at parish level and via Rural Community Councils; testing CLP in urban areas; good practice guidance; national-led advocacy to government, regional agencies, and local providers.

- Technical improvements – including review and refinement of Parish and Towns methodologies; compatibility of techniques across rural, market towns and urban areas.

- Support and sharing of good practice – including the need for a co-ordinated approach to presenting CLP to t he end user, including a shared bank of case studies and shared training resources.

AMT and ACRE have agreed a joint approach to promoting their respective CLP methodologies under a framework called LEAD, which illustrates a sequence of activities that community groups are expected to undertake when producing any Community Led Plan.  The four steps refer to generic stages involved in both the Parish Planning and Town Action Planning methodologies and the two organisations will promote this withing their documentation.

AMT has developed a best practice ‘Policy into Practice’ paper on CLP, which is aimed at community groups and towns/ parish councils.  The paper has been endorsed by ACRE and has undergone consultation with both AMT members and ACRE’s Rural Community Council Network.

Following the discussions among all key stakeholders (as noted above) a separate project (funded via the National Empowerment Partnership) has emerged.  This aims to explore how CLP might be developed for use in urban areas.  The work that has taken place undert he Empowerment Fund, for example the LEAD framework, will feed directly into this work.

2. Revised Market Town Healthcheck

Aim: Develop a revised Market Town Healthcheck which takes forward the work of the previous Healthcheck.   It will encourage users of the scheme to understand their town better, by undertaking surveys and observing activity in the town.

Acheivements: The new Town Action Planning (TAP) is intended to be an updated version of the former Market Towns Healthcheck.  There is greater emphasis on the simplification of the CLP process and on enabling greater and more accurate data at town level upon which to base plans.

The TAP takes account of the new LEAD framework, and having been piloted in a number of areas in the southeast, is to be launched before the end of the financial year.

There may be opportunity in Yr2 to discuss how it might be promoted as best practice guidance by CLG, or within the plan-making manual.

3. Alignment with the statutory planning process

Aim: Asses how top-down local authorities approach to planning can effectively meet community-led bottom-up approach.  Seek to benchmark different authority’s approaches against other areas of the country and facilitate an exchange of good practice and lessons learnt from the local authorities’ perspectives.  Building on an early study with Carnegie UK in Yorkshire, AMT would be equally interested in assessing how to maximise the towns’ strategic influence.

Achievements: AMT has been working with Northumberland County Council and Durham County Council to assist hem in the developmentof an effective framework for CLP.  The aim of the process is to enable local authorities to work in partnership with the voluntary and community sector, encouraging them to identify their priorities through CLP and, where appropriate, acknowledging and addressing those priorities through strategic planning processes.

Recommendations are likely to include technical considerations about the process including common data packs and structuring of reports to align with LAA themes, for example.  However the key issue that is emerging is need to understand the requirements of different local authority departments and to develop a receptive and empowering culture across an authority.

The work will continue into Yr2 and a dissemination event planned for May 2010 could raise awareness of the issues and finding and these might also be included in the proposed Small Towns for Tomorrow Think Tank symposium planned for July.

4. Towns-4-Towns

Aim- To build on AMT’s current Towns-4-Towns element of the Towns Alive Programme by seeking examples of good practice in environmental issues, as well as the planning for and delivery of affordable housing.

Achievements: Empowerment Fund budget has been used to commission four good practice case studies in environmental issues, with the aim of broadening the scope of the CLP process to ensure that it is better able to address environmental issues. These are:

• Settle Hydro – harnessing power at Settle Weir it is estimated that the community run project will generate about 165,000 kWh (units) of electricity a year – enough for around 50 average houses – saving 80 tonnes of carbon a year or 3,200 tonnes of carbon over its expected lifetime of 40 years;
• Leominster Anaerobic Digester – a project to provide the market town with its own community owned and operated power plant producing renewable energy;
• Chippenham Environmental Initiatives – the Chippenham and Villages Environmental group are implementing a project producing thermal images of houses to raise awareness of energy efficiency and provide assistance to householders in taking action to save energy; and
• Comrie- Sustainable development of Cultybraggan Army Camp – 90 acres of land brought into community ownership in September 2007 for developing ecological building construction methods, renewable energy sources for the village and local food production.

This work will directly benefit AMT’s members as it provides examples of work that has successfully been carried out and resources to assist in new projects. The work will be developed in Year 2 of the Empowerment Fund, with links being made with the Centre for Sustainable Energy to embed good environmental practice into the TAP CLP methodology.

Four case studies focussing on affordable housing in market towns have also been developed in line with the Policy into Practice Paper for Affordable Housing and these will be published shortly.

5. Policy into Practice Paper on Affordable Housing

Aim: Develop a Policy into Practice Paper on ‘affordable housing’.

Achievements: The paper has been drafted has been drafted and is currently in consultation with AMT members.  The document will inform the development of a Policy Position Paper for AMT and associated Campaign Plan.

6. Knowledge Hub

Aim: To develop the webpages, the market town advocates programme and the think tank – Small Towns for Tomorrow.

Achievements: The webpages continue to be added to.  A market town Advocates Programme has been established and 15 have been ‘recruited’ so far to input into internal AMT policy development and external consultations.  The Policy Forum, Small Towns for Tomorrow, has been established and three meetings have been held.  A formal link with the Rural Evidence Research Centre has been established which can act as the research capacity for the group.  The launch will take place in July as a policy symposium focussing on the future of small towns including raising their visibility in government policy.

Click here to find out what is planned for Year 2