Toolkit

Toolkit for Community-Led Regeneration: What is this for?

This is a toolkit for social housing residents who are facing the demolition of their homes and want to contest this demolition through proposing an alternative community-led regeneration scheme. The toolkit is also intended for urban planners and professionals who are supporting these residents in resisting demolition and proposing alternative plans.

Over the last few years different approaches to planning, types of frameworks, regulations and policies have been put in place with the aim of providing communities with formal planning tools for engaging in future developments of their neighbourhood. At the same time, community organisations are using diverse approaches – including direct actions or campaigning, as well as engagement with these formal planning tools – to fight against the demolition of social housing, instead proposing alternative plans that respond

more directly to the local community’s needs and demands. Despite the availability of such planning tools, some communities encounter many barriers when attempting to influence meaningfully the future of their neighbourhoods, with local authorities often disregarding residents’ proposals.

Building on lessons from seven case studies London, we have identified a set of tools, strategies and actions that residents resisting demolition and/or proposing community-led plans have used. The tools have different objectives and also respond to different degrees of participation, ranging from full community control to exerting influence on the decision-making process. They also include both formal planning tools and other tools, actions and strategies outside planning.

We have organised the examination of these tools into five sections: ‘Gaining residents’ control’, ‘Localism Act 2011’, ‘Policies for community participation in regeneration’, ‘Using the law and challenging redevelopment through the courts’ and ‘Informal tools and strategies’.

The case studies that have contributed to building this toolkit are all based in London and the policy framework is the England and Wales planning system. Although this toolkit is London-focused, it can also shed light on cases in other parts of the UK and in other countries.

The content that appears in this website is a summary of the open access book Community-Led Regeneration: A Toolkit for Residents and Planners, authored by Pablo Sendra and Daniel Fitzpatrick, developed in collaboration with Just Space, and published by UCL in 2020. For accessing the full content of the toolkit, download the book here.