Stages of neighbourhood planning

You will need to establish a community group of at least 21 unrelated people who live in or run businesses in your local neighbourhood area and are sufficiently representative of that area, who will then lead on coordinating the neighbourhood planning for your area of interest. 

This may be an existing community organisation or you may wish to form a new group.

The group must however have a formal constitution. 

Your local ward councillors may like to be involved too. 

This community group must be formally approved by the Council as a 'neighbourhood forum' for the purposes of doing neighbourhood planning.

You will also need to establish the boundaries of the neighbourhood area that your neighbourhood forum wish to plan for. This area of coverage will also need to be approved by the Council, to ensure it makes sense for spatial planning purposes and that it does not overlap with any other neighbourhood planning area.

See our leaflet Designating Neighbourhood Forums and Neighbourhood Areas for how to apply and how we designate neighbourhood forums and areas.