Parish plans and the spatial planning approach in England

Abstract

Community-led parish planning – both process and product – can play an important part in rural spatial planning, acting as a focus for community capacity-building and ultimately helping broader spatial strategies to reflect the goals and aspirations of local communities, whilst ensuring that these same strategies have a clear spatial dimension. Drawing on research that explores the nature of the spatial planning approach in England, and on a case study in the borough of Tonbridge and Malling, we consider how successfully parish plans are being aligned with broader statutory planning processes at a more strategic (district or borough-wide) level, given that they inevitably deal with very local issues and goals, and are not necessarily framed within the limits of planning intervention. In particular, and drawing on the work of other researchers in this area, we consider the extent to which parish plans should be formally integrated with spatial plans (i.e. LDF), as opposed to being put into these plans – an...