PlanLoCaL: the website, videos and resource pack
PlanLoCaL: the website, videos and resource pack
Giving communities the knowledge and confidence to influence local planning policy
A significant output from CSE’s PlanLoCaL project has been a group of products designed to help communities establish renewable energy projects through inclusive community decision-making and engagement with the planning system.
These include the PlanLoCaL website (www.planlocal.org.uk), a series of 47 short videos and a resource pack.
These are being used by community activists and community development workers seeking to get renewable energy projects off the ground. They cover the renewable energy technologies themselves, plus other critical issues like planning, neighbourhood consultation, funding, legalities and even how to spend any profits.
The website
The website is an in-depth written resource with a wealth of links to other advice sources. It has been designed to support the process of community-led planning to ensure that low-carbon considerations are not ignored. This will be vitally important as the government’s localism agenda, and tools such as Neighbourhood Plans become available to communities.
The website is arranged around the principle ‘what matters to you?' reflecting the fact that many people engaged in community-led planning are not motivated by climate change or energy security, but by other issues, such as transport, housing, local shops, facilities for young people etc. But, of course, all these concerns do have implications for climate change, and planlocal.org.uk provides detailed guidance on how to bring the issues together.
The website developed out of work CSE had been undertaking under the PlanLoCaL banner in partnership with ACRE (Action with Communities in Rural England) to understand the processes of community-led planning and help to place low-carbon planning within the priorities that emerge.
The videos
There are 47 PlanLoCaL videos which range from around 4 to 12 minutes in length. Ten of the films are case studies of successful community energy projects. Others cover relevant topics such as introductions to the different renewable energy technologies, project management, funding, dealing with planning, consulting with the community, generating an income stream, re-investing your profits and heritage and landscape.
The videos are collected onto two DVDs which are part of the resource pack (below). They can also be viewed online at www.planlocal.org.uk or on YouTube (www.youtube.com/csebristol).
The videos are designed to be watched in a communal setting and as an aid to collective decision-making when combined with the participatory exercises in the resource pack.
The resource pack
The PlanLoCaL resource pack grew out of a series of half-day training events that demonstrated the steps communities need to take to set up a viable renewable energy project, and the benefits that the community might enjoy as a result. Popular demand for more of these sessions prompted us to produce a resource that would allow communities to ‘do it for themselves’ – something that is very much in keeping with CSE’s approach of empowering others.
The pack itself is an A4 binder full of exercises, images, case studies, technical information, support on running events and help on setting up as a group. Interspersing factual information with participatory exercises, it's designed to empower communities to make decisions and plan projects on their own. You can order a free copy via this page of the PlanLoCaL website.
You can find every section of the pack, plus various other useful documents, in the downloads section of the PlanLoCaL website.
Feedback on the PlanLoCaL pack
CSE used online Survey Monkey questionnaires to collect data about the PlanLoCaL pack and training. The pack evaluation survey received responses from 61 groups including county councils, city councils, district councils and unitary authorities, community groups, transition groups, a university architecture department and more. Feedback included the following comments (which we can’t attribute because the survey was confidential) and for more glowing tributes, click here:
“It’s a fabulous resource that I have recommended to many people”
“We had already gone through a number of processes before we got the pack but it gives us more confidence we are on the right track and enables more [people] on our Committee to consider the process and options.”
“The pack helped with choosing what type of consultation to do, and reinforced how important it is to consult the community as widely as possible.”
“It has given the team a lot of information and enabled us to develop our own engagement programme.”
“Would have taken months of research to have achieved this myself.”
“Excellent resources to use both professionally and personally.”
“Made me stand back and look at community renewable energy projects in the context of its general importance to other people in the community who are less concerned with climate change impacts and sustainable energy."
We envisage that there are two ‘types’ of people who will use PlanLoCaL resources:
- community activists or individual community members (or small ‘core groups’ of people) who want to establish a community-owned renewable energy project in their own locality
- community development workers or individuals who would use this pack as part of their job, perhaps as a way to kick-start a process that would get a community interested in the idea of a community-owned renewable energy installation
Read about a PlanLoCaL resource pack training day, held in Bath in February 2011, here.