Output details

Community 21: social networking and neighbourhood planning toolbox for sustainable communities

Community21.org is an inter-community, online planning and networking tool, designed by Gant in collaboration with Action in Rural Sussex. It is a unique platform that enables communities to take up the opportunity to be their own ‘architects and planners’ under new ‘Localism’ legislation and changes in the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF, 2012) which intend to promote ‘bottom-up’ community planning.

The platform provides integrated functions that make community-led planning more efficient, transparent, inclusive and effective in fostering greater participation, enabling peer-to-peer community learning, and in helping deliver key actions and sustainable developments within actual communities. Pilot-tested as a prototype with nine participating communities of different geographic and social profile across East Sussex, West Sussex and Kent, the system was evaluated by the participating communities and development agencies, and through engagements with local and regional authorities, service providers and high-level civil servants and government ministers. The process of research and evaluation provided data on which a second version of the platform was developed. The system is endorsed as a neighbourhood planning toolkit by the Design Council/CABE and Action with Communities in Rural England (ACRE), and is used by the Rural Community Council Network as the ‘tool of choice’ for community planning, changing the method by which communities undertake statutory planning exercises with these agencies across the country (pending 2013/14).

The project was presented, by invitation, at the Broadband Summit (2012) organised by Nick Herbert MP and attended by Jeremy Hunt (then Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport), at the National Association of Local Councils Conference (2012), the UK-Ireland Planning Research Conference (2012), and The Rural Commission (2011). The pilot Community21 software was the topic of an earlier article by Gant and Gittins in ‘Gateways: The international journal for community engagement research’ (vol. 3, 2010). SEE DIGITAL OUTPUT.